David Copperfield disappeared from his apartment in New York and left his neighbors in trouble

The new owner of the penthouse arrived at the majestic Galleria building of Manhattan practically unnoticed, like someone standing on a dark stage just before the curtain rises.

The word got out.I think I heard about it from my neighbor, who in turn heard about it from the concierge.“said Emma Ruth Yulo-Kitiyakara, 78, a former resident of the building.

It was true. David Copperfield moved into the property. “It may magically get you out of your apartment“, someone joked.

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That was in 1997. Years later, the building’s residents would become acutely aware — painfully aware — of the world-famous magician’s four-story penthouse. It seemed to transform before their eyes from an ostentatious display of great wealth to an embarrassing and health-threatening eyesore.

And then, according to Galleria residents, Copperfield – for his next trick – disappeared.

Mold and mildew pose a serious health risk to residents (New York Supreme Court)

A lawsuit filed earlier this month in New York accuses Copperfield of leaving his penthouse in a “dilapidated” state and allowing a valve to fail, flooding the apartments and common areas below. And it’s not the first time.

New Yorkers have long lived with celebrities in the crowded city they all call home. Sometimes things go wrong. When your TriBeCa neighbor doesn’t keep the sidewalk in front of her house clean and racks up 30-plus city fines, it doesn’t make a difference that it’s Taylor Swift.

Sometimes the person complaining about a celebrity is also a celebrity. In 2007, an Upper West Side chimney used by Billy Squier, a mainstay of 1980s Top 40 radio, was emitting smoke into an upstairs neighbor’s apartment. That neighbor was Bono.

Copperfield’s relationship with New York City is long and particular and, at least for now, it seems to be in pause.

She lives in Las Vegas, where she performs 15 times a week in her show An Intimate Evening of Grand Illusion. Her lawyer in the matter, Matthew A. Cuomo, said the lawsuit’s claims are exaggerated. “This is nothing more than an insurance claim,” he said.

Architects warn of severe damage to the building’s structure (New York Supreme Court)

Copperfield grew up in New Jersey and has said that As a child he ran away to Manhattan to learn magic. After achieving great success, he set his sights on the Galleria in the mid-1990s, and the gossip pages of the tabloids took notice.

“How did David Copperfield get the owners of his luxury Galleria penthouse to lower the asking price from $18 million to a paltry $11 million?” The Daily News asked in 1997. “It may be his best trick yet.” He ultimately paid $7.4 million, according to the new lawsuit.

The price cut, the column suggested, may have been due to the odd layout of the idiosyncratic apartment itself. The 15,000-square-foot quadruple penthouse was designed for Stewart R. Mott, the son of a General Motors executive whose passions included philanthropy and gardens. The penthouse’s unusual glass walls would allow him to “greet the rising sun from his bed in the east sunroom and watch it sink from a west-facing desk, all amid 10,000 square feet of gardening,” The New York Times wrote in 1975.

Fragments of illegally burst pipe caused havoc in several units. (New York Supreme Court)

But as the costs of building his dream home mounted, including fortifying the building to support the weight of the soil he wanted to plant in, Mott’s enthusiasm for the place waned. He was also known to be a very busy man. (“When The Washington Post reported that he had slept with 40 women in an eight-month period,” the Times wrote, “he backtracked by saying it was actually 20.”) He never moved.

The first occupants of the apartment did not remain long. Then Copperfield arrived.

David Copperfield

He was certainly a household name back then. A popular series of prime-time television specials in the 1980s culminated in perhaps his best-known stunt: making the Statue of Liberty disappear in front of a live TV audience, then bringing it back again.

But for his neighbors, Copperfield was just the guy in the penthouse. And an enigma.

“I never saw him, I never met him,” said James Meyer, a former landlord in the building. “I don’t know anyone who knew him.” He did get a glimpse of the famous apartment once – on television, during a filmed interview with the magician.

David Copperfield (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

Another former resident, Ellen Wiesenthal, said she had not only never met Copperfield, but doubted she would have even realized she had. “I may not have even recognized him,” she said.

Yulo-Kitiyakara came close to seeing him, sort of, once. “He had a live-in domestic worker,” she said. “The worker ran into him in the elevator, or something.”

Ryan Drexler lived on the 48th floor for years and recalled seeing the magician in the elevator.

“Nobody talks to him. He is a very quiet guy.”“He’s not a guy who talks a lot,” Drexler said. “He’s very reserved and I respect that. Everyone has their own style.”

Time at the Galleria is measured, for many, as before March 8, 2015, and after March 8, 2015, the date of the first major incident involving the penthouse.

Copperfield’s apartment began on the 54th floor of the Galleria. On the third floor – the 56th in the building – he had a private swimming pool. Directly below was a room with the pumps and machinery needed to operate the pool.

In that spring of 2015, a valve in this pump room located about 180 meters above the ground “failed”, in legal terms.

“Copperfield’s flood was no illusion,” The New York Post reported. Water gushed into his apartment and seeped more than 30 floors below, soaking walls and putting an elevator out of service, according to newspaper accounts.

News coverage described a colorful collection in the penthouse of antique magical paraphernalia and arcade games.

“David was terrified, because he has some rare vintage Coney Island machines, which are priceless.“Irreplaceable antiques, including a fortune teller, strength testers, an electric shock machine and shooting galleries,” his attorney, Ted Blumberg, said days later.

But those were spared. “There’s a magic trick called ‘Catch the Bullet,’ where the magician catches the bullet between his teeth,” Blumberg said after the flood. “And David thinks he really dodged a bullet here.”

There is another magic trick, called “Multiplying Sponge Balls,” in which a person seemingly makes various objects appear out of nowhere. This occurred in the following months at the Galleria, but with lawsuits.

Copperfield’s insurance company sued the company that maintained the pool. So did at least two neighbors who lived downstairs. The company, in turn, accused Copperfield, which was operating in Las Vegas at the time, of negligence, while blaming the manufacturer of the defective valve.

The cases were bundled into one and, poof!, abruptly closed in the manner that usually follows confidential financial settlements.

In 2016, Copperfield opened his apartment to The Wall Street Journal for a guided tour. He went room by room, showing “all these interesting things to give it personality, to give it life,” he said. These included a “surprise chair” that knocked its occupant to the ground, stairs that turned into a slide, and water guns that shot backwards into the user’s face, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The pool was empty.

Another couple of years passed. Then, around 2018, at a regular meeting of the Galleria condominium board, a surprise guest appeared out of nowhere.

“He just came,” said Sholeh Assadi, who has lived in the building for 11 years. “He was very kind.”

He even offered the twenty or so attendees an impromptu visit to his home. They all went up.

What they saw shocked their neighbors. “It was messy, in very bad condition”“We all saw it,” Assadi said. “He didn’t care.” Room after room: “The bedrooms were upside down,” he said. And the bathrooms: “Mold and mildew everywhere.”

Marisa Lopez owned an apartment in the building where her mother lived, and she believes her mother attended the same meeting and later told her daughter about her visit to the famous magician’s apartment.

“He said, ‘Don’t you want a selfie with me?'” her mother said. “It was very sweet.”

Shortly after that assembly, Copperfield disappeared, according to the new lawsuit against him. “Copperfield left the unit in or about 2018,” it notes, firing a housekeeper, a house manager and a general laborer. The magician also owns a Las Vegas estate and a resort spanning 11 islands in the Bahamas, and to those at the Galleria — who rarely if ever saw him anyway — it seemed as if he had simply forgotten about the penthouse.

Instead of moving out in a safe and orderly manner,” the suit states, “Copperfield trashed the apartment. Copperfield has since allowed the unit to decay into a state of total disrepair.”

Finally, in December 2023, there was another flood — another faulty valve, this time in a maintenance room that served only the penthouse — which again caused damage to the apartments, elevators and common areas below, according to the lawsuit.

Other unfavorable news for the magician emerged this year. Court documents released in January showed that he had been a frequent guest at Jeffrey Epstein’s homes. And an article published in The Guardian described allegations of sexual misconduct by several women. Copperfield denied the allegations and no charges have been brought against him.

The lawsuit included several photos of peeling paint, mold and mildew that were circulated among former residents. “That guy has the original bathtub,” Lopez said, recognizing it.

Copperfield’s attorney, Cuomo, said the photos “do not reflect the current state of the apartment.”

Maybe they don’t. If that’s the case, it would be just another act of sleight of hand, the latest trick at the top of the Gallery.

The New York Times 2024.

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