Dating back to 1915, the building was first a barn and then a perfume factory before it was purchased by the artist Julian Schnabel in 2005. Painter, film maker (winning best director at Cannes for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), and designer, Schnabel pieced together his palazzo with one eye on aesthetics and another on profits, transforming his house and atelier into a lucrative real estate operation. Plunked smack on top of the factory building on W11th Street is a Pompeii-red palazzo, stuccoed on the outside with five huge residences, plus a studio for Schnabel, some serious exhibition space and a swimming pool. The place looks as if it began life in Venice on the Grand Canal, somehow floated up the Hudson River, then hoisted itself atop its three story “pedestal”. With 180 windows, balconies galore with cast stone and bronze railings and very large terraces, this building is truely one of a kind. Record construction times were owed to the risk of running into bans on height limits, and despite the grievances of millionaire neighbors and associations like the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, the building is now 12 floors tall — nearly 30 meters higher than before. The building’s floors were immediately sold out to various stars (and in some cases, resold just as fast). Richard Gere, Madonna, Johnny Depp, and an insider at Credit Suisse all call Palazzo Chupi their New York pied-à-terre, while the artist has held on to the first four floors as a studio and another two as apartments for his twin sons. - text by
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