Madonna Closes on Hard-Won $7 Million Central Park West Co-op

No one gets in Madonna’s way, especially not some stuffy Central Park West co-op board. It appears the world’s most famous Anglophile pop star will get to expand her 6,000-square-foot fiefdom in the decidedly Victorian sounding building Harperly Hall.

The Material Girl has closed on the $7 million, 7^th floor unit, according to city records published today, which will bring the swank duplex that has been her New York headquarters for the past two decades to positively palatial proportions.

The apartment is by no means the trophy property in her bulging real-estate portfolio--she reportedly owns seven homes in the UK and a mansion in Beverly Hills--but it might be the most hard-won. Madonna sued the co-op board last December for blocking her purchase of a third apartment at 1 West 64^th Street from her neighbor Julie Clark Thayer. Earlier this month she reportedly went to contract after settling the dispute.

Madonna has had beefs with co-op boards before—most notably when the San Remo refused to sell her and Sean Penn an apartment in the 1980’s. But Harperly Hall was only one of the B-list Central Park West buildings before the Material Girl moved in. The New York Times reported in 2003 that she drove property values in the whole building up about 25 percent, but also drew hordes of paparazzi, angering neighbors and forcing the lime-light hungry star to use the service entrance (gasp).