By Kim Velsey 1/22 7:45pm

Mo Money Mo Problems

Mr. Naumann's former townhouse.

When Your Townhouse Is Actually Too Big

“I realized I hadn’t been up to my library in six months. My wife pointed out that neither of us had been to the parlor in the last three,” art dealer Otto Naumann recently confessed to The Observer. “We were basically living on two floors.”

The Naumanns’ townhouse on East 78th Street had five, in addition to an elevator meant to relieve the headache of traveling between them. Perversely, the couple quickly discovered that the elevator made it easier not to get around the house. They were bypassing entire floors without so much as a glimpse from the stair landing for weeks, even months. Prized possessions, like a beloved boat sculpture, were stranded in neglected corners. After two years of rattling around the brownstone behemoth, they admitted defeat and retreated to a 2,500-square-foot cond-op.

They weren’t the first, or only, townhouse dwellers to find the vastness and verticality of their home daunting. While such residents would seem to be living the dream—the exceedingly common one in which the dreamer discovers extra, hidden, previously unexplored rooms in his or her own house—it can sometimes feel more like a nightmare. Read More

By Kim Velsey 6/29/12 5:00pm

Manhattan Transfers

Is uptown cheaper than downtown?

Historic Little UWS Townhouse Hits The Market For $4.5 M.

Sometimes, with all the spectacularly high townhouse asks (the $90 million Woolworth mansion) and gets (the $42 million Stanford White mansion), we forget that a townhouse can be had for much, much less.

Take this charming “Flemish renaissance townhouse” at 383 West End Ave that’s asking $4.5 million. It’s located in a “wildly picturesque” block of row houses across from the Apthorp that were the subjects of a Christopher Gray back in 2004. Read More

By Kim Velsey 4/02/12 12:01pm

Manhattan Transfers

UES

Deeply Discounted Upper East Side Townhouse Sells For $11 M. to Ziff Brothers Boss

Although the listing created a compelling vision of the grand life that one would lead in the townhouse 59 East 77th Street, inviting potential buyers to imagine “ascending upstairs via the wide striking main staircase to be greeted by a gracious landing,” or installing your art collection in a living room that “awes you with its incredible wood-sculptured ceiling,” it was not enough to net $18.7 million. Read More

By Matt Chaban 10:30am

Manhattan Transfers

7 Photos

Artists and Authors on Stuyvesant Street

VF Writer Nina Munk and Artist Peter Soriano Buy P.R. Queen’s Six-Story Townhouse

One of Graydon Carter’s premiere writers now has a Village townhouse all her own, just like the boss. Nina Munk, a Vanity Fair contributing editor and author of Fools Rush In, about the unraveling of AOL Times Warner, has just purchased 25 Stuyvesant Street with her artist husband, Peter Soriano.

Like any good story, the home was pitched by a PR pro, Jean Way Schoonover, a pioneer in the industry who ran Hunter PR with her sister after their earlier firm was acquired by Olgivy & Mather. She died last spring, and her gorgeous redbrick townhouse, designed by James Renwick, Jr., came on the market shortly thereafter, asking $4.5 million. Read More

By Elise Knutsen 12:41pm

Manhattan Transfers

Hedda Sterne Steinberg's former home at 179 East 71st Street

Hedda Sterne Steinberg Estate Sells Her and Saul’s Old UES Townhouse

Hedda Sterne is one of those artists who has faded into the backdrop of our collective cultural consciousness. A worthy artist in her own right, Stern is perhaps best known for marrying fellow Romanian luminary Saul Steinberg, whose half-century of New Yorker illustrations solidified the publication’s legacy.

While Stern and Steinberg separated, they never divorced, and the townhouse they shared together on the Upper East Side has just been sold by Sterne’s estate, city records show. Sterne died last summer at the age of 100, one of the last surviving artists from the Abstract Expressionist era. Read More

By Matt Chaban 8/21/11 2:25pm

Gigagosian

The Mansion

Is Larry Gagosian Turning the Harkness Mansion Into His Own Private Gallery?

While The Observer would never attempt to divine what goes on in Larry Gagosian’s head, based on discussions with real estate and art world experts, we feel safe to say that the Harkness Mansion is more than a home. It could also serve, in some capacity, as gallery, showroom, salon.

“The answer is, yes, it’s been done,” an attorney who specializes in zoning told The Observer. “It’s a residential district, which precludes any commercial use, but there is nothing stopping him from putting a gallery in the first few floors.” Read More