A very Clockwork Orange bedroom on Leonard Street.
Photo: Compass
We spend entirely too much time clicking through on StreetEasy and Trulia, and often find ourselves wondering — who lives there, and why do they have a peacock enclosure? Here, we’ve rounded up the listings that have recently sent us down wormholes, including a Soho condo staged with a single, vaguely-creepy image and a West Village townhouse once owned by the neighborhood cat lady.
Address: 151 and 153 State Street
Price: $14,995,000 ($5,676 monthly taxes)
It’s more common to see a “Frankenmansion” — i.e., a double-wide house, built by combining the interiors of two neighbors — in Greenwich Village than in Brooklyn Heights.(or anywhere in Brooklyn, for that matter). But going by this listing, that could be changing: This pair of townhouses is being marketed as a “singular opportunity” “to create a breathtaking 41-foot-wide mansion” that could be 12,000 square feet. 151 was fixed up by the photographer brother of historian Robert K. Massie.
Address: 115 Mercer Street #4A
Price: $5,500,000 ($2,364 in maintenance fees, $3,676 in monthly taxes)
Imagine staging a $5.5 million, two-bedroom Soho condo with only one piece of art and choosing, for that single work, a photograph of a topless woman.
It’s a hell of a choice, and it seems to have been made by the firm that was marketing the listing a week ago, whose co-founders, the Alexander Brothers, have been accused of raping or assaulting a growing list of women.
Address: 29 West 10th #4
Price: $1.995 million ($4,285 monthly maintenance fee)
Rose Gregorio played opposite Duvall and DeNiro, had roles in The Swimmer and The Eyes of Laura Mars, and got nominations for a Tony and a Drama Desk Award. She and her director husband helped add to 10th Street’s theatrical reputation: Neighbors have included Edward Albee, Kathleen Turner, and the Times critic Mel Gussow. But the Gussow family is now selling, and Gregorio died last year. The last assessment was made in her name, and a listing that says this is the first time it’s been up for sale shows built-ins, an original fireplace, and lots of theatrical posters.
Address: 125 Beach 135th St, Far Rockaway
Price: $3.995 million ($2,863 monthly taxes)
Walk east of Jacob Riis and you’ll spot a house on the sand with a full-outdoor pool — a boxy new build with glass balconies, sliding doors, and glittery chandeliers. My colleague Clio Chang wondered who had the ambition to go this big in Far Rockaway and found it’s the home of a co-owner of a plumbing company who was charged with tax evasion for chalking down “more than $10 million of personal expenses as business expenses,” including $11,000 on “luxury home furniture,” according to prosecutors.
Address: 18 Leonard Street #2D
Price: $6,500,000 ($4,952 in monthly taxes and $4,999 in common charges)
A four-bedroom, light-filled loft in a 1914 Tribeca building is teeming with colorful expensive-looking art — there’s even a Warhol soup can. But then, there’s this odd bedroom with a grayscale close-up of splashing milk covering a wall and furniture that seems chosen to decorate A Clockwork Orange–style milk bar: creamy shag and droplet-shaped lamps.
Address: 2109 Broadway, Apt. 1393
Price: $1.075 million ($1,363 monthly common charges, $1,023 monthly taxes)
The Ansonia is one of the city’s most romantic buildings, a former hotel built in the foamy Beaux-Arts style with cupolas and little Parisan balconies. This one-bedroom seems to be in one of the building’s dreamy turrets, with views east that frame the San Remo.
Address: 220 Tennyson Drive, Staten Island
Price: $1,579,000 ($1,171 in monthly taxes)
A suburban stand-alone in Staten Island’s Great Kills is formal in the front — marble, high ceilings, chandeliers. But head back to the curvy pool and the house gradually looks more like the set for a 1980s sitcom with recessed lighting and a futuristic bar.
Address: 860 Park Avenue #15
Price: $7,700,000 ($13,826 monthly maintenance fee)
When your apartment occupies an entire floor — with 3,500 square feet on Park Avenue — you have room to build pet projects, like an Old West style saloon.
Address: 114 Waverly Place
Price: $22,850,000 ($7,622 in monthly taxes)
Celeste Martin was known as a kind of Edith Beale of the West Village — a Rockette turned cat lady who lived with dripping pipes and peeling paint. Turns out she was one of the area’s biggest property-owners; she died in 2019 with a portfolio of $25 million in townhouses, including her personal spot: a bubble-gum pink, 22-foot-wide 1836 house with an arched studio window on the sixth floor. The estate sold to designers Cortney and Robert Novogratz, who have turned the pink house canary yellow.
Address: 360 Beach 59th #c Street, Arverne
Price: $125,000 ($90 monthly taxes)
Boathouses don’t come on the market often, but Airbnbs have been flooding in since last fall, when the city started cracking down on rentals shorter than 30 days that aren’t occupied by their owners. This one used to have a 4.97 rating when it was listed as the Salt Shack.
Address: 781 Fifth Avenue, 1801
Price: $24 million ($79,808 in monthly maintenance)
Serena Boardman, the agent with a speciality in high-end co-ops, is listing the entire 18th floor of the Sherry-Netherland, which has a monthly maintenance bill of $79,808. (It covers a private landing, “separate staff rooms,” three terraces, and this glorious walk-in closet.)
The current owner, who paid $67.5 million in 2015, is hidden behind an LLC, but phone records show a past owner may be more intriguing: Lucille Lortel, whose industrialist husband bought her a theater after he forced her to give up acting.
Address: 65 Tennis Place
Price: $4,999,000 ($4,983 in monthly taxes)
Tennis Place is the address, and the listing makes clear this is “steps away from the renowned historic Forest Hills Tennis Club.” That must be the draw. There are no photos of the actual house, which seems to be a tear-down in the same quaint, cheesy Tudor Revival style as all the neighbors.
Address: 59 East 66th Street
Price: $32,000,000 ($11,328 monthly taxes)
Mark J. Heller, an audacious lawyer whose clients included David Berkowitz (a.k.a. the “Son of Sam”), bought this townhouse for $2 million in 1986. A chandelier, visible from the street, made a Times profile, but there’s also a swimming pool walled in marble.
