A 19th-Century N.Y.C. Townhouse With a Long Artistic Legacy Just Listed for $18.5 Million

A bohemian 19th-century New York City townhouse with a long artistic history is ready for its next creative steward.

The $8 million property in Manhattan’s Kips Bay neighborhood, originally built in 1848 and today enshrouded in ivy, has been host and home to numerous artists over its 177-year history. It was initially the location of the National Fine Art Foundry, and in 1909, the artists Eugene Rochette and Michel Parzini bought the building and turned it into their sculpting and modeling workshop, The New York Times reported recently. Rochette & Parzini frequently worked with the esteemed architectural firm McKim, Mead & White, and they are credited with creating enduring sculptures for several N.Y.C. landmarks, including the Morgan Library, the Waldorf Astoria hotel, and St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Today, many of the firm’s plaster models remain within the townhouse. 

Photographer Clara Aich took over the property in the late 1970s, after it had fallen into disrepair. She restored the four-story building over the last five decades, creating two inhabitable living spaces while keeping much of what was there when she moved in. Along with the plaster models that now hang on the walls, there’s an original iron chain pulley system from the sculpture studio days. Faced with a $2 million mortgage, Aich is now selling the home, which is listed with the Amadei Hettinger Team at Sotheby’s International Realty—Downtown Manhattan Brokerage.

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The centerpiece of the ground floor is a 600-square-foot entertaining space with soaring 25-foot ceilings. Three massive skylights fill the room with daylight. Here, Aich has hosted plays, musical performances, and gatherings of friends and family. On this level, you’ll also find an office, a simple kitchen, and one of the building’s four bathrooms. A sauna is nipped underneath a mezzanine level that overlooks the cavernous room and which can serve as a sleeping loft. A main bedroom occupies the second floor and includes its own fireside sitting room, a kitchenette, and a bathroom decked out in steel and brass. Among the room’s idiosyncratic charms, a vintage claw-footed soaking tub sits in front of a wood-burning fireplace near the bed.

The two upper floors contain an independent duplex apartment with both interior access and a separate staircase to the ground-floor entrance. Along with a roomy kitchen and a living room with 26-foot-high ceilings and a humongous skylight, there’s a powder room and a good-sized terrace on the third floor and a bedroom and a bathroom with another sauna on the fourth.

If the 5,000 square feet of interior living space doesn’t seem like quite enough, the building has another 3,000 square feet of unused air rights, giving you the option to build up another four stories. For her part, Aich told the Times that she’s worried someone will knock down the townhouse completely, but listing agent Jonathan Hettinger said he expects another creative person to acquire and continue to utilize the storied building as a live/work space.

Click here to see all the photos of the New York City live/work townhouse.