Monk-Turned-Magnate Peter Norton Buys Village Loft for $6.8 M.

Late last decade, Peter Norton, the Buddhist monk turned software pioneer turned art magnate, was modest and enlightened enough to choose a Manhattan apartment so unassuming that his architect, Maya Lin, complained it was too small and dark. After all, the place was a ground-floor duplex, partially below ground.

Mr. Norton’s tastes have apparently changed. According to a deed filed with the city’s Department of Finance just this week, he paid $6.8 million for a penthouse at the Greenwich, a huge prewar luxury loft building on West 13th Street, late last year. The condo has at least 23 windows facing north and west, according to the Corcoran listing, but then there’s a 10.5-foot-wide solarium, which leads to a 1,095-square-foot terrace.

The 42-foot-long living room (with a wood-burning fireplace) leads to a gourmet kitchen that the listing says is award-winning, though it’s not clear who bestowed what award.

Mr. Norton is famous for the bespectacled, cross-armed, rolled-sleeve, slightly smirking pose that’s often accompanied his eponymous computing guides, antivirus programs and God-sent data-retrieval utilities. He’s been around for so long that a 1980s New York Times article on his work called “A Remarkable Disc Doctor” ends with an unrelated few paragraphs introducing the fax machine—“a way of sending documents from one place to another.”

The earlier Maya Lin apartment aside—and even that place had expertly milled sycamore panels hiding the refrigerator, plus an armoire that morphed into a room divider—Mr. Norton’s tastes aren’t necessarily ascetic. He’s built up, and has spread around to several museums, one of the world’s largest contemporary art collections, and is also known for the little Christmas gifts he sends to a few thousand friends each year, commissioned from artists like Takashi Murakami and Kara Walker.

Maybe their work will go in the penthouse’s triangle-shaped library, two bedrooms, or the master bedroom (or its private bathroom and walk-in-closet).

His seller is listed on the deed as Xenora Trail Limited, a company connected to an investor named Thomas M. Melone.

mabelson@observer.com