Let's Get Physical: Murdoch's $400,000 Penthouse Gym

According to a 2005 construction permit just discovered on the Department of Buildings' Web site, Mr. Murdoch is enlarging the existing exercise room in his three-level penthouse at 834 Fifth Avenue, which he bought two years ago for $44 million from Laurance Rockefeller’s estate.

The construction cost? Only $400,000!

“Sure, construction can be a nuisance, but it happens,” neighbor (and ex–Lazard Frères vice chairman) Robert Mezzacappa told The Observer in March. “People spend lots of money to live in the building, and they have a perfectly natural desire to have the apartment as they want it.”

Six-digit gyms are perfectly natural too.