EXCLUSIVE: Home to Holmes! Inside the stunning apartments where Katie is starting her new life
EXCLUSIVE: Home to Holmes! Inside the stunning apartments where Katie is starting her new life
She's starting her new life as young, single woman. And Katie Homes has chosen chic Chelsea in Manhattan as the place where she will spread her wings again.
Now, exclusively, we can reveal the luxury lifestyle she will be enjoying inside the stunning apartment block she has moved into this week after revealing she is divorcing Tom Cruise.
Fabric merchant and iPad-only magazine publisher Christopher Hyland, who is Katie's new neighbor, has opened the doors to the New York Daily News to show us around.
Hyland, who has met American presidents, sold fabric to global royalty, and chaired Bill Clinton's committee on United States design, can handle a swarm of photographers.
Fabric merchant and iPad-only magazine publisher Christopher Hyland.
He greeted them warmly, and spoke eloquently about Katie Holmes, his new neighbor, whom he said "handled herself like a princess."
What a humble Hyland didn't say was that was that he lives in the building's top apartment.
Hyland's apartment is on the market for $23 million.
And it's for sale, on the market for $23 million listed by Nest Seekers International executive vice president Ryan Serhant, star of Bravo TV's hit show Million Dollar Listing New York.
Hyland's residence is one of the most tastefully done homes in the city.
A mansion on the 12th floor of Holmes' new building, the 12-room 4,000 square-foot four-bedroom masterpiece is filled with modern photography by Robert Mapplethorpe, paintings by Hudson River School masters, and busts from ancient Greece and Rome. The fabric in the dining room is a reproduction of the same kind made specifically for the sister of Marie Antoinette.
There are other design triumphs. The kitchen is inspired by an English country house. The entry foyer is covered in marble. The coved ceilings and moldings come right out of a Beaux Arts home.
"People's jaws drop the second they walk in," says broker Serhant. "It's like having your own North Shore outside of Boston mansion here in New York. The building is one of the most secure in the city. The lobby is expansive. This started the uber-luxury trend in Chelsea,"
For Hyland, living near Holmes is no different than how he's always lived. Hyland is a Knight of Malta, has donated modern art to the Papacy, and will be honored in London next week at an event highlighting his world class photography collection.
"So many celebrities come and go from this building that at first I didn't think anything of it," says Hyland, who is working on a luxury real estate and design magazine partnership with the Daily News Home section. "This is a very brave little girl to go up against a powerful religion. She has friends in the building who will help her any way they can."
Holmes has already made a new lifestyle change -- she’s shed her wedding ring.
The actress was spotted Monday sans band when she arrived at Parsons The New School of Design in Manhattan for a taping of Lifetime’s “Project Runway: All Stars.”
“She did great,” show judge Isaac Mizrahi told People.com after the six-hour shoot, for which Holmes acted as a guest judge.
The 33 year-old “Dawson’s Creek” star pulled the plug on her marriage to Cruise with a surprise filing on June 29.
She seeks sole legal custody of Suri, the couple’s only child.
Cruise, who has been in Iceland filming his new movie “Oblivion,” a $140 million post-apocalyptic science-fiction epic, was said to have been blindsided by his spouse’s decision to end the marriage.
