(Photo: Patrick McMullan)

Visitors to this year’s Kips Bay Decorator Show House, held not in the usual brownstone but at the big Third Avenue apartment building Manhattan House, may not be aware they’re walking through Maria Bartiromo’s old apartment. The CNBC star and her husband, financier Jonathan Steinberg, bought a $6.5 million, five-bedroom townhouse on East 62nd Street last year, and the two apparently vacated the tenth-floor penthouse two weeks before the annual design extravaganza took over the giant building. (Completed in 1951, it’s the original East Side white brick; residents have included Grace Kelly and Benny Goodman.) The former Bartiromo apartment was reportedly the last to undergo transformation for the Kips Bay event. Its move to Manhattan House, whose condo conversion is being repped by Über-broker Dolly Lenz, has invigorated the decorator showcase. Jennifer Skoda, Kips Bay director of special events, says, “It looks as if the income is up 10 to 15 percent this year.”

Related:

• Archive: “Real Estate”
• Articles by S.Jhoanna Robledo
• Table of Contents: May 26, 2008 issue of New York | Subscribe!