When he launched The Daily, his new tablet-only newspaper, Rupert Murdoch pledged to its editor, Jesse Angelo, that he’d put up $30 million dollars to get the thing up and running. That number puts into context the amount that Angelo just reportedly spent on a home on one of the fanciest blocks of the Upper East Side. Most recently listed at $27.2 million, the townhouse that Angelo scored at 117–119 East 69th Street came for the discount price of $23 million. That’s a whopping $5.5 million less than its previous owner, Edgar Bronfman, bought it for in 2008 — but a whole heck of a lot more than the $600,000 Muppet-maker Jim Henson spent on it way back in 1977. A neo-Georgian marvel (the two street addresses mean it’s a double-wide at 40 feet) with original details from 1928 and a working elevator, the house will still need a lot of work, according to StreetEasy. Although the deed was signed by Angelo (whose dad, by the way, is private-equity bigwig John Angelo), the house was purchased by a limited liability corporation with the name of Statler — as in Statler of Statler and Waldorf, the skinnier of Henson’s famously curmudgeonly Muppet critics.
According to the listing, the space could be used for offices as well as a home — so maybe 37-year-old Angelo, who has no kids but is dating Newsweek editor Rebecca Dana, has other plans for it. After all, his last apartment cost only $1.9 million, according to the Observer. But considering News Corp. cleared out the whole 26th floor of 1211 Sixth Avenue for The Daily, it looks like this Muppet has a new home.
Meanwhile, look at the headline on that Observer story. Looks like new editor Elizabeth Spiers is really going for that elusive Observer “house style”, huh?
