Molly Ringwald Lists Fourth Floor Walk-up Penthouse in Downtown Manhattan

SELLER: Molly Ringwald
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $1,795,000
SIZE: 2 bedrooms, 1.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMA’S NOTES: Having settled some years ago on the Left Coast with her writer/editor husband Panio Gianopoulos, 1980s Brat Pack queen Molly Ringwald, who also lived for quite some time in Paris, has decided to sell her long-time New York City pied-à-terre, now listed, as was first reported by the savvy property gossips at the Observer, for $1.795 million. It’s not quite clear when the star of the iconic and still beloved teen-angsty rom-com films “16 Candles” and “The Breakfast Club” purchased the two-bedroom and 1.5-bathroom co-operative duplex apartment but property records suggest it was sometime before 2004. It’s a thigh-busting haul from the street up to the fourth floor walk-up that occupies the top two floors of an 1861 Anglo-Italianate row house along a tree-lined block in the Renwick Triangle section of the St. Marks Historic District, a covetously plummy pocket of the East Village neighborhood. According to marketing materials and historical records the red brick row house was designed by James Renwick Junior, “one of the most successful architects of his time,” who also designed the magnificently flamboyant Neo-Gothic St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue across from Rockefeller Center.

There are semi-glossy narrow-gauge hardwoods throughout most of the apartment and a 10-foot exposed beam ceiling and a two generously proportioned wood-framed antique sash windows in the living room. The apartment features a pretty pair of antique carved marble fireplaces, one in the living room and the other in the larger of the two bedrooms upstairs that additionally features an exposed brick wall, one of the more quintessential and some might argue cliché downtown Manhattan decorative/architectural memes. An arched corridor, off of which opens a convenient, marble-tiled half bathroom easily converted to a full bathroom according to listing descriptions, links the street-facing living room to south-facing eat-in kitchen with marble mosaic tile floor, stainless steel counter tops, and a perfectly preserved vintage range. The duplex also includes a private rooftop terrace with wrap-around over-the rooftop views that include the Chrysler Building, the One World Trade Center and the ornate, supermodel slender steeple of the French Gothic Revival-style Grace Church on lower Broadway that was also, as it turns out, designed by James Renwick Junior.

Our research shows that between 2008 and 2011 the famously flame-tressed veteran actress and torch singer — she turned up earlier this year in James Franco’s gay porn bio-pic “King Cobra” and currently co-stars opposite Jason Priestley on the Canadian sitcom “Raising Expectations” — put the duplex up for lease a handful of times, initially at $5,500 per month and later at $4,500 per month. We also turned up digital evidence Miz Ringwald unsuccessfully attempted to sell the apartment in 2006 with a price tag of $1.225 million that inexplicably jumped to $1.295 million before it was chopped to $1.195 million.

We haven’t a clue whether the Ringwald-Gianopouloses, parents of three children, plan to acquire something larger and more family-of-five-friendly in New York City but we do know that back in Los Angeles, in the not so distant past, they were holed up in a rented four bedroom and three bathroom contemporary set privately behind gates on close to five semi-remote acres in Topanga, California. We also know that once upon a time — two long decades ago, actually — Miz Ringwald owned a 3,412-square-foot home in a celeb-packed section of the Hollywood Hills that she sold in 1996 for an undisclosed amount to comedian and “Wheel of Fortune” host Drew Carey.

Listing photos and floor plan: Weichert Properties

Related stories

Molly Ringwald, Ally Sheedy on How 'The Breakfast Club' Helped And Hurt Their Careers

'Rainbow Brite' Revival Series Set with Emily Osment and Molly Ringwald

Juliette Lewis, Molly Ringwald Join 'Jem and the Holograms'

Get more from Variety and Variety411: Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Newsletter