Director Spike Lee owns a historic New York City landmark that serves as his primary residence. In 2014, he put the property on the market for $32 million.
Known as the Barbara Rutherford Hatch Residence, the 8,292-square-foot townhouse dates back to the early 20th century.
Inside the Famed Home
The three-story home boasts five bedrooms, five bathrooms, three fireplaces, an elevator, a library, and two-story staff quarters. Notable architectural features include cathedral ceilings and oak and mahogany floors, according to Curbed.
The filmmaker and his wife, Tania Lewis Lee, purchased the property in 1998 for $16.6 million a widely publicized sale at the time, and when they listed it for $32 million in February 2014, the news once again made headlines.
However, after struggling to find a buyer, they lowered the price to $28 million just 3 months later.
By 2015, the couple decided to take the property off the market and continue calling it home.
The Hatch Residence holds a special place in New York’s Upper East Side – certainly distinguished in its own right and a relic that was once progressive in its construction.
Architect Frederick J. Sterner, known for his work in New York, Colorado, and London, worked between 1917 and 1919 on The Hatch, which was inspired by the Spanish colonial style.
The building had a progressive brownstone façade, a spacious interior courtyard, stucco walls, a red tile roof, and ordinate iron railings.
The Hatch is named after Barbara Rutherford Hatch, the wife of financier Cyril Hatch and the daughter of William K. Vanderbilt, a member of the prominent Vanderbilt family.
According to The New York Post, The Hatch has a long history of being owned by figures in the entertainment industry.
In 1921, Broadway producer and agent Charles B Dillingham, the former owner of the Globe Theatre, now the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, acquired the home.
It was in the 1940s that a burlesque entertainer named Gypsy Rose Lee, no relation to Spike Lee, became the owner of The Hatch and threw fancy parties there.
In a New York Times article published during the time, the flamboyant townhouse was reported to have 26 rooms and seven baths with marble floors in the living room.
After Rose Lee’s passing in 1970, the home was acquired by Dr. Ferruccio Di Cori, a psychiatrist known as “the Shrink of Broadway.”
The psychiatrist pushed for landmark status and got approved by the Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1977.
In the 1980s, renowned modern artist Jasper Johns purchased the townhouse, where he lived and created some of his most significant works. During his time there, he sold the painting White Flag to The Metropolitan Museum of Art for $20 million and False Start for $80 million.
It is unclear who Johns sold the home to, but Lee bought it from fourth-generation Brooklynite Liz Mandarano, who purchased it in 2013 through an anonymous shell company, Alright, Already LLC, according to The New York Post.
