McSweeney's Editor Sells For $3.52 M. on Mott

Long gone are McSweeney's days as a magazine for brilliant rejects.

 

In a sign the quarterly has gathered a whiff of the bourgeois, editor-at-large Sean Wilsey and his wife, Daphne Beal, a writer and former editor at The New Yorker, just sold their loft at 262 Mott Street for $3.525 million. The former Civil War armory was converted into condos about 15 years ago, and Mr. Wilsey, then a bachelor, moved in not long after, eventually combining four units with Ms. Beal into a single residence.

 

The buyer is Victoria Birch, wife of Oppenheimer exec Robert Birch.

 

In an email to The Observer, Ms. Beal declined to provide the financial details. "Isn't this the area where the interests of the journalist and the interests of the private citizen will probably never overlap?" she wrote.

 

The listing broker, Corcoran's Gabriella Winter, said the home featured a coat closet fashioned out of the original freight elevator doors and movable walls made of bookshelves.

 

The couple has purchased a brownstone in Clinton Hill for $1.75 million, public records show. "We moved out in late December," Ms. Beal said of 262 Mott, "and are on to a new chapter."