“This is how Marie Antoinette would have lived if she had the money.” Those were the words of Joan Rivers, an absolute titan of American entertainment and the undisputed pioneer for women in stand-up comedy. This time, however, she was not joking. She was talking about her palatial New York triplex, a gilded Versailles-like aerie with soaring 23-foot ceilings.
According to 6SQFT, the prewar penthouse sat at 1 East 62nd Street, inside the Spencer Condominium, just a few minutes’ walk from Central Park. Yet it was not the views outside the home, but the world Joan created inside it, that truly took one’s breath away. Part of a seven-story limestone mansion designed in 1904 by Horace Trumbauer, the residence was later bought by Saudi Arabia’s Prince Muhammad bin Fahd for a reported $28 million in 2015.
For most billionaires, a 5,100-square-foot Manhattan penthouse with five bedrooms, five bathrooms, around 430 square feet of outdoor space, and five fireplaces would have been more than enough. But not for this Saudi royal. One would imagine that a home already associated with palace-like grandeur would have made the apartment an easy move-in trophy. Instead, what made other jaws drop did not seem to leave much of an impression on the prince, the son of the late King Fahd and former governor of Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province. What happened next shocked the neighbors, then the real estate world, and eventually everyone who had admired Joan Rivers’ spectacular Manhattan fantasy.
Prince Muhammad, then in his mid-sixties and used to far larger private residences, reportedly decided to completely remodel the property. The condo format may have appealed to him, but his royal habits and security expectations did not take long to clash with apartment living. While Joan Rivers had spent decades preserving the spirit of the home, the prince brought in architects, designers, and contractors to remake the interiors.
A source noted at the time that the “whole Palace of Versailles thing is going” because it was not the look he wanted. It was not merely an interior refresh. The apartment reportedly had to be adapted to suit royal protocol, privacy, and security. Reports claimed the prince wanted a more private elevator arrangement and round-the-clock security at the building, requests that sounded extravagant inside a historic 1904 residential mansion.
To mere mortals, that may have sounded outlandish. But this was a prince accustomed to palace-scale living, including lavish residences far removed from the compromises of Manhattan apartment life. No matter how flamboyant Joan Rivers’ penthouse was, it was not a royal compound with acres of land, massive gates, manicured lawns, and standalone security. It was a historic Manhattan jewel box inside a 12-unit limestone mansion. The bigger question was how many royals could fit a larger-than-life lifestyle into such a setting without making major adjustments.
“Ever since Prince Fahd bought the home nearly two months ago, he has had designers and contractors in and out of the place,” a source told DailyMail.com. “He is ripping it to shreds. Everyone is surprised because the place had a certain French look, it was very specific, and one would think the buyer would be into that. And now he doesn’t want that.” Sadly, that version of the home was reportedly erased, and the irony is that it did not seem to serve royalty for very long either. The prince’s family later listed the penthouse for $38 million in 2021 after using it a handful of times. The price was cut to $34.5 million, and after failing to find a buyer, it eventually returned to the market at $28 million, the same headline figure tied to Joan Rivers’ posthumous sale.
The Manhattan Versailles Joan Rivers created
Rivers’ home was never just a luxury apartment. It was a theatrical creation, a private French palace floating above Manhattan. The Louis XIV-inspired rooms came with a grand ballroom large enough for 125 guests, a music room crowned by a trompe l’oeil blue-sky ceiling, a wood-paneled library, antique columns, crystal chandeliers, gilded boiserie, parquet-de-Versailles floors, and towering 23-foot ceilings that made the space feel more like a European château than an Upper East Side condo.
Gilded columns separated the grand entertaining spaces, while the apartment’s antique detailing and unapologetically dramatic interiors gave it the kind of old-world splendor money could rarely recreate from scratch. Preston Bailey, the celebrity event designer who once had an event thrown in his honor at the home, recalled, “What I loved most was the way you would walk in from one of the busiest and most hectic cities in the world and instantly be transported to another period in time. Joan’s apartment was a reflection of the true Joan: warm, elegant and truly inviting. You felt as though you were being entertained by royalty.”
