Mr. Naumann's former townhouse.

“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.

In a city where most residents are desperate for an extra room—and uncomfortably familiar with every ceiling crack and plaster chip in their diminutive apartments—having too much space could hardly be called a problem, let alone an occasion for sympathy. But it is a phenomenon, one that surprises the homeowners as much, if not more, than anyone else. Some owners admit to staring into the hardwood-floored, ceiling-medallioned abyss and wishing for the unthinkable: a smaller house.

“It’s like being too rich or too thin,” remarked Jed Garfield, a broker at the boutique townhouse firm Leslie J. Garfield & Co. Inc. “You can’t be too rich, too thin, or have too big of a house.” He laughed, admitting that his 4,500-square foot house was, in fact, a little large for his family of four.

“The reality is that we live in the kitchen and the library. We have a living room and two guest bedrooms that we never use,” he said. “I can’t think of anyone besides empty nesters who has left a townhouse because there was too much space, but it’s certainly not uncommon to hear people say things like, ‘I haven’t been up there in a couple of years.’”

A couple of years?

“Especially as people get older, they tend to just use the first three floors,” he explained. In almost all townhouses, that’s where you’ll find the living room, the dining room, the kitchen and the master bedroom. Is it really any surprise that residents end up camping out downstairs?

“The kids go to boarding school, and the parents end up living in the kitchen, the dining room and the den,” said another broker. “Sometimes not even the dining room. And the only person who goes to the sixth floor is the maid.”

For New Yorkers, space is intoxicating, and buyers can easily find themselves under the spell of a townhouse’s square footage, which commonly clocks in at between 4,000 and 8,000 square feet (although some homes, like the Woolworth mansion, swell to 20,000). Manhattan townhouses don’t come cheap, but they’re often a much better value than comparably sized co-ops and condos. And there’s something sublime about having an actual house in the middle of Manhattan. But townhouses present unique challenges that co-ops and condos don’t. Among them: figuring out how to use a space that’s been designed for a different era, when live-in staff were the ones doing most of the hoofing up and down the stairs.

“I think the phenomenon of under-utilized space is due partially to the natural inclination of our species to view everything horizontally,” reflected Mr. Naumann. “We don’t envision spaces above or below us. It’s also our inherent laziness. Why climb stairs or enter a slow elevator unless it’s essential? And it rarely is.”
Plus, 19th-century floor plans don’t allow for good flow.

“It’s common for clients to fall in love with an old townhouse’s charm but want to bring in modern sensibilities and ideas, space and light,” said architect Julian King, who has done a number of townhouse renovations. “Old spaces were very cellular, with framed doors leading to more framed doors.”

There are many ways to encourage better use of a space with a redesign, he said. Still, there are limits.

“We have a client in Carroll Gardens who is very concerned with how many footsteps it will take to go from the garden to the top level,” Mr. King said. “It’s constant topic of conversation—how can we make it more efficient? But it’s not a hospital. It’s a house.”

kvelsey@observer.com

Yours, for the same price as some antiseptic 2-bedroom condo

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.

But even at $4.5 million, it's a huge price jump given that the houses first sold for in 1887 for between $18,000 and $20,000. Apparently they were always considered lovely and low-key, in a city where ostentatious castles were springing up along the Park at the same time.

"In 1886, a critic in The Real Estate Record and Guide praised the Queen Anne-style row for its ''freedom from all meretricious tricks of ornament, and thorough honesty in the whole plan and style of construction,' wrote Gray in his column.

Certainly, 383 is not as grand as many of its uptown or downtown cousins—and we doubt, based on the tight-lipped listing from Leslie Garfield broker Richard Pretsfelder—that it's updated with all or any of the modern conveniences that other listings like to brag about: audiovisual/internet entertainment in every room, wine cellar, Miele and Sub-Zero, state-of-the-art security system, spa bathrooms, etc., etc., etc.

The listing notes that the home is still single-family and has light, a lovely garden and a "tranquil third-floor terrace." Okay, maybe it needs some work.

It is owned, according to city records, by artist Deborah Aschheim and Robert A. Weiss, who appear to have bought the house for an undisclosed sum in 1997.

Only in New York would a townhouse seem, well, almost quaint.

kvelsey@observer.com

The latest property to disappear from the market is the now under-contract townhouse at 26 East 73rd Street, listed with Brown Harris Stevens broker Paula Del Nunzio at $23 million.

The luxurious limestone building, on the cusp of being sold to an unknown buyer, was bought anonymously for $18  million in 2007 by owners who records suggest are based in the Netherlands.

They clearly had whimsical and artistic preferences when it came to decorating. Listing photos show a swarm of butterflies crossing the living room, lavender walls, a bright orange breakfast nook and and a plethora of interesting paintings.

But fresh, alluring design aside, it seems that buyers can't keep their hands off really expensive properties these days and 26 East 73rd Street fits the bill. The six-story, five-bedroom townhouse has an elevator, central heat that is adjustable room-by-room, a high-end security system, a private exterior vestibule hidden behind a heavy brass front door and more high-tech creature comforts than we've ever seen included in the same listing before.

There's also a roof terrace (with built-in irrigation system), both gas and wood-burning fireplaces (a total of 5), closets galore, a living room with state-of-the-art home theater equipment and a master bedroom with a regular closet and a shoe closet, as well as a bathroom with heated limestone floors.

The beauty also apparently caught the eye of Jerry Seinfeld last June, but either the comedian and dyed-in-the-wool Upper West Sider decided to stay in known territory or he takes a very long time to make up his mind.

kvelsey@observer.com

Those are some wonderful windows. (PropertyShark)

A magnificent living room? Yes, but not an $18.7 million one. (Corcoran)

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.

The house, which has been listed with Corcoran since May 2011, sold for only $11 million, according to city records. But then, buyer Wui Yen Liow, a principal at Ziff Brothers Investments LLC and a managing director of ZBI Equities, has had ample opportunity to master the art of spending wisely. It also helped that the owners dropped the home's listing price to $14.9 million in October.

Mr. Liow purchased the much-discounted six-story, six-bedroom townhouse through the Liow Family Trust. His wife Eeling Lim is listed as trustee.

"It was a beautiful house. I'm not surprised it would sell," said broker Thomas Wexler, who shared the listing with his Corcoran colleague Lisa Fitzig. Mr. Wexler would not confirm any details about the buyers other than to say the home had been purchased as a private residence.

Besides the striking staircase and the awe-inspiring living room, the house also features a current pool, "abundant oversized windows that invite showers of natural light" and a very large gourmet eat-in kitchen with a dumbwaiter (less an amenity than an oddity to scare and delight the children).

And while the sellers, telecommunications entrepreneur and champions of Tamarind art Kent Charugundla and his wife Marguerite, didn't get the $18 million they had hoped for, they still made a tidy profit, given that they purchased the home for $6.8 million in 2004.

kvelsey@observer.com

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. Renwick designed St. Patrick's Cathedral on Fifth Avenue and the original Smithsonian, among other landmarks.

The artist and author did not rush into this deal, and they were rewarded for their patience—after nearly a year on the market, the home sold for $3.7 million, according to city records, a 17 percent discount. It is a worthy price, given the exquisite condition of the home. The perfect refuge, one hopes, from the NYU students and fratty bankers streaming this home in the heart of the East Village on Friday night. Perhaps an escape to the brick-walled garden out back, where a Budha watches over the premises, would help leave the city behind.

Inside, a grand spiral staircase connects the six compact floors. Four fireplaces warm the living room, library and two of the five bedrooms. "Retaining its elegant and thoughtful single-family floor plan, 25 Stuyvesant Street is approximately 3380 square feet inside," Brown Harris Stevens broker Paula Del Nunzio writers in her listing. She notes that the street was laid out by Petrus Stuyvesant, a descendent of the Dutch governor, whose son Peter founded the New York Historical Society and grandson Hamilton Fish, born on the block, would serve as governor and Secretary of State.

Ms. Munk and Mr. Soriano are themselves descendents of greatness. Her father made the acclaimed Clairtone sound systems, about which Ms. Munk wrote a book. His father ran a Phillipino mining concern, his grandfather served as the minister of finance for the island nation during World War II. The couple previously called a co-op at 242 East 19th Street near Gramercy Park home.

It can be tough keeping up with the Carters.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Pretty as a painting. (Property Shark)

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.

The townhouse at 179 East 71st Street was put on the market in September, just a month after Stern passed away. Originally listed for $7.9 million, the home ultimately fetched $6.7 million, city records show.

The young, moody artists

In the 1950s, when most women were relegated to the rubber-gloved domestic life,  Hedda Sterne had a vastly different set of priorities. A member of the Abstract Expressionist school, Sterne was one of very few women in a rag-tag pack of angsty post-war male painters. In 1951, a group of artists penned a letter to the president of the Metropolitan Museum, protesting its conservative aesthetic bias. While 18 artists signed the document, Rothko, de Kooning and Pollock among them, Sterne was the only female signatory.

According to a listing from Corcoran agent Barbara Hochhauser, the five-bedroom, five-bath townhouse had been converted into a three-unit home. Should the buyers,  listed on the deed as Maria Herrera and Pedro Chomnalez re-convert it back to a single-family dwelling, they will have a full 13 rooms at their disposal. Sadly, the home comes sans art, and was delivered vacant according to the listing.

eknutsen@observer.com

The Mansion. (Property Shark)

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."

The massive 20,000-square-foot mansion could not be entirely given over to art, because the Department of Buildings still requires certain amenities for a residential building to get its certificate of occupancy. In this case, that includes a kitchen and at least one bedroom. The residences could occupy a few floors, or be nothing much more than a garret in the fifth-floor attic.

There are still further restrictions on the gallery plan. There can be no separate entrances for the home and the gallery and no signage on the doors. Business hours are strictly forbidden—this is not a venue for public viewings. "But that doesn't mean you couldn't throw a party there every night if you wanted," said the attorney.

The stately house would be a nice addition to the 11-gallery Gagosian empire, his most upscale space so far. Yet Mr. Gagosian would not want to go abandoning the mothership at 980 Madison, either. The biggest restriction of all is that no commercial activity could take place in the home. Even for the notoriously behind-closed-doors Mr. Gagosian, the convenience of going around the corner to sign over art would be essential.

A Gagosian spokesperson declined to comment on the gallerist's plans for his new home.

Still, Mr. Gagosian is just about the perfect buyer for the Harkness Mansion. As The Observer reported Thursday, one of the reasons J. Christopher Flowers was having such a hard time selling it, after paying a record $53 million in fall 2006, is because the Harkness had been gutted, in preparation for a renovation that was derailed by an acrimonious divorce.

Most buyers want something that is move-in ready, but assuming Mr. Gagosian plans to turn at least some portion of the mansion into a gallery, buying a shell actually makes that job easier. Not only does he save on demolition costs, but the shrewd dealer could also negotiate down the price of the home, which had been asking more than $40 million but sold for $36.5 million.

Galleries in townhouses on quiet Upper East Side streets are nothing new. L&M Arts operates one, as does Marianne Boesky. Unlike Mr. Gagosian's new manse, both are partly zoned for commercial use. In Ms. Boesky's case, it was a doctor's office on the ground floor that was converted to a gallery in 1971, according to city records. Still, this did not keep her from staging the “dwelling” show in the spring, occupying every floor of the brownstone. Just because it's a bedroom does not mean it cannot also become a gallery space.

Perhaps the best known—if most notorious—example of a gallery inside an Upper East Side mansion was the $150,000-a-month 71st Street palace that another Larry once occupied. The disgraced Salander O'Reilly, at 22 East 71st Street, actually lay within a commercial district, making sales there legit. Well, legit from a zoning perspective.

Allan Stone lived over the shop on East 90th Street for 16 years until his death in 2006. The converted firehouse was sold this summer for $9.875 million and is reportedly being turned back into a single family home. Richard Feigen's situation is very much like that of Mr. Gagosian, in that his gallery is located on the first few floors of his home, but any sales must be done off-site due to the aforementioned residential restrictions.

The carriage house. (Property Shark)

Something of a live/work space would not be unusual for Mr. Gagosian. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, before he got a space in Sandro Chia’s studio building on West 23rd Street in 1985, he operated a private gallery in a loft on West Broadway, where he continued to live after he opened in Chelsea. (In an early interview, Mr. Gagosian recalled buying that loft in 1978 for $10,000 and a Brice Marden painting.) The West Broadway space, which was at one time operated by Mr. Gagosian in cooperation with dealer Annina Nosei, was, in fact, where David Salle had his first New York exhibition.

In his native Los Angeles, Mr. Gagosian ran a similar operation in the 1980s. Exhibitions were held in a space on Market Street in Venice in a gallery that was attached to his home there. That building was designed for Mr. Gagosian by architect Robert Mangurian in the early 1980s.

He mixes work and hearth to this day. On Oscar weekend this year, Mr. Gagosian hosted a get together at his new Holmby Hills home in L.A.—he had just purchased it for a cool $15.5 million the year before. According to The Wall Street Journal, members of the staff “mingled with guests, discreetly passing a rolled-up sheet of paper between them like a baton. The sheet listed prices for nearly every artwork in sight.”

Indeed, a similar air of showiness suffuses Mr. Gagosian's current home inside a converted stable at 147 East 69th Street. (The street has long been a haven for artistic types—in addition to Mr. Feigen's gallery, Mark Rothko had and Jacob Collins has a studio on East 69th.) Pieces from his prodigious private collection hang on the walls, including Richard Prince, Andy Warhol, Cy Twombly, Damien Hirst, Roy Lichtenstein and countless contemporaries. He is said to have what may be Picasso's last painting hanging over his bed.

Since the Harkness Mansion is more than three times as large as Mr. Gagosian's current 6,525-square-foot abode, it may well be the manse will be his new home. Which is to say that no Gagosian home is ever just a home. The Harkness gives him considerably more space in which to hang personal art, which everyone knows, despite appearances, is all always for sale. After all, buyers love buying off the gallerist's walls. It's an old trick that gives the art a personal touch and, naturally, drives up the price.

“Is it anything a standard gallery person could do and get away with? Probably not,” said one source. “It's not something Gavin Brown could or even would do. But Larry's a word of mouth, private client, private banking kind of guy. It won't be his gallery. It will be his salon.”

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

The Nicholses are leaving behind Greenwich Village, where they owned a duplex. Mr. Nichols had been selling the three-bedroom himself since September, asking $2.25 million; it slipped off the market in mid-January. A 718 number attached to the listing was disconnected and emails were not returned.

"A rare opportunity to own a two-story home... nestled inside a luxury building with a full staff, turnaround driveway, landscaped garden, 24-hour garage, exercise facility and so much more!" declared 10thStreetDuplex.com, the Web site Mr. Nichols launched to market the renovated home, which had been purchased in 2004 for $1.255 million, according to StreetEasy. Mr. Nichols has worked in the music industry, but it appears he has a future ahead of him as a broker.

As for the new home, it was purchased for $5.2 million from Edward and Sharon Kreps, doctors who had owned the mansarded beauty since 1970, according to city records. "In addition to six stories above grade, there is also unbelievable amounts of basement storage including a wine cellar," Lydia Rosengarten writes in her Leslie J. Garfield listing. Hope all that wine does not give the Nicholses Heartburn.

Read past Manhattan Transfers. >>

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

A Johns Hopkins-trained doctor, Mr. Ratner has penned the textbook Concepts in Medical Physiology as well as the far less technical The Jump Artist, a novel about postwar photographer Philippe Halsman that has been praised by Harper's, among others. Yet it stands to reason that it is family connections as much as book royalties helping to pay for the stunning five-story home at 96 Joralemon Street. According to the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, Mr. Ratner is the stepson of James Ratner, who is an executive at Cleveland-based Forest City and cousin to Brooklyn macher Bruce Ratner.

The home's former owner also happens to be a writer, Karla Kuskin, who authored more than 50 books for children, according to The Times. Kuskin died in 2009, and her family put the 4,630-square-foot Federalist-style home on the market last February for $3.6 million and cut the price twice to $3.2 million in September. Mr. Ratner and his wife Kristin paid exactly $3 million, according to city records.

Undoubtedly, the 24-foot-wide townhouse's defining feature is a grand bay window on the third floor, part of an owner's triplex that sits atop a two-bedroom parlour floor apartment and a doctor's office on the garden level. Period details abound, as detailed in the Corcoran listing from Kim Soule and Lucy Perry: "The leaded front vestibule doors tastefully open onto the parlor floor apartment which boasts period parquet floors, two ornate decorative fireplaces, lovely stained glass windows, two bedrooms and a full bath. The upper triplex is flooded with light and has beautiful parquet floors, two decorative and one working marble fireplace."

Read past Manhattan Transfers. >>

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

Well-known designers Space4architecture have created a home where "the indoor and exterior spaces have been maximized for the pleasure of the modern urban family," according to the Douglas Elliman listing. If that were not enough, the place comes with celebrity cache. The renovation was undertaken by hotshot Carlyle Group managing director (and half-brother of the French president) Pierre Olivier Sarkozy, who bought the home from Richard Avedon's estate in 2005 for $6.5 million, according to city records, a year after the renowned photographer died.

SLIDESHOW: Richard Avedon's Artfully Updated Townhouse. >>

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo