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Jerry Della Femina, an icon of the advertising industry whose memoir about Madison Avenue’s rollicking heyday provided fodder for the hit cable series Mad Men, has a new campaign: selling his home.
Della Femina and his wife, former TV journalist Judy Licht, have put their Upper East Side townhouse on the market for $7.9 million, according to a listing that appeared Tuesday.
It’s not the first time the couple has tried to attract a buyer for 124 E. 62nd St., a five-floor, five-bedroom prewar property between Park and Lexington avenues. Indeed, between 2017 and 2018, Della Femina and Licht also marketed the property, asking about $10 million in that go-around, according to StreetEasy.
Although No. 124 is now selling for about 20% less, a likely nod to a much softer market, the townhouse—which has two living rooms, each with a fireplace; a library adjacent to a balcony; and a fountain-centered garden—could still offer some upside. The couple paid $2.3 million for the shutter-lined, 19-foot-wide site in 1995, records show.
A Brooklyn native who joined his first ad agency in 1952 at the age of 16, Della Femina and his various firms have crafted memorable spots for a long list of brands prominent in the late 20th century, including Beck’s, PanAm, Isuzu, Blue Nun and Dow Chemical.
But his perhaps most famous earworm, which came by way of his agency Della Femina Travisano & Partners, was a jingle to promote the Meow Mix brand that featured a cat purring a melody of repeating “meows.”
Along the way, Della Femina shone a light on the rowdier side of his industry with the best-selling memoir From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor, which the AMC series Mad Men apparently mined for inspiration.
The initials N.A.C., for “no afternoon calls”—a request uttered after multiple-martini lunches—appear both in the show’s dialogue and the book’s pages, for example.
Licht, meanwhile, was a fixture of local TV news for decades beginning in the 1970s, a run that included stints as a reporter with the local Fox and CBS affiliates as well as time on the anchor desk of WABC’s Good Morning New York.
Townhouses, a small segment of the overall residential sales market, have been taking longer to find buyers as of late, a likely victim of the same sluggish high-interest-rate environment as other properties.
In fact, in 2023 townhouse sales were down 23% versus in 2022, according to data prepared by the appraisal firm Miller Samuel for the brokerage Douglas Elliman, though the median price of single-family homes, $5.8 million, was up 5% in the same time frame.
Dana Kirshenbaum, the agent with Sotheby’s International Realty who’s marketing 124 E. 62nd, did not return an email for comment by press time.
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C. J. Hughes , 2024-06-12 19:29:24
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