Journalism

SHANGHAI — “It’s quite bonkers,” Pearl Lam said of her 22nd-floor, 9,700-square-foot loft in the French Concession district here. The apartment, a mix of ancient Chinese artifacts and Western and Chinese contemporary art and design, may in fact be the wildest interior in the city.

Avowing a passion for trees of awesome girth and rarity is a means of gaining social cachet these days. Soaring crimson king maples and golden honey locusts are among the new status symbols, giving a surprising new meaning to "tree climbing."

''It’s called Excessive Sensual Indulgence,'' Isabella Blow said, gleefully cranking up the electronic sequencer that regulates the pulsating fountain-shaped light sculpture in the Vampire Room of her new house in London's Waterloo.

NEWPORT, R.I. - RONALD LEE FLEMING said he felt exultant when he purchased Bellevue House in 1999. The house, a Colonial Revival mansion built in 1910, was the work of the celebrated architect Ogden Codman Jr., and a repository of some particularly colorful social history.

IN her heyday as the bejeweled empress of New York philanthropy, Brooke Astor entertained presidents, first ladies and a potpourri of pooh-bahs and literati at her elegant 14-room duplex on Park Avenue. And when she died on Aug. 13, 2007, at Holly Hill, her estate in Westchester County,

EVEN as the real estate market cools, the contemporary art market is at fever pitch, as evidenced by the record-breaking total of $157.4 million brought in by Christie's sale of post-war and contemporary works on Tuesday.

THE remains of his day have been scattered among astonishingly diverse locations, from the home of Nancy and Ronald Reagan in California to the 26th Street flea market, with an auction at the determinedly unglamorous Holiday Inn in Dedham, Mass., falling somewhere in between.

While thumbing through one of Cecil Beaton’s unpublished scrapbooks two years ago—enjoying a peek at a friend's rarefied collection—I stumbled on a blurry black-and-white photograph of a tousle-haired youth. Beneath it Beaton had scribbled a caption: "Horrid Madboy." 💥

Even in his natural habitat—Twin Quarries, his arcadian estate Gloucester, Massachusetts, where hummingbirds gather nectar beside a tranquil lake—Horace “Woody” Brock is an exceedingly rare bird. He is a political economist with five degrees from Harvard and Princeton

When romance finally blossomed for Jay McInerney and Anne Hearst, two decades after their first meeting, they went in search of a home that would fit their happy midlife union, someplace fresh, sunny, and bohemian. They ended up purchasing a Greenwich Village penthouse...of sorts.

When designer Steven Gambrel visited a Manhattan couple's apartment on the Upper East Side for the first time, he was captivated by their 1912 building's Renaissance palazzo architecture—and by its rich history. The work of the venerable firm McKim, Mead & White,

"Good heavens, you’re naked!” roared Jeanne Moreau, the French cinematic legend, as I entered my bedroom, dripping from the shower, on the first day that Merchant Ivory came to film in our East Side apartment. “I’m afraid my coiffeur has commandeered your room,” she laughed,

"I never thought I’d live to see the day,” says Sondra Gilman Gonzalez-Falla, who is currently the Whitney Museum of American Art's longest serving trustee (since 1977), clearly elated after a tour of the museum's new 220,000-square-foot home in Manhattan's Meatpacking District.

Peter Bacanovic and I have been close friends for sixteen years, and we speak six times a day. For the past twenty months, he dreaded reading newspapers and watching TV news, so he called me every morning for a précis, which I tried to deliver gently. It’s been tough.

Ardent fans of Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch may still be reeling from his defeat in the high-stakes competition of this year's Oscars, when fellow Brit Eddie Redmayne won for his compelling portrayal of Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything.

Set in the foothills of the Slieve Bloom mountains in County Laois, 60 miles southwest of Dublin, the Neoclassical mansion of Ballyfin was erected in 1827 to trumpet the wealth and prestige of Sir Charles Coote, Premier Baronet of Ireland. When the Coote family fell on hard times after World War I

DRESSED in ripped jeans, a black leather jacket and a bandanna wrapped around his unruly mop of black hair, Kohle Yohannan seems an improbable lord of the manor. But there was no mistaking his proprietorial glee on a recent windswept afternoon as he led a tour of his home

MOSCOW—A FEW hours after Viktor Melnikov died of cancer at 91 on Feb. 5, his estranged younger daughter and nephew appeared on his doorstep with a retinue of lawyers and bodyguards to try to seize control of his house in the center of this city. “My father’s body was still warm,” Ekaterina Karinskaya, Mr. Melnikov’s elder daughter, recalled bitterly

With his lyrics that satirize the rich, powerful and social of New York and Washington, CHRISTOPHER MASON might seem an incongruous choice for Purim party entertainment.