Boston’s Largest and Most Expensive Home
By Anthony Longo 8 08 2008
With 15 bathrooms, six parking spaces, and 24,000 square feet of living space, it might be found sprawling across some suburb. But this $23 million mansion is smack in the middle of Boston.
The largest single-family home in all of Boston is being assembled from two adjoining buildings at Exeter Street and Commonwealth Avenue in the Back Bay. Its owner, investment executive Ofer Nemirovsky, spent a decade purchasing the four condominiums in the Exeter building and the adjacent Commonwealth townhouse, and is now combining them in a two-year, gut renovation project.
The house’s luxuriant features include an atrium bordered by a glass walkway and railings, according to building plans filed with the city. Each of three children’s bedrooms has its own bathroom and dressing room. The master suite has “his” and “hers” studies, dressing rooms, and bathrooms.
There’s more: an elevator, a sitting room, living room, parlor, media room, family room, exercise room, upper lounge, an “eat-in study,” a 27-foot, oval-shaped library, and an office for the house manager.
“You’ve got to be kidding me - that’s insane,” said David Kaufman, as he stopped to gawk at the building while walking his Bernese mountain dog one July day.
With workers crawling like ants along the wall of scaffolding, the renovation has Back Bay abuzz. Passersby invariably stop to speculate about what extreme amenities the home might have. One rumor making the rounds is an indoor pool. There is no pool, according to the plans, but the house will have a “ball-playing court” in the basement, next to the recreation room.
“Did a Saudi prince buy it” asked John Arena, a Florida resident who is renting a Back Bay apartment this summer. Arena has watched as the renovation evolved over the weeks, but admitted he “didn’t know it was one house.”
Nemirovsky, a managing director of HarbourVest, an international private equity firm in Boston, declined repeated requests for an interview, saying he wanted to maintain his family’s privacy.
Even by the imposing standards of Back Bay, which has been home to Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s former wife, Joan, and car dealer Herb Chambers, Nemirovsky’s house stands out for its grandeur and its size. Luxury condominium projects such as the Mandarin Oriental-Boston are mushrooming all over downtown, some with units as large as a suburban house. But Nemirovsky’s residence is Boston’s largest, according to The Warren Group, a real estate research firm.
“Nothing comes close,” said Warren analyst Alan Pasnik.
The scale of the house recalls the Gilded Age, when Boston’s wealthy families between 1860 and 1890 constructed the mansions that line the boulevards of Back Bay. Over the next century, the single-family residences on Commonwealth were chopped into apartments, condominiums, college dormitories, or professional offices. Continued…
Source: Boston Globe (Kim Blanton)
No pool? For $23,000,000 I would at least expect a pool…
BL don’t knock Boston. I didnt see a pool at the Heather Lane estate on Nantucket either and that was $19M as a shell.
But…if you do insist on a pool check out this listing in the Back Bay: http://boston.condodomain.com/Boston-Real-Estate-MLS/74-Beacon-Street/383009/70758865/
I’d have to agree with you both…
Since Boston gets cold, indoor swimming space would be nice in such an expensive home…either home…
But, considering the descriptions of both estates, you could swim in the bathtubs no? It seems that anything would be possible with such crazy plans and visions at both places…
I don’t know though - the best home seems to be when you make every context your home when leave “home” - so why have such a big home?
I have a hard time keeping 2000 square feet clean!
That would be a 570,000 refund check from condoDomain!!!!!
See, Thomas, I agree with you here, but here’s the thing…
The discourse of the company lies within a borderland of theory…
Between those properties which are very luxurious and can only be afforded by very luxurious individuals … and thus perhaps those that might consider an extra half million a nice donation to an organization…
And those properties and clients for whom the refund check is a huge deal, a mindful decision of how to use it towards all those costs associated with home buying, or towards new things like furniture that can extend beyond IKEA etc…
The discourse of the company lies between and serves the clients’ priorities no matter what… I quote Jess “No matter what the cost of the property, all our clients are served the same…” (that’s not a direct quote, but something like that…”
So, how will the company continue to live out within these two discourse borderlands…to which theory can we both make the luxury folks feel luxurious and the those that are looking at a property that is let’s say 300 grand in Dallas still feel luxurious …and yet have different, way different, needs of the rebate check?
Make sense. You strike me as a theory man, so I throw out all this gibble gabble. If you’re like to continue the convo anytime, be sure to drop a note or visit the blog