Billionaire Alexander Rovt and historic mansion on Upper East Side.

18 East 68

18 East 68

The house on 18 East 68, Sloan Mansion, was built with a scandal and was sold with a scandal. The house  was built  by mansion designer C. P. H. Gilbert for the  Henry Sloan who settled there after his scandalous divorce.  

Henry T. Sloane was a son of a founder of  W & J Sloane carpeting company that provided  carpeting for  the White House  and  Waldorf- Astoria Hotel. Just two years before the divorce Henry built a beautify house on East 72.  His wife had an affair and got married again several  hours after divorce.  Mr. Sloane moved into the house on East 68  house  with his two young daughters.

18 East 68 (August 2013)

There were  30 room in this limestone mansion with  17 baths, three terraces, 17-foot ceilings and 11 fireplaces.  In the middle of the XX century the house was sold and divided into nine small apartments.

The group of investors   bought the house in 2007  for around  20 million, renovated it  and return it back to marker for 64 million. The price went down in 2009 and  later dropped to $37,900,000. By May of 2011 the owners had defaulted in over $28 million in loans and Henry Sloane's mansion was sold at a foreclosure auction to Alex  Rovt.

Alexander Rovt was born 1953 in  the Jewish family in Mukachevo, Ukraine.  He attended Lvov State University  and has a PhD in international economics.    In 1985, he fled to the United States with his wife Olga  and settled in Brooklyn. He went to work in a kosher deli.  In 1988 Rovt worked for  the small company named  IBE (international barter exchange )Trade. The founder of IBE outsider states with little hard currency ( such as  Uganda after its 1980s civil   or Romania under Ceauşescu) and  accepted payment in commodities like coffee or iron rocks. Fertilizer was an ideal barter commodity, and the Soviet Union had made tons of it, and Rovt was the  entrée into the closed economy of the Soviet Union.

IBE’s trades carried significant risk. Rovt and his business partner  eventually bought out IBE and the company  shifted to a more traditional model, buying and shipping fertilizer around the world.
In mid-1990s Mister Rovt has owned a large house in  Mill Basin, waterfront neighborhood in Brooklyn. In 1997 he built yeshiva The Zvi Dov Roth Academy  ( 3300 Kings Hwy, Brooklyn, NY 11234) and named it after his the grandfather.

232 East 63

In September 2005 he paid $4,700,000 for a 25-foot wide red-brick Georgian townhouse on East 63rd Street  (232 East 63rd ) with attached  car garage.  Rovt spent the next five years on an extensive and expensive renovation. The five-story, 12,000-square-foot building is constructed out of reinforced concrete,  like a bunker faced with brick, and its windows have retractable bulletproof shades. There is full swimming pool in the house with gym, a massage room, sauna and steam. The house has of five outdoor spaces, five bedrooms and twelve baths.

Pool at 232 East 63

The house was put on the market in  May 2011 with an asking price of $27,000,000. According to Zillow the house is still ,on the marker with the price of $22 million. 

And only a month  later in June 2011 Alex Rovt bought   historical Sloane Mansion, at 18 East  68, off 5 Avenue, in the heart of  the upscale Upper East Side. 

14 Wall Street

In April 2012 Mr. Rovt purchased the historical  landmark skyscraper at 14 Wall Street for $303 million, in cash, without a broker.  Bankers Trust Building with its pyramidal roof is one of the great towers that define the lower Manhattan.  It  was built in 1910-1912  and was the tallest bank building in the world when it was completed.  I told about the building in one of my older posts.

Rovt told that he had set aside another $300 million to $400 million  to make additional residential and commercial buys in Manhattan. So let’s wait for his next purchase…

14 Wall street, St Mark's Campanile and fertilizer tycoon

 

14 Wall Street 

Gillender Building

     14 Wall Street   skyscraper (29 floors) sits across Broad Street from Federal Hall.   It is not the first skyscraper occupying this lot.  The first one was a 20-story Gillender Building, named after millionaire Eccles Gillender.  The building was  completed 1897 and was one of the  eighth tallest structures in New York.  It was named "one of the wonders of the city"    and was demolished in 13 years, in 1910.    Gillender Building  was the  first skyscraper wrecked to make way for a taller skyscraper. But it was not the last one.  For instance, Singer Building, a 47-story office building completed in 1908, was demolished  in 1960 and  1 Liberty plaza with 60 floors was built.

Architects  took  St Mark's Campanile   (the bell tower of St Mark's Basilica in Venice) as a base for the design. Many  skyscrapers took the Venetian bell-tower as a  model for a modern office tower such as The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Towerin New York.

Campanile in Venice

Tower in Denver

The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower in New York

Other examples in US are the Daniels & Fisher Tower in Denver  and Sather Tower, nicknamed the Campanile, on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley.  

14 Wall street

But for the architects Trowbridge & Livingston of 14 wall street it was not enough – they used Mausoleum of Halicarnassus,  designed by the Greek architects  between 353 and 350 BC in present Bodrum, Turkey  as a model for structure  on top of the tower. 
Mausolus  was a satrap (governor) of Caria in South Asia. The  word Mausoleum  comes from the name of his  tomb . 26 Broadway in New York is based on the model  of the Mausoleum.

The building on Wall street was built for the Bankers Trust headquarters .  Bankers Trust was founded in 1903 and fourteen years later it became a full-service bank and one of the country's wealthiest financial institutions. Bankers Trust adopted the pyramid at the top of the skyscraper as its trademark, and took as its slogan "A Tower of Strength".

When 14 Wall Street was completed in 1912, it was the tallest bank building in the world and one of the three or four tallest buildings in the city.  Over the next few decades  the 14 Wall Street Building became an iconic symbol of American capitalism and the Wall Street financial district.

There was a J.P. Morgan's private residence on the   31st floor 1911 to 1913. Later  penthouse  was converted into an upscale French restaurant called "The 14 Wall Street"  that had panoramic views of New York Harbor and had the  menu in French  style.  However, the restaurant was closed in April 2006.

In 1935 Bankers Trust assets had reached $1 billion. In 1961 the bank opened a second major headquarters in midtown at 280 Park Avenue.  In 1987 Bankers Trust sold the building to 14 Wall Street Associates. In 1991 the building passed to the 14 Wall Street Realty Corp., and in 1992 it was acquired by General Electric Investment Corporation.  On January 21, 2007, the building's owners  agreed to sell the property to Cushman & Wakefield. 
 

In April 2012, majority control of the  1.05 million-square-foot building  was sold for $303 million in cash to Alexander Rovt, a fertilizer tycoon from Ukraine, who paid off the building's outstanding debt as part of the deal.  This skyscraper is the largest building built by  Rovt but not the first one! In my next  post I’ll tell you more about mr. Rovt from  Mukachevo!