Preservationists Uneasy As Developers Eye More “Suicides”

The irony of 34 East 62nd Street was that by purposely destroying the house in order to keep it from his ex-wife, Dr. Nicholas Bartha’s ex-wife would earn even more from the land.

Last summer, real estaters thought a new house on the property would fetch $15 million. Now they’re hoping to get $30 million:

A super-luxe eco-friendly townhouse is being planned for the upper East Side lot where suicidal Dr. Nicholas Bartha detonated his brownstone last year.

The built-from-scratch five-story mansion on E. 62nd St. will have a bamboo-fringed garden, underground pool, spiffy all-glass elevator — and an asking price of $30 million.

“Our mission is to preserve the quality of this landmark site while making the house appropriate for today’s lifestyles,” said Janna Bullock of the Russian Investment Group, which hopes to get city approval for the ambitious plan in the next few weeks.

If the modern glass-and-stone townhouse gets built, it would add a spectacular punctuation mark to one of the stranger New York stories of recent years.

The reclusive Bartha, 66, blew up the house last June 10 to avoid handing it over to his ex-wife in a bitter divorce. He touched off a raging explosion and fire by turning on the gas valve and igniting the building.

The so-called Dr. Doom survived the initial blast but died a few days later. Passerby Jennifer Panicali, 23, was injured in the explosion but recovered.

RIG bought the plot for $8 million from Bartha’s estate.