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Look out, King Kong. There's a new breed of creatures who aren't scaling buildings, but snatching them up. Mies van der Rohe skyscrapers, along with Modernist homes by such architectural icons as John Lautner and Gordon Bunshaft rank as the must-haves of a growing number of deep-pocketed, international collectors, who cut across the worlds of finance, film, fashion, media and real estate.
This designer obsession, which has been the talk of Hollywood cocktail parties for years, is lately developing into a global pandemic. The itch to own pedigreed 20th century architecture is part of a condition that could be called The Brand-Name Real Estate Portfolio Mystique. For the players, it's goodbye 18th century country manor, hello Modernist masterpiece.
"If the icon is there, they will buy it," says Barry Bergdoll, professor of 19th and 20th century architectural history at Columbia University. Azzedine Alaia, couture's "King of Cling," has a structure built by France's preeminent Modernist designer Jean Prouve inside his cavernous Paris loft. But that's nothing: Robert Rubin, a retired Manhattan commodities and currency trader, recently bought a small prefab house by Prouve. For purchasing, shipping and restoring the 1949 Maison Tropicale from Brazzaville, Congo Republic, Rubin dropped $1 million plus.
Manhattan real estate mogul Aby Rosen plucked up Mies van der Rohe's 38-story 1952 Seagram Building (Philip Johnson designed its Four Seasons restaurant), and the 1952 Lever House by Bunshaft of the power architectural firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, not to mention other New York Modernist structures and Art Deco skyscrapers. Alexis Stewart, daughter of infamous taste maven Martha Stewart, recently put a celebrated Gordon Bunshaft house in the Hamptons on the market for $9.2 million.
Bergdoll notes that this feeding frenzy is a case of huge demand and dwindling supply: For every Modernist structure purchased, 20 have been destroyed.
If Rosen is...