The Art Gallery That Wasn’t

Despite its provenance—fashion designer Richard Tyler and his wife, Lisa Trafficante, were the owners— the townhouse at 727 Washington Street waited for a buyer for nearly a year (306 days, to be precise). Perhaps it had something to do with the price’s not wavering from its original asking of $15.9 million? It has finally sold, or so it seems. Prudential Douglas Elliman broker Leslie Mason’s Web listing for the ultraminimal house—which sports a Romanesque front but, inside, has been reconfigured into an airy, loftlike space, complete with a glass-bottomed pond—now says it’s in contract. If it fetches anywhere near its asking price, Tyler and Trafficante will have scored again in a real-estate deal. They paid $6.1 million for the townhouse back in 2000, the same year they sold 19 Gramercy Park South, the 18,000-square-foot nineteenth-century mansion they bought in 1995 for $3.5 million. That house went for the princely sum of $16.5 million, netting them a nice $13 million return.

The Art Gallery That Wasn’t