Joan Rivers’ former haunted triplex penthouse is back from the grave with a fresh new look.
The late legendary comedian and American icon swore her sprawling Upper East Side home — which hit the market in May for $38 million and is styled like the palace of Versailles — was haunted by the ghost of Mrs. Spencer, J.P. Morgan’s niece and original resident of the John R. Drexel mansion at 1 E. 62nd — a grand, 42-foot-wide, six-story residence.
In a 2009 episode of the TV show “Celebrity Ghost Stories,” Rivers said she could feel the celestial spirit who was apparently not a fan of Rivers’ renovating 25 years earlier.
“It was just very strange,” Rivers said on the show. “The apartment was cold. I could never get any of my electrical things to work correctly.” Quipped the doorman to River, “I guess Mrs. Spencer is back.”
But the ghost wasn’t always a malevolent spirit.
Broker Dolly Lenz, whose firm is now listing the apartment, said she first toured the four-bedroom penthouse when Rivers was still alive.
She wanted to downsize and move to the West Coast to be with her daughter,” said Lenz. But she never had a chance as she died unexpectedly following complications from a botched surgery in 2014.
“Joan talked about the ghost,” Lenz said. “The stories she told me were so interesting. Mainly, it hung around her bedroom. She’d sit beside Joan and watch her put on her make up. It was a very long process.”
*And Rivers wasn’t the only one to see the ghost.
“The penthouse boasts a grand entertaining room with a balcony above it where paid musicians would play for her guests. Some of them saw the ghost there,” Lenz said.
However, prior to her death, Rivers had the spread “cleared” by a psychic. Au revoir spooks!
Rivers bought the apartment in 1988, a year after the death of her husband Edgar Rosenberg. She served as president of the condominium board, but reportedly jokingly referred to herself as the “scary lady upstairs,” the Post previously reported.
“There has been a recent refresh, which has given the apartment a whole new look,” listing broker Jenny Lenz, of Dolly Lenz Real Estate, told The Post.
The grand triplex comes with 26-foot ceilings, parquet floors, terraces and views of Central Park.
The seller is Saudi royal, Muhammad bin Fahd, who bought the regal home for $30 million in 2015, after it first listed for 2013.
Now another residence in the limestone mansion is also slated to hit the market today for $5 million.
The second-floor duplex comes with two bedrooms and two bathrooms, with a main bedroom overlooking a massive living room, which comes with a fireplace and a balcony. Details include 16-foot-4-inch ceilings, curved stairs and Central Park views.
John Drexel was the heir to the fortune of his father, Anthony Joseph Drexel, Sr., who founded Drexel, Morgan & Co. in 1871 with J.P. Morgan as his junior partner at the urging of his father, Junius Spencer Morgan. The company played a major role in the rise of global finance after the American Civil War.
The mansion, in which late director Elliott Kastner also lived, was designed by Horace Trumbauer in 1903. (Trumbauer was also the architect of the mansion last owned by Jeffrey Epstein, the late, disgraced pedophile. That mansion recently sold for $51 million, as Gimme reported exclusively.)
The apartment is unique and is like a “mansion within a mansion,” a source says, noting that it also played host to Ernest Hemingway.
The listing broker is Paula Del Nunzio, of Brown Harris Stevens.