Here‘s Your Chance to Peek Inside Mayor Bloomberg’s House

The billionaire mayor of New York -- who has been known to serve tuna on crackers at cocktail parties and allegedly prefers diners to the swanky hotels and restaurants often the choice of most power-brokers -- might (albeit inadvertently) be allowing us a peak into his palatial Upper East Side and London townhouses.

On Monday The New York Times revealed that photos of the very private Bloomberg's homes were posted on the website of his interior designer, Drake Design Associates.

The photos, labeled only “Townhouse, NYC,” and “Townhouse, London,” did not mention Bloomberg by name but did offer an intimate tour of the opulent residences.

The NY Times reports:

“It’s certainly not a budget-deficit look,” said Marian McEvoy, an author and former editor in chief of House Beautiful and Elle Décor. “This is not somebody who is interested in appearing less successful than he is, and rightly so. He appreciates, obviously, fine furniture and good art.”

...

In the New York town house, the photos show that visitors are greeted by what appeared to be, in the eyes of one antiques dealer, a Dutch old master painting, an English Regency table that could be worth $90,000 and sconces that could go for $40,000 each. In another room sits what the dealer said was a $1 million Georgian Chippendale couch beneath what appeared to be an 18th-century portrait by a prominent painter like Joshua Reynolds or Thomas Gainsborough, which might be worth $450,000. Throughout the house are more sconces and chandeliers valued in the five or six figures, the dealer said.

Another room holds an antique snooker table that is worth at least $50,000, another expert said. Billowing drapes, an Egyptian marble foyer and French Savonnerie carpets all add to the centuries-old opulence. Three bathrooms, each appointed in a different fashion, are pictured.

“Michael wants to live large, like a 19th-century railroad baron,” Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair magazine and a longtime friend of Bloomberg, told the Times in 2001. “He sees himself as very much like the Carnegies or Mellons.”

According to the Times, Bloomberg's chief spokesman, Stu Loeser, declined to discuss the properties or the personal affects therein, not would he say whether Bloomberg was even aware that the photos had been posted online. Interestingly enough, however, shortly after the Times story was published, the photos were removed from Drake’s website.

View the photos that inevitably were pulled from Drake's website below:

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