Ronald Lauder has unloaded a modernist landmark.
The cosmetics billionaire and GOP megadonor has sold 242 E. 52nd St., a Turtle Bay townhouse designed in 1950 by architect Philip Johnson for the Rockefeller family. The sale closed Nov. 15 and appeared in city records Monday, with the property going for just shy of $20 million.
Lauder, the ex-chairman of Estee Lauder and a prominent art collector — he is also a founder of the Upper East Side museum Neue Galerie — had purchased the home by way of a Christie’s auction in 2000 for $11.2 million.
Little is known about the buyer, who shielded their identity behind a shell company, Ludo USA LLC. And the deal for the 25-foot-wide, 2,100-square-foot home appears to have occurred without any public marketing, so details about the process and which brokers might have been involved, if any, are unclear.
Joseph Tuite, the treasurer of Lauder’s foundation, signed the deed on the sales side. An email sent to Tuite went unreturned.
Known as the Rockefeller Guest House — after former MoMA President Blanchette Rockefeller, the woman who commissioned it — No. 242 makes for an unusual presence. Tucked on a block near Second Avenue amid more traditional townhouses, the two-story version is simplistic and almost Japanese in its minimalism.
Three large windows sit atop an ornamentation-free brick wall that’s punctuated by a single small wooden door. The City Council made the facade an official landmark in 2001.
Inside are three bedrooms that overlook a central courtyard with a pool, according to the Landmarks Preservation Commission report that nominated the site for protection, though the interior itself is not a landmark.
Constructed beginning in 1948 for $64,000 (the equivalent of about $820,000 today), No. 242 was intended to serve as a place for Rockefeller, the wife of John D. Rockefeller III, to display her art collection and entertain guests, the report said. Blanchette selected the site because it stood between her home on Beekman Place and the MoMA, it added. John Rockefeller III was the grandson of Standard Oil co-founder John D. Rockefeller.
Why Lauder decided to sell now isn’t known. For years the building nuzzled the Turtle Bay Music School. But in 2018, Minrav Development bought the school building for $11 million and replaced it with a much large, seven-story, 15-unit condo tower that was under construction for several years. The building, called the Minuet, is now in sales mode, with units starting at $1.3 million.
Lauder has reportedly spent more than $35 million in recent decades supporting Republicans, including $11 million in a bid to elect former Rep. Lee Zeldin to the governorship of New York in 2022. Though Zeldin came within a few points, he lost to incumbent Kathy Hochul.
Philip Johnson — whose New York credits include the 885 Third Ave. “Lipstick Building,” the 550 Madison Ave. “Chippendale Building” and Lincoln Center’s David H. Koch Theater — also designed the Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut, a close kin of the Rockefeller Guest House. Johnson lived at No. 252 from 1971 to 1979.