who's buying

Rupert Murdoch Is Returning to Hampshire House

Photo: Kenneth Grant/Alamy Stock Phot

Rupert Murdoch is returning to Hampshire House. As The Wall Street Journal reports, the nonagenarian conservative media mogul is in contract to purchase a rare floor-through at 150 Central Park South, where he first lived in the early ’90s with then-wife Anna Murdoch. Two wives later, he’ll be taking up residence on the 27th floor of the copper-roofed co-op. (Though he’s still waiting on board approval.)

Murdoch’s first act in Hampshire House was three floors down in a 3,400-square-foot apartment — nearly half the size of the 6,500-square-foot seven-bedroom he just closed on. In 2000, after divorcing Anna and marrying Wendi Deng, Murdoch sold the Hampshire House apartment for $5.5 million, a building record at the time.

Before Murdoch, philanthropist Alice Tully once lived on the 27th floor, first buying an apartment in 1959 before spending the next decade buying up the rest of the floor — including an apartment Greta Garbo owned and Frank Sinatra rented — to eventually create the current mega-unit. After she died in 1993, coincidentally at the age of 91, which is Murdoch’s current age, the apartment was put up for sale. The New York Times described it at the time as a place “whose value, estimated at $7 million, excludes the spirit of the great lady, an incalculable extra.” Now it will include the spirit (and living body) of Rupert Murdoch.

Rupert Murdoch Is Returning to Hampshire House