Visiting the Oligarchs

I went by Russian Oligarch Oleg Deripaska's pied-a-tier Mansion in DC at 2501 30th St. NW. -- pictured above. Not sure what it’s worth, but Zillow says $15.4 million and the place next door is for sale and can be had for $16.5 million (listing here ).

Vernon Jordan is across the street, David Bradley, the owner of The Atlantic magazine, is three doors down, and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross is (or was) just across the way. 

Former Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin's $12 million mansion is a five-minute walk away, and I passed by one of Jeff Bezo's places (the former Textile Museum) on my way over (it is partially pictured below). 

Across narrow Rock Creek is the former house of Ivanka and Jared, around the corner is George and Kelly Anne Conway's old place on Benton Place, and the Obamas have a house not too far away.

As for Deripaska, he has has so many houses he could lose this one and not even know. What’s one more box of rocks, more or less?

This house, for the record, is not that old. The original place that was located at this address (a Tudor mansion) was bought for $1.7 million by Dart Drug Chairman Herbert H. Haft who knocked it down to build this 20,000-square foot prefabricated concrete place that was then-described as a nouveau-renaissance "mini-Versailles”.  

Herbert Haft went on to make a fortune, get in a famously messy divorce, fired his own son who he had to pay $34 million to when he lost the suit, and then bankrupted his remaining companies (Crown Books, Trak Auto, started by his son). 

Herbert Haft's final residence is at the back of King David Memorial Garden in Falls Church -- a rather plain grave, tucked out of the way, and not apparently visited too often.