A Downtown Duplex, Filled With Art, That Leo Koenig Called Home
For the last several years, the gallery owner Leo Koenig has been busy creating his own work of art: his West Village home.
The sprawling duplex, at 259 West Fourth Street, which he shares with his partner, Jennifer Lyu, a top executive at the fashion brand Kate Spade, is made up of three apartments that he painstakingly pieced together starting in 2018, including one that had previously been combined. The last of the units was purchased in 2021.
“It was a labor of love,” said Mr. Koenig, who deals in contemporary art and runs a gallery on the Upper East Side. He paid around $3.5 million for the apartments. “Then at least a million more in renovations,” he said. “I got to the point where I stopped counting.”
Besides combining the three spaces through extensive renovations, which included new tiled bathrooms and an updated kitchen, he added a four-zone HVAC system and soundproofing. All of these changes and upgrades were just recently completed.
And now — you guessed it — it’s time for him to sell. “Our lives are shifting more and more uptown,” said Mr. Koenig, who also has a farm complex in Andes, N.Y. “Jen works on Park Avenue, and I’m on Madison and 75th Street. Her child goes to school on the Upper West Side. And our friends have also been moving up north.”