New York's most expensive apartment: billionaire art collector sells West Village penthouse for £23.3m in highest value property sale this year

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A New York apartment which contained artwork so expensive it had to be blurred out in the sales photos is the most expensive second hand property sold in the city this year.

The five-bedroom, three-storey penthouse sold for £23,390,000 ($30 million) this week.

The flat is in The Abingdon, a 1905 West Village building, which started life as Laura Spelman Hall, a home for working women, then became a nursing home before being converted into a luxury apartment building in 2013.

At 9,600sq ft, the apartment in question is the largest in the block and is significantly bigger than an entire West Village townhouse.

It was bought by hedge-fund billionaire Steven Cohen who has a world-renowned art collection worth an estimated £78 million ($1 billion), including pieces by Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol and Damien Hirst.

Some of Cohen’s impressive collection is displayed throughout the apartment, although the artworks are so valuable they had to be pixellated in the sales shots of the property.

The apartment’s interiors were designed especially to show off the billionaire’s multi-million pound artworks, which he reportedly rotates between his various homes and offices in New York, London and Asia about four times a year.

“The gallery walls throughout the residence are appointed with integrated museum-quality lighting for the display of a sizeable collection,” said Erin Boisson Aries, of Christie’s International Real Estate.

There is also an entire floor given over to entertaining spaces, including a “great room” with 12-foot ceilings; a formal dining room with gourmet chef’s kitchen and butler’s pantry; a casual dining room off the kitchen; a library with a fireplace; and various private nooks.

An impressive 30-foot high downstairs entrance hall has a white Carrara marble staircase with wrought-iron railings, which circles up the double-height foyer to the second floor.

There is also an en-suite guest room, games room, private gym, laundry room and cloakroom on this floor.

Private living quarters are secreted on the third floor where the master bedroom suite spans 1,200sq ft, the size of a generous two-bedroom flat. This includes a marble bathroom, his-and-hers dressing rooms and a home office.

Three further bedrooms with two bathrooms and a private courtyard also share the top floor.

There are motorized privacy and blackout shades, state-of-the-art security systems and direct lift access to each floor.

The original asking price for the apartment was £26.3 million, meaning it found a buyer for just over 10 per cent below the asking price, although the estate agent remains tight-lipped about who the buyer is.

However, the eight-figure sale is nowhere near the mammoth sum splashed out by fellow billionaire Ken Griffin last year during an international property spending spree.

Also a billionaire hedge-fund manager, Griffin is understood to have spent £187 million ($238 million) off-plan on a 24,000sq ft, four-storey penthouse at the top of a skyscraper overlooking Central Park in the most expensive home purchase ever in America.

In the same week he bought a £95 million home near Buckingham Palace in London and he also owns multi-million pound homes in Chicago and Florida.