Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum has paid $22.8 million to acquire a 62-unit apartment building, the only non-museum property on the block adjacent to museum’s new wing.
According to an ARTnews report, the museum said its acquisition of the five-story building was designed to prevent potential development that could be seen as disrupting the museum’s surrounding area. The funds for the acquisition were separate from the museum’s funds used for exhibitions, programs, and conservation of its collection.
The apartment building was sold by the Gilberts, a Boston-area family that recently sold six other properties in Boston’s Fenway and Longwood sections to a Cambridge-based property group. The museum will maintain the building as residential housing and outsource its property management to a third-party vendor.
Photo of the museum via Beyond My Ken / Wikimedia Commons