Ivana Trump’s NYC Townhouse, Decked Out in Gold and Animal Print, Asks $26.5 Million
Ms. Trump bought the five-storey, 20-foot-wide property the same year her divorce was finalized from former President Donald Trump
5 min
Stepping into Ivana Trump‘s Manhattan townhouse, with its limestone facade and embellished gold entryway, is like stepping back in time to the 1980s, when the late socialite and her ex-husband, former President Donald Trump, were the ultimate power couple. The home’s décor—leopard print, pink marble, crystal chandeliers and lots and lots of gold—is reflective of the glamorous, over-the-top aesthetic that helped define that era and the Trump real-estate portfolio.
“My mom absolutely loved that house,” said their son Eric Trump, noting that it reflected her “style and elegance.” The opulence, he said, “embodied Ivana Trump.”
Ms. Trump’s estate is now putting the property on the market for $26.5 million following her death earlier this year, Eric Trump said. Ms. Trump was found dead at the home in July. The proceeds of the sale are slated to go to her three children: Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump.
Ms. Trump purchased the townhouse for about $2.5 million in 1992, the same year her divorce from Donald Trump was finalised, records show. While Ms. Trump also had homes in Florida and France, Eric Trump said the New York property was especially important to her. “She was so comfortable there,” he said. “It was the last possession in the world she would ever have gotten rid of.”
On a recent Tuesday, Ms. Trump’s tiny Yorkshire terrier, Tiger, greeted visitors at the door of the roughly 8,725-square-foot townhouse, which is located between Fifth and Madison avenues. Since Ms. Trump’s death Tiger has remained in the house with Ms. Trump’s longtime assistant, to whom he is attached, Eric Trump said.
The entrance hall has blood-red carpets, upholstered fabric walls in red and gold, lashings of pink marble, a crystal chandelier and a Romanesque statue. The upper floors are accessed by an old-fashioned birdcage elevator and a red-carpeted, curved marble staircase with a painted mural.
In her 2017 book, “Raising Trump,” Ms. Trump described her design style as “luxurious” and “whimsical.” When she bought the house, she wrote, it needed significant work. No one had lived there for about 12 years, and the property’s last incarnation had been as a dentist’s office, with many small rooms.
The second floor now has two formal entertaining areas. At the front is a living room heavily upholstered in shades of red and green, with a pleated gold fabric ceiling and velvet chairs. The space is decorated with ornate figurines and other collectibles, such as clocks and silver jewellery boxes. In her book, Ms. Trump described the room as “how Louis XVI would have lived if he had had money.”
The dining room has walls covered in gold fabric and a chandelier hanging above. Two tables, one round and one long and rectangular, have tall-backed chairs upholstered in golden yellow. Eric Trump said the furniture could be negotiated with the sale of the property, should a buyer be interested.
In between the two rooms stands a white grand piano. While Ms. Trump never played piano herself, she wrote, she had professional pianists come to entertain guests at parties. Eric Trump said his sister also played the piano.
On the third floor, there is a library outfitted almost entirely in leopard print, with spotted wallpaper and upholstery. On the walls hang a painting of two leopards playing and a framed photograph of Ms. Trump embracing a young Ivanka. Where there isn’t animal print, there’s gold. On the sofa rests a doll modelled after Ms. Trump, with blond hair, an embellished silver jacket and a fur stole.
The primary bedroom embodies Ms. Trump’s self-described whimsical aesthetic. The colour palette is muted pinks, greens and gold. A canopy bed sits in front of a gold-embossed fireplace. On the walls are Chinese-style murals. The en-suite bathroom is a burst of Pepto Bismol-pink, from the marble floors to the double sinks to the bathtub to the cabinets and the walls. The faucets and hardware provide accents of gold. Then, there’s the closet. In her book, Ms. Trump described it as so large that it seems to go “on, and on, and on.”
“I call it Indochine, because by the time you get to the end of it, you might as well be in another continent,” she wrote.
In the rear of the house, there is a south-facing garden and a terrace off the primary bedroom, which gets plenty of light in the midmorning and early afternoon.
“She used to go out on the private balcony every morning with coffee and she’d read the paper,” Eric Trump said.
Eric Trump said he and his siblings lived in the house during their teenage years. He has happy memories of the family chatting around the dining room table and of his mother’s parties, which at times included famous actors and even royalty, he said.
At one point, Ms. Trump converted Donald Trump Jr.’s former bedroom into a gym. From there, she could see into the house across the street, where fashion designer Donatella Versace lived, Eric Trump said. She would wave to Ms. Versace from the treadmill. “They loved each other,” he said.
The five-story, 20-foot-wide house is currently configured with five bedrooms, but could be redesigned to accommodate more, according to the listing agents, Adam Modlin of Modlin Group and Roger Erickson of Douglas Elliman. Two of the floors are currently split into several rooms, but those spaces could be combined to take advantage of the full width of the townhouse, the agents said.
The one conspicuously absent amenity: a full-size kitchen. There are two small, galley-style kitchens, one off the dining room on the second floor and another by a study on the garden level. Ms. Trump, by her own admission, didn’t cook much in her later years. The agents said a buyer could likely build a larger kitchen on the garden level.
The agents said most prospective buyers will want to do a significant renovation. Eric Trump said his mother once had plans drawn up to construct a pool in the basement, which already includes a sauna, but changed her mind.
The block is one of the city’s most illustrious, according to the listing agents. In addition to the Versace mansion, now owned by hedge funder Thomas Sandell and his wife Ximena Sandell, the street has drawn big names like billionaire Len Blavatnik and record mogul Tommy Mottola, according to public records and people familiar with the properties.
“It’s like being between Boardwalk and Park Place on a Monopoly board,” Mr. Modlin said.
The Trump property comes on the market as New York’s townhouse market revs up. In recent months, a series of major Upper East Side townhouse deals have closed, despite what agents say is a cooling market for luxury homes across the country. They include the $50 million sale of a Beaux-Arts mansion that was owned by the Permanent Mission of Serbia to the United Nations, and the $48 million sale of real-estate investor Keith Rubenstein’s townhouse.
Ms. Trump, a onetime model, hailed from the former Czechoslovakia. While married to Mr. Trump, she took on several roles at the Trump Organization, including vice president of interior design. She also supervised construction and design of Trump Tower and the Trump Plaza Hotel. Later, she had her own fashion line.
“She wasn’t a, ‘Let’s throw on a pair of sweatpants,’ kind of person,” Eric Trump said. “She believed in looking good.”
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The marketplace has spoken and, at least for now, it’s showing preference for hybrids and plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) over battery electrics. That makes Toyota’s foot dragging on EVs (and full speed ahead on hybrids) look fairly wise, though the timeline along a bumpy road still gets us to full electrification by 2035.
Italian supercar producer Lamborghini, in business since 1963, is also proceeding, incrementally, toward battery power. In an interview, Federico Foschini , Lamborghini’s chief global marketing and sales officer, talked about the new Urus SE plug-in hybrid the company showed at its lounge in New York on Monday.
Lamborghini
The Urus SE SUV will sell for US$258,000 in the U.S. (the company’s biggest market) when it goes on sale internationally in the first quarter of 2025, Foschini says.
“We’re using the contribution from the electric motor and battery to not only lower emissions but also to boost performance,” he says. “Next year, all three of our models [the others are the Revuelto, a PHEV from launch, and the continuation of the Huracán] will be available as PHEVs.”
The Euro-spec Urus SE will have a stated 37 miles of electric-only range, thanks to a 192-horsepower electric motor and a 25.9-kilowatt-hour battery, but that distance will probably be less in stricter U.S. federal testing. In electric mode, the SE can reach 81 miles per hour. With the 4-litre 620-horsepower twin-turbo V8 engine engaged, the picture is quite different. With 789 horsepower and 701 pound-feet of torque on tap, the SE—as big as it is—can reach 62 mph in 3.4 seconds and attain 193 mph. It’s marginally faster than the Urus S, but also slightly under the cutting-edge Urus Performante model. Lamborghini says the SE reduces emissions by 80% compared to a standard Urus.
Lamborghini’s Urus plans are a little complicated. The company’s order books are full through 2025, but after that it plans to ditch the S and Performante models and produce only the SE. That’s only for a year, however, because the all-electric Urus should arrive by 2029.
Lamborghini
Thanks to the electric motor, the Urus SE offers all-wheel drive. The motor is situated inside the eight-speed automatic transmission, and it acts as a booster for the V8 but it can also drive the wheels on its own. The electric torque-vectoring system distributes power to the wheels that need it for improved cornering. The Urus SE has six driving modes, with variations that give a total of 11 performance options. There are carbon ceramic brakes front and rear.
To distinguish it, the Urus SE gets a new “floating” hood design and a new grille, headlights with matrix LED technology and a new lighting signature, and a redesigned bumper. There are more than 100 bodywork styling options, and 47 interior color combinations, with four embroidery types. The rear liftgate has also been restyled, with lights that connect the tail light clusters. The rear diffuser was redesigned to give 35% more downforce (compared to the Urus S) and keep the car on the road.
The Urus represents about 60% of U.S. Lamborghini sales, Foschini says, and in the early years 80% of buyers were new to the brand. Now it’s down to 70%because, as Foschini says, some happy Urus owners have upgraded to the Performante model. Lamborghini sold 3,000 cars last year in the U.S., where it has 44 dealers. Global sales were 10,112, the first time the marque went into five figures.
The average Urus buyer is 45 years old, though it’s 10 years younger in China and 10 years older in Japan. Only 10% are women, though that percentage is increasing.
“The customer base is widening, thanks to the broad appeal of the Urus—it’s a very usable car,” Foschini says. “The new buyers are successful in business, appreciate the technology, the performance, the unconventional design, and the fun-to-drive nature of the Urus.”
Maserati has two SUVs in its lineup, the Levante and the smaller Grecale. But Foschini says Lamborghini has no such plans. “A smaller SUV is not consistent with the positioning of our brand,” he says. “It’s not what we need in our portfolio now.”
It’s unclear exactly when Lamborghini will become an all-battery-electric brand. Foschini says that the Italian automaker is working with Volkswagen Group partner Porsche on e-fuel, synthetic and renewably made gasoline that could presumably extend the brand’s internal-combustion identity. But now, e-fuel is very expensive to make as it relies on wind power and captured carbon dioxide.
During Monterey Car Week in 2023, Lamborghini showed the Lanzador , a 2+2 electric concept car with high ground clearance that is headed for production. “This is the right electric vehicle for us,” Foschini says. “And the production version will look better than the concept.” The Lanzador, Lamborghini’s fourth model, should arrive in 2028.
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