Not Just Porn for Bob Guccione: Real Estate Porn, Too
Penthouse founder Bob Guccione died yesterday from throat cancer at age 79. In the 1960s, Guccione’s creation of Penthouse was the raunchy counter punch to Playboy’s social-sexual revolution started by Hugh Hefner. And like Hefner, whose Playboy Mansion became the real estate symbol of sexual excess, Guccione more than dabbled in high-end real estate. But due to declining magazine sales and bad investments, Guccione’s empire started to go bust in 2003. With it, he lost two prime real estate properties:
- Guccione’s Manhattan mansion (above). It has 27 rooms, eight fireplaces, and a Roman-style indoor swimming pool on the first floor. It was marketed as the “Milbank Mansion” instead of the Guccione mansion and sold in 2008 for $49 million to investor Philip Falcone — a $10 million reduction from the original $59 million asking price. (See more photos of the mansion).
- Guccione’s “The Willows” mansion (below). The 55-acre estate in Staatsburg, NY (about 60 miles south of Albany), was used as a weekend home by Guccione and his third wife, Kathryn Keeton. Keeton died in 1997 and is buried on the property. Uma Thurman and her boyfriend, hotelier Andre Balazs, reportedly bought the property in 2004.
