You Can Own Stephen Sondheim’s Turtle Bay Townhouse for $7 Million

Stephen Sondheim’s Turtle Bay home has gone on the market; the asking price for the seven bedroom, three-and-a-half bath townhouse is $7 million.

Sondheim lived at 246 East 49th Street, part of the Turtle Bay Gardens enclave, for decades. The 12-room home is 5,690 square feet, comprising five floors. The 32-foot living room “features chevron-patterned wood floors with mahogany inlay and back-lit built-ins,” with a formal dining room complete with floor-to-ceiling windows and French doors that lead into the garden. A chef’s kitchen features a commercial-grade eight-burner range with vented hood.

The music studio is on the second floor, with a music library, wood-burning fireplace, and baby grand piano; a solarium leads to a 30-foot terrace. Two bedrooms and a fully-renovated kitchen sit on the third floor, with the primary bedroom suite on the entire fourth floor. A studio apartment with kitchenette, terrace, bathroom, and rainshower sit on the fifth floor. There’s also a cellar with laundry and storage space, plus multi-zone central air conditioning.

Sondheim purchased the home in the mid-1960s with royalties from the musical Gypsy providing the initial down payment. Early on, he rented out the top three floors to help pay the mortgage, but stopped doing that by 1973. He died in November 2021 at his other home in Roxbury, Connecticut.

The listing is held by Michael J. Franco at Compass; for photos and more information, click here.