Bronfman Boy Buys Bing Crosby Hang-Out For $18 M.

Liquor heir Matthew Bronfman paid $3 million in 1994 for his old townhouse on East 67th Street, and sold the place this year for $33 million.

According to a deed filed today in city records, he closed last month on the townhouse's replacement, a 14-room co-op at 998 Fifth Avenue. He paid $18 million, around the rumored contract price; maybe that means if he plays his cards right again (and if our calculations on his townhouse profit are good), he can flip this place sometime in 2020 for $198 million.

The seller is Anne Slater, the blue-blooded, blue-spectacled matron who had been in her building even before it went co-op in 1953. "Bing Crosby made this his home when he was in New York," listing broker Kathy Sloane told The Observer when we wrote about the sprawl in March (click here, it's the fourth item).

The north wing of the apartment--with a bedroom, one of the apartment's kitchens, two staff rooms, and a bedroom exclusively for the butler--was called the theater wing, because of the actors (like Orson Welles' leading lady Anne Baxter) who stayed there. "There is even theatrical lighting in that wing,” Ms. Sloane said.

Yet, Mr. Bronfman is leaving behind a much bigger townhouse, which he shaped himself. Then again, his new place has a 497-square-foot gallery, a glorious oval “salon” on Fifth, 17 closets and two wood-paneled wet bars.

And on the bright side, it's massively bigger than the "pod" condos Mr. Bronfman has developed with Rolling Stone daughter Jade Jagger on West 19th Street. "It’s very interesting," Mr. Bronfman told The Observer this year, when asked about his real estate life, "there’s a lot of stuff that goes into building buildings."