Photo-Illustration: Curbed; Photos, clockwise from left: Eitan Gamliely/Sotheby’s International Realty; Envision Studio Inc./Phil & Noa; Anton Brookes/H5 Property/Douglas Elliman; Jake Di Pietro Studios; Melanie Greene Photography; Brown Harris Stevens
Paging through listings of bare, white-walled apartments filled with beige furniture can feel like a walk through the salt flats — even a stray pebble catches the eye. So when a home includes a sunken conversation pit or an antique chandelier dangling over kitchen tile, we stop and lean in, wanting to know more. This year, by asking about the wild and glamorous rooms we spotted among the duds, we also uncovered the stories of the distinctive, sometimes peculiar New Yorkers who live in them, from the artist who turned her loft into a living diorama to the philanthropist who improved her view of Gramercy Park by chopping down some of its trees (allegedly). Below are the “Truly Terrific” listings Curbed readers spent the most time reading.
A sculptor’s faux carriage house was built from the bricks of demolished Brooklyn buildings. It was so convincing that he got a call from Landmarks. Read the story.
A row of homes on West 10th, designed by James Renwick Jr. and striped with wrought-iron balconies, has drawn big buyers who have funded gut renovations. But not No. 28, where the 1857 stairwell still has the original coffin corners and Renwick’s showy moldings and curved closets outfit rooms that once housed Dashiell Hammett, Jane and Paul Bowles, Marcel Duchamp, and the family of a theater critic. Read the story.
An artist whose work is obsessed with the “bleed between fantasy and reality” applied the same instincts to the top floor of a former shoe factory, where she turned a crawl space into a teeny den sized for a doll and added a hidden cocktail bar and a cozy library. Read the story.
It’s unclear what’s the strangest chapter of Donna Henes’s story: how she fought her landlord to get her apartment, how she afforded it as a self-proclaimed urban shaman, or how she developed the style that she would decorate it in, which a friend called “Palm Beach 1940s.” Read the story.
The stylish owner of a womenswear boutique bought a Park Avenue apartment that became a kind of showroom. “I had to stop going to antiques shows because I couldn’t fit any more of it,” she said. “I’m kind of out of my mind.” Read the story.
A friendship with George Plimpton led a writer to buy a co-op above the Paris Review offices. Eventually, when life forced her to sell, she bought a studio in the same building and made it her office, which eventually filled with a lifetime’s worth of books. Read the story.
An Upper East Side two-bedroom styled perfectly for the 1970s miraculously escaped the renovation cycle because it just worked for a series of owners who appreciated a perfect “postdivorce apartment.” Now, it’s a rare artifact of that era, with a sunken living room, hidden bar, and walls of mirrors. Read the story.
The townhome that an architect renovated for himself and his family is filled with clever, livable touches; breathtaking bright views; and warm wood paneling that he pulled from trees on his family’s land. It also became his calling card. Read the story.
A fifth-floor apartment on Gramercy Park with a perfect view over the tops of trees may have been designed to be that way: The owner was accused by neighbors, including the writer Janet Malcolm, of abusing her power to trim the trees below — with deadly results. Read the story.
In 1976, a middle-class couple took out a mortgage worth about $475,000 today and bought a quaint, two-bedroom row house. They restored the floors, opened fireplaces, and finished a basement where the floor had been partially dirt. Then, they watched the neighborhood explode with models, actors, and billionaires. Read the story.
Source link
