Last November, the New York City apartment where prominent journalist Barbara Walters lived for 30 years, up until her death in December of 2022, went into contract. But in a surprise turn of events, the Upper East Side unit was quietly placed back onto the market on January 9 at $16.995 million—almost $1 million dollars less than the $17.75 million for which records show the contract was signed. A report by the New York Post claims that the prospective buyer simply walked away from the deal and their enormous deposit. The luxury abode, which sits in a historic 1925-build on the edge of Central Park, first hit the market with a $19.75 million price tag in April. It had dropped to $17.8 million in September before the mystery buyer scooped it up. [Source: Architectural Digest]
The home is listed with Compass. A Compass representative confirmed the re-listing but did not disclose a reason for the soured deal. Listing images of the almost 100-year-old unit show a full-floor apartment with 10-foot-high ceilings. “The scale of the entrance gallery and rooms, the views to Central Park at just the perfect height, and the knowledge that so many wonderful dinner parties and meetings have happened [here] make this a most unique residence,” the listing states. Walters’s taste in decor ran between classical—evidenced by items like traditional floral drapes and antiques—and modern. The listing images show an embrace of contemporary style, with pieces like her red-lacquered bookshelf and Eames chair covered in red leather, which were inside her study.
Walters was a known collector, and her five-bedroom, five-bathroom home was brimming with treasures from around the world. On November 6, Bonhams held a live auction of the groundbreaking news anchor’s $8 million trove which included furniture, several lots of precious jewels, like the ruby and diamond floral brooch she wore when photographed with Audrey Hepburn at a 1991 event, and a collection of 19th-century American paintings by artists like John Singer Sargent and William Merritt Chase.
“From the way she dressed to how her dinner table was set and the people she gathered in her home—every detail was personal, and nothing was by accident,” close friend and former CNN producer Pamela Gross told The Hollywood Reporter of Walters’s curatorial style.
