Talk about art cred!
A stately East Village loft — the former home of Swiss artist Urs Fischer — is on the market for $9.95 million. The three-bedroom, 3½-bath loft at 38 E. 1st St. is in the neighborhood’s most pre-eminent, art-infused building. Fischer rented the third-floor unit from 2012 to “very recently,” our spy said.
Other art luminaries who live (or have lived) there reportedly include the family of Brazilian bossa nova star Caetano Veloso along with Chinese pyrotechnic artist Cai Guo-Qiang — whose symbolic projects include large scale fireworks and massive art lit up flames from gunpowder fuses — who bought his first-floor unit for $1.9 million in 2011.
Former residents include the late Michael Crichton — best selling author, filmmaker and doctor. Art-world queen Maja Hoffmann, a Swiss pharmaceutical heiress and art collector also known as an “activist enabler” patron of the arts, bought the building, a 19th-century former school house, with artist Izhar Patkin when it was falling apart and surrounded by crack houses, in 1994.
The 5,000-square-foot loft comes with 16-foot ceilings, 33 windows, a grand-entrance gallery and a double-sized living room. There’s also a paneled library, a dining room, chef’s eat-in kitchen and a spacious master bedroom.
Fischer loved the loft, our spies say, for its unique architecture and soaring ceilings, with spaces ideal for large-scale artworks.
Corcoran listing broker Maria Manuche declined to comment.