‘ Beyond spacious’
Belafonte’s NYC apartment largest on West End Ave.
Get Them to Sing Your Song, a feature film documentary about his life, is one of the many projects actor/ singer/ composer Harry Belafonte is currently working on. Another is selling his 17-room New York apartment.
The apartment occupies the entire fifth floor of a 13- storey West End Avenue co- op. It has been home to Mr. Belafonte and his wife, Julie, for 47 years, and during that time “ became a place of enormous comfort to people working on social and political issues,” Mr. Belafonte says. “It was a home away from home” for Martin Luther King Jr., who worked on some of his speeches there.
The home has a hallway stretching about 30 feet long, where photographs of family and guests, and autographs hang, says real estate agent Maria Pascal of Prudential Douglas Elliman. “ One of the writings of Martin Luther King is framed and hangs on the wall. Pictures include Nelson Mandela with Julie and Harry, and Bishop Desmond Tutu. She’s found that it takes 30 to 45 minutes to walk through and show the apartment because there’s so much to stop and look at.”
The stately 1901 architectural beauty offers almost 7,000 square feet of luxury living space, and is the largest apartment on West End Avenue, Ms. Pascal says.
It has five “beautifully proportioned public rooms offering the owners a distinctive background for art, living and entertaining,” she says. The living room faces south and west, and has a woodburning fireplace. There’s a dining room, a billiards room, a family room and a sound-proofed entertainment room.
The entertainment room has been the site of “endless parties, dinners for heads of state, wouldbe heads of state and aspiring political figures,” Mr. Belafonte says. “It’s also been where birthday parties for the children and for Julie and me have been held.”
Mr. Belafonte says the kitchen, finished with a Mexican tile floor, is his favourite room. “Cooking and ironing are sources of tremendous relaxation,” he says.
There’s a private laundry room, an in- home office and a professional darkroom. The apartment also has a recording studio, which the King of Calypso says has been an invaluable place to “determine whether we were getting the sounds we wanted before going to the recording studio.”
The private family area of the residence consists of seven bedrooms with ensuite bathrooms, two powder rooms, a sauna and a steam shower room. There are also dressing rooms and walk-in closets.
There are two banks of elevators, with one leading to a front foyer and the other directly into the entertainment room.
The residence has been renovated but retains its pre-war detail. The original 21 rooms were reconfigured, with five maids’ rooms combined to create nicesized bedrooms, Ms. Pascal says.
“ It’s attractive and beyond spacious,” Mr. Belafonte says. “It’s comfortable, a seductive environment for people who want to relax without external interventions. There are spaces that are isolated, with no phones and no noise.”
Mr. Belafonte and other investors bought the co-op in the early 1960s. The couple raised their four children, and his two children from a previous marriage (one is actress/ singer Shari Belafonte-Harper) at the residence. “They’re a close-knit family,” Ms. Pascal says.
Now the children have grown and moved out, and the Belafontes don’t need as much space. “I have cut back my career interests,” says the now 78-year-old Mr. Belafonte. “I don’t tour any more or sit in a studio. I do film work though. I’m [working to a] simpler zone and that’s one of my motivations to sell.”
“But they’re both busy, Julie with her writing and film-making, and Harry constantly busy with political issues near and dear to his heart,” Ms. Pascal says.
“ The couple’s thoughts are to stay in the city, where they have a son and grandchildren. They are both from New York and it’s important for them to stay.”
Mr. Belafonte was born in Harlem to Caribbean-born immigrants and spent part of his childhood in Jamaica.
He was instrumental in cracking the colour barrier in the United States, winning fame and fortune for his stage acting (including several Tony awards), his film work, an Emmy-winning television show and a string of albums through the 1950s, according to Rolling Stone’s Web site.
Mr. Belafonte sang on the 1985 single We Are the World, and replaced Danny Kaye as UNICEF’s Goodwill Ambassador a year later. His humanitarian work continues and “Belafonte has become no less political with age; in recent years he has been a keynote speaker at peace rallies and other leftist gatherings,” the Web site notes.
For Mr. Belafonte, his home has been a place of peace, quiet and comfort. But he says he longs to spread his wings and travel, in search of great thinkers and people interested in humanitarian goals, people with a lot of spirit. Those like Harry Belafonte.
Price tag: US$15-million.