Novelist Jonathan Franzen Sells Upper East Side Home

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — Best-selling novelist Jonathan Franzen is no longer an Upper East Sider. The writer closed on a sale of his former East 81st Street home in late July, according to city records.

Franzen sold his co-op apartment at 140 East 81st Street for just less than $2 million, according to public records. The "Freedom" and "The Corrections" author listed Santa Cruz, California as his place of residence on the sale documents.

The author's former East 81st Street home contains three bedrooms and two bathrooms, according to a real estate listing on realtor.com. The 10th-floor corner apartment features architectural details such as herringbone oak floors, beamed ceilings with crown moldings and triple exposures that allow tons of natural light into the unit.

The National Book Award-winning author told the New York Times in a June profile that he moved to California to live with "wife equivalent" Kathryn Chetkovich, who's also a writer. Franzen described the move as a "game of chicken" in which he attempted to convince Chetkovich to move to New York.

Here's what Franzen had to say about the Upper East Side:

He doesn’t miss Yorkville, which he calls the “last middle-class neighborhood in Manhattan,” though he’s pretty sure the new Second Avenue subway will change all that. Things were changing so fast as it was. The stores he loved kept closing. His favorite produce market, owned by a nice Greek couple, had been supplanted by a bank, and the Food Emporium he reluctantly shopped at became a Gristedes that resembled a Soviet-era rations market.
Read the full New York Times profile here.

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