Billionaire New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been very secretive about his homes and personal life, but the New York Times discovered yesterday that photos of two of Bloomberg's townhouses were posted in plain sight on the website of his interior decorator.

The photos have since been taken down, but Business Insider discovered a blog from 2008 with photos reposted from Drake Design Associates' website bearing the same labels as those of Bloomberg's homes: "Townhouse NYC" and Townhouse London" — including the photo the NYT took a screenshot of. Though not definitive, these appear to be the pictures since removed from Drake's site.

The NYT consulted with a few antiques dealers and concluded that Bloomberg's taste indeed runs high. According to the paper:

In the New York town house, the photos show that visitors are greeted by what appeared to be, in the eyes of one antiques dealer, a Dutch old master painting, an English Regency table that could be worth $90,000 and sconces that could go for $40,000 each.

In another room sits what the dealer said was a $1 million Georgian Chippendale couch beneath what appeared to be an 18th-century portrait by a prominent painter like Joshua Reynolds or Thomas Gainsborough, which might be worth $450,000. Throughout the house are more sconces and chandeliers valued in the five or six figures, the dealer said.The NYT consulted with a few antiques dealers and concluded that Bloomberg's taste indeed runs high.


Republished with permission from BusinessInsider.com. Authored by Kevin Lincoln. Image via Business Insider.