Hoagy Bix Carmichael’s Wood House on Sylvan Terrace

Up in Washington Heights, squeezed between 160th Street and 161st, is a one-block-long anomaly: a cobblestoned street of 20 wood-frame row houses built in 1882 that still look like it. There are ten homes on each side, all painted to match with tan façades, green shutters, brown gingerbread, and wooden steps leading up to identical stoops. A 1981 preservation effort restored all the homes in one batch (except for one holdout, which later caught up). These days, there’s a surreal theme-park feeling to the block. Influencers come to shoot selfies against the romantic backdrops, and Hollywood blocks off the road for period shoots (Sylvan Terrace even played “whore row” in Boardwalk Empire).

But actual people live here, and they tend to be the kind of New Yorkers who seek out antique treasures. At No. 6 lived Phyllis Kind, an art dealer who championed the work of outsider artists; next door is Tom Givone, an ad copywriter whose meticulous restoration of No. 8 pushed him into a new career as a contractor; and across the street at No. 11 is Charmaine Lord, who came to New York in 1990 as a working actor but found herself establishing a second career as a chef. Then there’s Lord’s husband, Hoagy Bix Carmichael, an author, a producer, a founder of the American Tap Dance Foundation, and the manager of his father’s catalogue of hundreds and hundreds of songs.

The row branches off from the Morris-Jumel Mansion (right) and was built when a developer subdivided the estate — the oldest home in Manhattan, built on the island’s second-highest point.
Photo: Gloria Kilbourne/DD-reps

Carmichael’s father, Hoagy, was the most prolific piano composer of the Tin Pan Alley era and the author of “Georgia on My Mind,” “Heart and Soul,” “Two Sleepy People,” “Lazy River,” and “Stardust.” There’s also “Rockin’ Chair,” recorded with bandmate Louis Armstrong, the lyrics of which were based on a wooden chair that’s now at the Sylvan Terrace home in a parlor furnished with other antique treasures: artwork Lord collected depicting life in Jamaica; original McClelland Barclay drawings of her husband’s mother, Ruth Meinardi; and the posters of movies his father appeared in, like The Best Years of Our Lives, in which a piano unspools during a tense moment.

Carmichael bought the house in 2018 because he wanted a home that wasn’t some “modern blah blah,” he says. “I happen to like that — no, I subconsciously feast on that.” The couple has “always lived in unusual homes,” says Carmichael, who grew up in the Los Angeles mansion of a Wrigley chewing-gum heir and had a vacation house in Westchester that dated to the 1930s. They met in 1993 on the set of a piece Carmichael was producing that featured one of Lord’s friends. “In our previous homes, he’d make me crazy searching for the right hinge,” says Lord. Here, he didn’t need to. The previous owner was architect Kenneth Lake, who recently worked on the expansion of St. Luke’s School in Greenwich Village. Lake restored the home, putting in hardwood oak floors appropriate to the era, expanding the kitchen, and cutting out a space in the floor of the parlor level to create a shaft that brings more sunshine downstairs to the garden level and connects the two spaces socially: On a daily basis, someone is shouting down for a glass of water.

Lord, Carmichael, and their dog, Clyde, under Hoagy Carmichael movie posters and art showing Lord’s native Jamaica.
Photo: Adriane Quinlan

They’re usually shouting down to Lord. The kitchen downstairs is what convinced her to move from their West 85th Street prewar apartment, which had only a galley kitchen. Here, the kitchen occupies most of the 20-foot-wide floor with enough space to put an antique table in the center to use as a work surface and perks like a stove with six burners that vents outside. When COVID shut down the city, Lord had been filming recipes for a Canadian broadcaster but pivoted to filming for her social-media followers from 11 Sylvan Terrace. “Something about the space made me feel like I could start doing this on my own,” she says. “I felt very comfortable filming in here, and I would get lots of people commenting on my backdrop.”

That backdrop includes exposed-brick walls and wood beams and, off the back, a door that leads to a patio where she planted a garden. Near the front of the house, a 19th-century table is often the spot for dinner parties that she sets with a collection of antique china — Spode, Royal Albert, and yellow-and-blue Laure Japy.

They don’t want to leave, but life is pulling them away. “I’m spoiled,” Carmichael says. “Every day when I’m here, I know and feel how unusual this block is.”

No. 11 sits on the north side of Sylvan Terrace, so it faces south and gets more sunlight. The lower door opens onto the kitchen.
Photo: Gloria Kilbourne/DD-reps

The main entrance leads into a tiled vestibule. A second set of doors opens onto the parlor level.
Photo: Gloria Kilbourne/DD-reps

The arched entry (left) leads from the front door to the living area. A cutout in the floor helps when shouting down drink orders to the kitchen below.
Photo: Gloria Kilbourne/DD-reps

A renovation by a former owner, architect Kenneth Lake, turned an antique roof beam into a pole that sets off the shower in the parlor-level bathroom.
Photo: Gloria Kilbourne/DD-reps

The downstairs kitchen looking back to a private patio.
Photo: Gloria Kilbourne/DD-reps

Toward the front of the garden level is a dining area outfitted with Lord’s collection of antique china.
Photo: Gloria Kilbourne/DD-reps

Tucked behind a kitchen cabinet is the pantry of a serious chef.
Photo: Gloria Kilbourne/DD-reps

The garden-level bathroom features Hollywood stills of Hoagy Carmichael, who turned a songwriting career into a series of film roles.
Photo: Gloria Kilbourne/DD-reps

The back patio looking into the kitchen.
Photo: Gloria Kilbourne/DD-reps

The back patio. Behind the house are only the gardens of townhomes on an adjacent street, so even the north-facing windows get light.
Photo: Gloria Kilbourne/DD-reps

The staircase and its balustrade may be original. It swirls as it reaches the top landing, which is crowned with a skylight that features stained glass.
Photo: Gloria Kilbourne/DD-reps

The primary bedroom overlooks charming Sylvan Terrace through quieting, double-paned glass. The bench is an antique from Sweden. Not shown is a walk-in closet Lord sometimes works from, which she calls her “cloffice.”
Photo: Gloria Kilbourne/DD-reps

Their daughter has the second bedroom, which looks north.
Photo: Gloria Kilbourne/DD-reps

There’s a renovated bathroom on every floor, unusual for an 1882 townhouse.
Photo: Gloria Kilbourne/DD-reps