Gilded Age townhouse sells for $34.5 million in NYC, ending 2 sisters' heated bankruptcy battle

• A fashion heiress and her sister, both in their 80s, fought six years to keep a 1901 townhouse.
• A mystery buyer, the top bidder in a contentious bankruptcy, purchased the home for $34.5 million.
• The sisters failed to halt the Gilded Age home's sale, which closed on Tuesday.

A Gilded Age Manhattan townhouse, the subject of a contentious and lengthy bankruptcy battle by two sisters in their 80s, has been sold for $34.5 million.

The sale, to an LLC whose owner has remained anonymous, closed Tuesday, according to court documents.

Fashion heiress Marianne Nestor and her sister, Peggy Nestor, both self-represented, had fought against foreclosure for six years and in at least three courthouses, most recently in federal bankruptcy court in Manhattan.

"Miserably difficult," their main opponent, bankruptcy trustee Albert Togut, said during a hearing last week, in describing his war with the litigious siblings — including what he characterized as years of battling a "litigation cloud" filled with "frivolous appeals and objections."

The sisters had purchased the home together in 1984.

Six years ago, creditors began litigating for its sale to collect on millions of dollars in mortgages and liens against the property.

Peggy Nestor, by then the sole owner, according to their own sworn statements, filed for federal bankruptcy nearly four years ago to keep it from being sold in New York state court. Debts collateralized by property had swollen past $30 million by the time the judge ordered it to be sold — and the occupants removed.

They were forcibly evicted two years ago after the bankruptcy judge found that they had repeatedly refused to let Togut, his lawyers, and court-appointed realtors inside to market and sell the 1901 property.

"I'm suing everybody," Marianne Nestor told Business Insider, when told Tuesday night of the closing. "They're crooked as hell," she said of Togut and US Bankruptcy Judge Michael Wiles.

Marianne is the widow of fashion designer Oleg Cassini, widely credited with creating Jacqueline Kennedy's "look" as First Lady.

Cassini had used the townhouse as a design studio and showroom until his death on March 17, 2006 — twenty years to the day before the sale closed.

"Today is the day that he died, OK?" Marianne said in a lengthy phone call, during which she called the sale "totally incorrect," "a set up," "deed fraud," and "like Germany in the 1940s."

"Leave out the F-words," she asked Business Insider.

The sisters continue to argue that they could have purchased the property back themselves, that it is "rent-stabilized," and that they remain its 50-50 owners, contentions repeatedly rejected by the judge.

They still have open three cases in federal and state court in Manhattan that challenge Togut's authority and his appointment as trustee, and accuse him and a former attorney for Peggy Nestor of impropriety.

A lawyer for Togut's firm declined to comment on the closing when contacted earlier Tuesday.

After taxes, a $1.4 million broker commission, and other closing costs, the net proceeds of the sale will be $32 million, according to court documents — a sum that still won't cover a decade-long accumulation of debts against the property.

It is unclear where the sisters have been living since US Marshals evicted them from the townhouse; Marianne Nestor has declined to say.

The two continue to have access to a $5 million brick mansion in Norwalk, Connecticut, purchased by Peggy Nestor in 2021.

But in January, the bankruptcy judge found that Peggy had improperly tried to transfer the mansion for $1 to a third sister, Brenda, who lives in Palm Beach.

The judge ordered that the seven-bedroom, 9,800-square-foot mansion, which overlooks Long Island Sound, must also be sold to satisfy Peggy's debts.

The Norwalk property's sale remains pending.