Realty tycoon taunts ex-wife with 42 feet tall pic of new one

NEW YORK: They measure 24 feet wide and 42 feet high, which makes them taller than a telephone pole but 3 feet shorter than the letters in the Hollywood sign. The two photos, according to the recently divorced and newly remarried man who had them installed last week on one of the tallest residential buildings in the Western Hemisphere, are “a proclamation of love.”

That man is real estate developer Harry Macklowe, who is pictured in one of the photos and was married for the second time on Thursday after a contentious 14-week divorce trial. His new wife, the woman in the other photograph, is Patricia Landeau, president of the French Friends of the Israel Museum. Macklowe built the building where the images appear, 432 Park Avenue.

“My wife looks gorgeous, and I love the picture of me,” Macklowe, 81, said on Saturday — and began thinking about ways to show them off. “Since I wasn’t getting married during the summer in the Hamptons,” he said, “I wasn’t able to hire an airplane with a banner to go up and down the shoreline. I thought: ‘I own a building. Why don’t I just hang a banner from my own building?‘”

It did not take long for the tabloids to notice. “Macklowe puts new wife’s pic on Park Avenue bldg. where ex nixed apt,” the New York Post wrote. “Ex” was a reference to Macklowe’s first wife, Linda. They were married for more than 50 years before a public breakup in 2016. Linda has a contract to buy an apartment in the building that is now adorned by the images of Macklowe and his new wife.