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MOM'S 2,800-SQUARE-FOOT PAD IS UPSTAIRS FROM JENNIFER LEROY'S One night in 1966, at Maxwell's Plum, his first restaurant, Warner LeRoy spotted a woman at a table by the window and introduced himself as the man she would marry. That woman did marry him, in 1970, and for most of the next three decades, Kay and Warner LeRoy were a prominent uptown couple, reigning over Tavern on the Green and the Russian Tea Room and living in a lavish apartment at the Dakota. LeRoy once reportedly bought his wife a $75,000 couture dress, and the couple is said to have burned through $2 million a year in personal expenses.
In 1999, when their three kids had all reached the age of 20, the LeRoys split up, though they remained close until his death in February. After the divorce--in which she was awarded $22 million and the couple's house in Amagansett--Ms. LeRoy, a British former TWA stewardess, enrolled at New York University with the intention of finally getting a college degree.
This summer, between semesters, Ms. LeRoy bought a $2.871 million loft at a building called the Greenwich, at 65 West 13th Street, and moved there from the Upper East Side. Having installed herself downtown, Ms. LeRoy is now living under the same roof as her daughter Jennifer, 22, the new chief executive of Warner LeRoy's $54 million empire.
Ms. LeRoy had accompanied her daughter to the building, the former Siegel's department store, last winter, when Jennifer was looking to buy her 2,700-square-foot apartment--unfinished space with plumbing and floor-to-ceiling windows. A few months later, Ms. LeRoy went down to the same building on her own to see a 2,838-square-foot loft that was on the market for $2.9 million (common charges are $1,219). The apartment she bought on July 2 is a corner unit with 95-year-old wood floors and large, rounded windows detailed from the outside by ornate railings, said Michele Conte of Brown Harris Stevens, the building's sales director.
Ms. Conte said the two women were anxious to share an address. "Their relationship is really something," said Ms. Conte. "They just adore each other .... When it comes to mothers and daughters, this is the way it should be." Ms. LeRoy wouldn't comment, and Jennifer LeRoy...