Biggest Home Sale of '12; Chanel No. 6 Condos

It's time for the weekly contribution from our sister site Curbed Boston: Curbed Cuts, all the latest neighborhood news...

BACK BAY - The monarchical manse at 15 Commonwealth Avenue, with a provenance nearly as old as Back Bay itself, traded for $12,500,000 in what is the biggest Boston home sale of 2012 so far. According to a source, the 15,000-square-foot mansion, which has gone back and forth from commercial use over its history, will be a private home once again. It took more than 1,000 days to sell, having gone on the market in the summer of 2009, and the price was chopped gradually from $15,900,000.

BOSTON - Boston's soon-to-be-new housing may not be the family-friendliest, but the city does have households with kids, kids that need schooling—too many kids that need schooling, in fact. The School Department received 2,306 kindergarten applications for the coming school year, up from 1,823 last year, an increase of more than 25 percent. The city's trying to fix this space shortage by adding kindergarten classrooms (and staff) at five schools: Umana Academy in East Boston, Harvard-Kent in Charlestown, Mission Hill in Jamaica Plain, and Haley Elementary and Sumner Elementary, both in Roslindale.

BACK BAY - The price just keeps on dropping at the exquisite 3-BR, 3-BA penthouse at 137 Marlborough Street. On the last day in February, it shaved its tag by $105K (it was amid a brief flurry of epic price-chops). On Wednesday, it knocked another hundred grand off. So, now, for $3,395,000, you get 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, 2,133 square feet, a private deck with wet bar and presumably one motivated seller.

BACK BAY - The new condos slated for 4-6 Newbury Street, where a garage currently stands and where a 10,000-square-foot Chanel store will stand as well, are expected to ask $3.5 million to $6 million each, depending on their sizes and design requests. That would make them among the most expensive listings in Boston when they come online next winter. The project, which is being dubbed No. 6 Newbury (but that we will henceforth call Chanel No. 6), will have a Chanel store on the first two floors and six condos above: two 2-BR duplexes and four 3-BR and 4-BR units.