Billionaires' Row

A fly-on-the-wall account of the ferocious ambition, greed, and financial one-upmanship behind the most expensive real estate in the world: the new Manhattan megatowers known as Billionaires’ Row—from a staff reporter at The Wall Street Journal To look south from Central Park these days is to gaze upon a physical manifestation of tens of billions of dollars in global wealth: a series of soaring spires dotting the skyline from Park Avenue to Broadway. Known as Billionaires’ Row, these slender high-rise condos have transformed the skyline of New York City almost in stealth, thanks to the city’s developer-friendly policies and a seemingly endless gush of cash from tech, finance, and moguls from Russia, China, and the Middle East. In just a few years, the cutthroat real estate impresarios behind these “supertalls” turned what was once a rundown strip of Midtown into the most expensive street on Earth. Most of us, however, will never be invited inside these gargantuan towers. The saga of Billionaires’ Row epitomizes the “new Gilded Age” of twenty-first-century wealth. Behind the blue-tinted façade of One57, you might see financier Bill Ackman riding in an elevator to his $91.5 million apartment with computer legend Michael Dell, who paid $100.47 million for his. One block over, hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin shattered records with his $238 million home at 220 Central Park South, the imposing limestone tower where the musician Sting also purchased a penthouse of his own. Most owners, however, remain shrouded in mystery. For some, these monuments to wealth are a place simply to park money; they have never bothered to visit. In Billionaires’ Row, Wall Street Journal reporter Katherine Clarke reveals the riveting inside story of how a group of New York’s most legendary developers went toe-to-toe with renegade upstarts in an ego-fueled race to build the tallest and most luxurious skyscrapers the world has ever known—and to burnish their legacies in the process. The result is a real-life drama complete with broken partnerships, broken marriages, lawsuits, and, for a few, triumph.