#RealEstatePorn: Diane von Furstenberg’s Amazing Meatpacking District Penthouse

She was a pioneer in the area. Diane von Furstenberg‘s corner live/ work space is dream come true anywhere, but in the hottest neighborhood in Manhattan, it is pure heaven. If you’ve watched House of DVF, you know that DVF‘s flagship store sits on the corner of Washington & W. 14th Street. If you’ve been to the Meatpacking Distrct, you’ve passed it. I moved to the are 10 years ago and Diane’s former home and shop was a few blocks south on W. 12th Street. She sold that for a fortune and had the architects of WORKac build her an unconventional live/work space next right to the High Line —the raised park that she and husband Barry Diller helped create. (Meanwhile, he had Frank Gehry build his spectacular IAC headquarters a few blocks north.) DVF says:

“Everybody told me when I came to this neighborhood that I was crazy—that it was full of drag queens, that it smelled awful because of all the butchers. All of that is true, and yet in a weird way the cobblestone streets remind me of Belgium.”

The six-story, 35,000-square-foot structure comprises Von Furstenberg’s design studio and flagship store. She once lived in a lavish Park Avenue apartment and the 65-year-old grandmother of three explains:

“When I was young, I lived like an old woman and when I got old, I had to live like a young person.”

Von Furstenberg hired Amale Andraos and Dan Wood, of the architecture firm WORKac —to connect two 19th century redbrick buildings and the gap between them is now a concrete staircase that goes from the lobby floor to her private rooftop lair with a live/work space – and on top, a 900-square-foot master suite with a terrace. THE perfect New York apartment, perched on top of the business she built from a single wrap dress. And if that’s not enough, in a garage downstairs sits a late-model Bentley – I’ve seen it with the garage door open and the driver waiting for the lady upstairs. For more photos, go here.