MANHATTAN — Fire Marshals said the weekend blaze that tore through an ornate Upper East Side penthouse owned by a wealthy businessman and victim of Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme, injuring seven firefighters, was accidentally sparked by a lamp cord, FDNY officials said Monday.
No one was home at the penthouse in the luxury building at 2 East End Ave., near East 79th Street at the time, fire officials said.
The lavish apartment is owned by Tuvia Feldman, said a resident who lived downstairs from where the blaze happened.
In a 2001 Observer article, Feldman was called a "New York story" by someone who knew him, saying, "He drives around in a Rolls Royce, and he came from nothing.”
Feldman took over Artie's Delicatessen in 2010, according to the Upper West Side restaurant's website.
The 6,700-square-foot penthouse triplex with stunning East River views had been listed for sale at $13.5 million in 2007, and again for $14.95 million the next year, before being taken off the market in July 2011, according to StreetEasy.com.
The sales pitch for the pad boasted of an 80-foot-long living room, a media room with 28-foot ceilings, two grand staircases, four wood-burning fireplaces, six and one-half marble bathrooms, two kitchens and a garden terrace off the master suite.
It also said the apartment followed Frank Lloyd Wright's vision with floors displaying "a marriage of limestone, bronze and steel. Its grand staircase was modeled after the French cruise ship Normandie," according to a piece on NBC's LXTV.com.
Feldman was listed as a client of disgraced money manager Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme. Feldman's name comes up on lists of those with accounts found by the court-appointed trustee in the case or people who contacted the trustee, saying they were clients and wanted to file a claim.
A call to Feldman was not immediately returned.
It took the 106 firefighters who raced to the scene around 8 p.m. Saturday just over an hour to get the blaze under control. Other than the firefighters, no one else was injured in the blaze.
