New York abuzz as Queen of Pop goes hunting for a new home

From The Observer:

New York is a city whose inhabitants are notoriously hard to impress when it comes to celebrity. But there is one name even New Yorkers get excited about living next door to: Madonna.

The city is feverish with rumours that the Material Girl is about to up sticks from her home in Britain and return to the city where she first shot to fame. Perhaps Madonna has finally had enough of dreary English weather and living the country life.

Sharp-eyed paparazzi caught Madonna on a tour of some of the city’s plushest residences last week, sparking a wave of speculation that she is going to move herself and her family to New York. ‘She’s back!’ trumpeted Saturday’s front-page headline on the New York Post.

Certainly it appears that she’s looking to buy a house in the city: a very, very big house. The properties that Madonna was shown around by a uber-elite real estate agency firm are not exactly your run-of-the-mill homes.

For average New Yorkers, used to paying exorbitant rents for cramped apartments, it was a lesson in how different the world of celebrity is. One of the houses she toured comes with a $35m price tag. The six-storey home has a lift inside and 10 bathrooms. It also boasts seven bedrooms, a gym with a sauna, servants’ quarters and a billiards room.

Gossip writers would also note that the house contains children’s bedrooms and a room for a nanny: hinting that Madonna is indeed thinking of moving to New York with her children and husband, Guy Ritchie, in tow. Madonna’s publicist, Liz Rosenberg, said she was unaware of any plans for the star to move to New York, but did say she would not be surprised at the development. ‘Hopefully, I’ll have a new neighbour. I’d be very happy,’ she told the Post.

If Madonna does return to New York she will be coming back to the city where she first found fame. She first moved to the city in 1978 as an impoverished dancer and lived in dingy, squalid apartments in some of Manhattan’s then toughest neighbourhoods. She arrived with $35 in her pocket and worked as a nude model as well as at fast food restaurant Dunkin Donuts. Obviously things are rather different now.

She returns as one of the wealthiest women in music and one of the most famous people on the planet. She is clearly looking for a house which reflects that. On her tour of the city Madonna looked at four townhouses that were all in the wealthy Upper East Side, situated between Madison and Fifth Avenues.

But that also brings with it other problems that the youthful Madonna would not have dreamed of. If she shuns buying an entire house and instead opts for an Upper East Side apartment she could face the ordeal of having to be interviewed by one of the city’s notorious co-operative boards. In 1985, when she had just shot to fame, at the age of 26, she tried to buy a property in the city’s luxurious San Remo building. The building’s board – made up of other residents – rejected her, proving that in New York sometimes wealth and fame is not always enough. Even for Madonna.

From an article by Paul Harris, The Observer.