Real Estate Gossip: Photographer Pays Record Price for Red Hook Home

Former Rivington Arms gallerist and photographer Mirabelle Marden has long set tongues wagging in the art world. But on Monday, it was real-estate obsessed blogs that were all abuzz when the West Village-based "socialite snapper" purchased a new home at 17 Dikeman Street in Red Hook, for $1.55 million or $775/square foot—a neighborhood record, according to The Real Deal. 

The 2,000-square-foot carriage house previously belonged to German architect Thomas Warnke, who spent $760,000 in 2008 after finding it on Craigslist, according to a report in The New York Times. But Wenke decided to sell the space because "he wasn't attached to the property," said the article.

Marden's broker, Eva Zurek of Group, told The Real Deal that the photographer—whose mother is painter Helen Harrington and father minimalist artist and downtown “quasi-aristocrat” Brice Marden—“has a group of friends [in Red Hook] and she felt this was her community.”

Perhaps Marden will extend that friendship over to Cobble Hill, where French artist and designer Ramdane Touhami has been caught in litigation with his landlord Peter Glusker, the CEO of Gilt Groupe Japan, who claims Touhami owes $17,000 in unpaid rent and utilities, according to The New York Post.

Ironically, only last month was Touhami's home, which features luxurious touches such as Vivienne Westwood wallpaper and Hello Kitty old-master style paintings, photographed in T Magazine for The New York Times.

Touhami’s lawyer Helene Hartig told the Post, “My client is not refusing to pay rent. He has a strong belief that the landlord owes him. He significantly enhanced the value of the house. He made a dilapidated house into a beautiful work of art.”