June 30, 2015

My 800sqft: A Cute Design Couple Fill Their Ridgewood Railroad Apartment with Whimsy

Our ongoing series “My sqft” checks out the homes of 6sqft’s friends, family and fellow New Yorkers across all the boroughs. Our latest interior adventure brings us to Ridgewood, Queens. Want your home to be featured here? Get in touch!  Few neighborhoods have gotten as much buzz in the past year as Ridgewood. Considered the next frontier for cool kids getting priced out of hip areas like Williamsburg and Bushwick, Ridgewood sits at the top of NYC's list of ones to watch. But even with all the hoopla, how many of you actually know someone who lives off this stretch of the L? In our latest installment of My sqft, we meet Sean and Liz, a couple of Greenpoint expats who've made their way into a beautiful, historic brick construction along a peaceful block in the heart of this up-and-comer. Living large in a very bright and airy 800-square-foot railroad apartment, these two really don't face the same space challenges that plague the rest of us New Yorkers, and as such they've found the freedom to infuse their space with lots of personality (toy bunnies, illustrations of "nerd weapons" and quirky art from across the globe) and all the furniture they've collected over the last decade (lots of covetable mid-century modern pieces and antiques). Jump ahead to meet this perky pair and see how they've created that perfect old-meets-new-meets-endearing balance that we all strive for but pretty much have no clue how to make happen in our own homes.
Go inside their adorable home here
June 30, 2015

$12.8M Upstate Castle May Look Medieval, but It’s Only 30 Years Old

Knights, turrets, life-size lion statues, secret passageways...this stone castle looks like something straight out of "Game of Thrones." But, believe it or not, the upstate mansion is not medieval at all; it was built just 30 years ago. Located in Bolton Landing, New York, up in the Adirondacks and overlooking Lake George, Highlands Castle was conceived by John Lavender, a man who (for some unknown reason) told his then-three-year-old son that he'd build him a castle. A decade later, he did just that, and he's now listed the one-of-a-kind home for $12.8 million.
Explore the castle here
June 30, 2015

Model Amy Hixson Asks $899,000 for Custom-Designed, Bespoke East Village Pad

A model home for a model citizen…literally. This East Village pad belongs to model Amy Hixson, who has graced the pages of GQ and Victoria's Secret, to name a few. Hixson purchased the home for $625,000 in 2010 and spent three months gut renovating the joint with the help of Own Entity designers. The interior is meant to channel the work of Roman and Williams, with handcrafted features like refinished original oak floors, reclaimed Barnwood doors, and a refurbished fireplace mantel. Now it's back on the market, asking $899,000.
Take a look around
June 30, 2015

Hadrian Bricklaying Robot Can Construct a House in Just Two Days

Here's a bit of technology sure to please developers worried about rising construction costs: This new robot engineered by Marc Pivac has the ability to erect a home in just two days. Named Hadrian after the Roman emperor who rebuilt the Pantheon, and more famously constructed the Hadrian Wall that marked the northern limit of Britannia, this incredible piece of tech can work 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and it's able to lay 1,000 bricks per hour with the potential of building 150 homes in a year.
So how does it work?
June 30, 2015

Sales Launch at Rosario Candela’s 360 Central Park West; The Condos Replacing Brooklyn Heights Cinema

Sales have launched at Rosario Candela’s 360 Central Park West. A selection of three- to four-bedroom residences have been priced between $3,950,000 and just over $5,750,000. [CityRealty] Here are the Morris Adjmi-designed condos replacing the beloved Brooklyn Heights Cinema at 70 Henry Street. [6sqft inbox] 21 Broadway buildings have been shunned by the Landmarks Preservation Commission. [NYT] Neighbors […]

June 30, 2015

NYU Expansion Plan Gets the Final Green Light from Court of Appeals

Last October, the appellate court overturned a previous decision by the New York Supreme Court that prohibited NYU’s $6 billion, 1.9 million-square-foot Greenwich Village expansion plan. But in Feburary, opponents of the plan (including community groups like GVSHP, Assemblywoman Deborah Glick, local residents, NYU Faculty against the Sexton Plan, and even actor Mark Ruffalo) announced that the New York State Court of Appeals would hear their case one final time. According to DNAinfo, though, today the state's highest court ruled in favor of NYU, giving the expansion plan the final go ahead.
Find out more about the ruling
June 30, 2015

Designer and Art Writer Sue Hostetler Finally Sells Four-Story Alphabet City Condo for $7M

Six years ago, designer and art writer Sue Hostetler (she's the Editor-in-Chief of Art Basel Magazine) built a modern six-story townhouse at 238 East 4th Street. She and her husband, media executive Jon Diamond, decided they'd occupy the first four floors, while selling off the two-story penthouse. The Alphabet City location raised some eyebrows at the time, but before long, celebrity husband-and-wife design team Bob and Cortney Novogratz were tapped to design the upper condo, which sold for $5 million to Oscar Proust and Colleen Goujjane, owners of the well-known West Village restaurant One If By Land, Two If By Sea. But despite creating her dream home from the ground up, and even installing a paparazzi shield on the one-car garage, Hostetler first put her massive home on the market in 2012 for $8.5 million. Rachel Weisz and Danielle Craig checked it out at the time, but it's been struggling on the market for three years, including an attempt at selling the entire building for $12.4 million. Now, according to city records released today, the 6,500-square-foot residence has sold for $6,995,000, and the buyer is, quite appropriately, light and interactive sculptor Jen Lewin.
Take a look around
June 30, 2015

New Map Plots Every Airbnb Listing in NYC

"Adding data to the debate" is the tagline of this new interactive map called Inside Airbnb, which has plotted all listings as of June 1st from the popular room-sharing website. The searchable bird's eye map was created by Bed Stuy photographer Murray Cox to show "how Airbnb is being used to compete with the residential housing market" in cities around the world (h/t Gothamist). In addition to looking at the trend across the city as a whole, the map allows users to zoom into a specific neighborhood and look at how an Airbnb presence has changed in a given area over the past few years.
Learn more about the map
June 30, 2015

Rent Guidelines Board Approves Freezes on One-Year Leases for First Time in History

In a historic decision made last night, the Rent Guidelines Board voted 7-2 last night to freeze rents for the first time on one-year leases for New York City’s more than one million rent-stabilized apartments. The board, entirely appointed by Mayor Bill de Blasio, also moved to increase rents on two-year leases by just two percent, the lowest in the board's 46-year existence. The decision follows last week's lackluster vote at the state level to only extend but not strengthen rent regulations. "Cuomo betrayed us, the RGB can save us," tenants chanted at the meeting.
Find out more here
June 29, 2015

Michelle Williams Buys Colonial Revival Mansion in Prospect Park South That Needs a Little TLC

Actress Michelle Williams is clearly a fan of big, beautiful Brooklyn houses. 6sqft got the scoop back in September that she was listing her lovely Boerum Hill townhouse for $7.5 million. The ivy-covered, corner-lot home came complete with a three-car garage and more space than is usual for the neighborhood. Likely for these reasons, she sold the house for well over the asking price ($8.8 million to be exact), just two months later. And after keeping us in suspense for seven long months as to where she and nine-year-old daughter Matilda would move, Ditmas Park Corner revealed today that Williams purchased an historic Colonial Revival-style home in Prospect Park South. Last listed for $2.45 million, the eight-bedroom home at 1440 Albemarle Road is referred to as "The Tara of Prospect Park South" in the listing. It boasts a two-story front porch with fluted Ionic columns, dormer windows, eight fireplaces, and leaded and stained glass windows. The landmarked house is definitely in need of some TLC, but that shouldn't be a problem for Williams, as she told a neighbor "I love living somewhere that feels like the suburbs but is next to an express train."
Check out the interiors, this way...
June 29, 2015

The High and Low: A House at the Top

Though townhouses, row houses, and wooden houses exist in NYC in lower density areas like Brooklyn and Queens, in Manhattan, there’s often nowhere to build but up. It follows that those who enjoy the conveniences of modern condos sacrifice the feel of a free-standing house, and vice-versa. Penthouse living provides a rare exception; if you’re the top dog, you can basically build what you want, and the highest surface becomes your backyard and front porch. Penthouse bulkheads take a variety of shapes, with the most elaborate ones resembling nothing so much as a modernist masterpiece hovering above it all. In a few notable cases, this allowance is taken more literally than usual. The handful of log cabins, wood houses and such are curiosities atop the city’s tall buildings. The pair of lofty dwellings below exemplifies this good fortune. The first, a glass-walled rectangle above one of Tribeca’s most coveted converted industrial buildings removes the need for a Palm Springs retreat, though the $22.5 million price tag is definitely New York City-sized. The second, at $4.45 million, is more average-penthouse-priced, but the East Village home is definitely unique–its top floor resembles a country cottage.
See more of these have-it-all rooftop pads this way…
June 29, 2015

‘Poor Doors’ No Longer Allowed with New Rent-Regulation Bill

Thanks to a provision added to the newly extended and altered 421-a tax abatement passed last week, developers looking to segregate their wealthy tenants from their affordable rate renters will have to think again. According to The Post, Mayor de Blasio inserted a reform into the tax program plan that would ban the practice in which developers build a separate entrance for folks occupying the cheaper, below market-rate apartments in their buildings—better known as "poor doors."
More on the move here
June 29, 2015

FAO Schwarz Readies for a Move to Times Square; The Top 20 Power Players in NYC Real Estate

FAO Schwarz is wrapping up negotiations for a Christmas opening in Times Square. [CO] My Micro NYC has finished stacking its modular housing pods. [Field Condition] Jennifer Lawrence spotted looking at an apartment at Tribeca’s 443 Greenwich. [NYDN] The 20 biggest power players in NYC real estate. Norman Foster, Dbox, Soo K. Chan, Annabelle Selldorf and […]

June 29, 2015

VIDEO: See the 1970s Graffiti Culture of NYC in This BBC Documentary

Watch this 26-minute video without sound and you'll see a striking, visual portrait of the 1970s graffiti movement in NYC, where everything from park monuments to subway cars was covered in tags. Listen to the commentary, though, and you'll find something much deeper. Created as a mini-documentary for BBC, the video explores the root of graffiti culture. Is it folk art, youngsters marking their territory, planned-out vandalism, a result of pent-up anxiety, or quiet rebellion? Keep in mind this one of the roughest and crime-ridden decades in the city, so it's interesting to see how some of those interviewed saw graffiti as a parallel to the crime, while others felt it was an artistic alternative that typified the energy of New York.
Watch the video here
June 29, 2015

Wooden Sauna Welcomes Guests to Sweat Out the Stress of the City

Located among grain silos, dairy barns, greenhouses and a grand 1940s estate house in Staatsburg sits a beautiful wood sauna construction. Designed by Andre Tchelistcheff Architects, it features long horizontal windows that span all of its facades, each window framing majestic views of the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains. Its woodland surroundings together with its cozy and scented interiors make this modern sauna perfect for sweating out any stress brought in from the city.
Learn more about this warm wooden retreat
June 29, 2015

Domino Sugar Factory Might Get a Photobook; NYC’s Economic Pizza Principle

Urban photographer Paul Raphaelson is raising funds on Kickstarter to produce a photobook called “Sweet Ruin: The Brooklyn Domino Sugar Refinery” in which he’ll feature his shots of the abandoned site. [CO] Check out these fun photos from yesterday’s “exultant” Gay Pride Parade 2015. [Gothamist] Though it won’t open for another year, here’s a first look […]

June 29, 2015

Discover Your Inner Activist in This Brooklyn Heights Home of Women’s Rights

Here's an opportunity to own a piece of history in this beautiful $2.995 million parlor-floor duplex in the mansion that once housed the Brooklyn Women's Club and the Brooklyn Woman Suffrage Association. This very building at 114 Pierrepont Street was the gathering place of visionaries like Laura Curtis Bullard, Elizabeth Tilton and Ida Sherwood Coffin, who hosted lectures on world politics and peace advocacy as well as events like card games. And the apartment is as grand as its history.
More pics inside
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June 29, 2015

Joan Rivers’s Opulent UES Penthouse May Have a New Owner

It's been almost five months since the late, great Joan Rivers's opulent Upper East Side penthouse hit the market for $28 million, and now the Post is reporting that the lavish triplex at 1 East 62nd Street may have a new owner. "Last Thursday, its final day, art and antiques storage specialists packed and hauled the remainder of what was heading to Christie’s and elsewhere... The sale’s not gone to contract, but there is a buyer," notes the paper.
Find out more here
June 28, 2015

Live the Charmed Life in This $1.3M Historic Babylon Victorian

With one look at this house you can immediately see the harmony at work between modern and traditional. Only a modern house would dare to be coated in a color so striking. However, the Victorian features of this Babylon, NY home elevate it from merely striking to sophisticated and chic. This 3,956-square-foot Babylon Victorian (h/t CIRCA) is perfect for the person who loves old world charm with modern conveniences (and who has $1.3 million to spend).
Look around the house here
June 27, 2015

Weekly Highlights: Top Picks from the 6sqft Staff

Landmarks Preservation Commission Maps 150 Years of LGBTQ History in Greenwich Village For $1.25M You Can Live Like a Governor’s Daughter in This Historic Victorian Home Are You Rich? The Wealthometer Will Tell You 2,000 NYCHA Apartments Are Vacant Despite 270,000-Name Waiting List Unique Brooklyn Heights Studio Comes with Clever Space-Saving Ideas and a Private […]

June 26, 2015

Live in the Funky Former UES Factory of 1930s Gnome Bakers for $14K

There are few things in life more charming than a gnome. We're willing to bet Americans would take more vacations if they could just pack that little guy from Travelocity along with them. Well, we'll do you one better. We are talking an actual gnome house. That's right, this $14,000 rental at 316 East 59th Street was once home to Gnome Bakers, a little bakery that sold oddly shaped breads and rolls.
More pics inside
June 26, 2015

Darling Upstate Cottage Looks Like It Came Straight out of a Storybook

Looking for a place to live happily ever after? We couldn't have dreamt up a more picturesque home than this little beauty located in Ghent, New York. Described by its listing as "pure magic in a storybook setting," this charmer comes with streams and ponds right at its doorstep and a wooden bridge to welcome guests home, and it's surrounded by miles and miles of pristine woodlands to get lost in. Really, the only things missing here are Golidlocks and three bears!
Have a look inside the fairy tale home
June 26, 2015

New Yorker Spotlight: Patty Dolan Shares Stories of Running the Hampton Jitney for 16 Years

Memorial Day might be the unofficial start of summer, but the end of June marks a distinct shift in the city. With temperatures climbing, school finally out, and July 4th a week away, New Yorkers are ready to beat the heat by heading east. For many, that means booking a seat on Hampton Jitney, where they can enjoy the Long Island Expressway in style. Since 1974, Hampton Jitney has been a pioneer in Manhattan-to-East-End transportation. What began with one van has blossomed into a major transportation operation, and the company relies heavily on its experienced employees like Patty Dolan to keep service running smoothly. Patty has worked at Hampton Jitney for 16 years. She has held various positions, and in her own words, has done everything but drive and fix the buses. Today, Patty serves as both a reservations manager and dispatcher, which has turned her into a multitasking problem solver extraordinaire. In time for Hampton Jitney's peak season, we spoke with Patty to find out how she helps keep the wheels turning, as well as to pick up a few travel tips.
Read the full interview here
June 26, 2015

Inside a Bed-Stuy Home with Over $10M in African Art; Greenpoint Landing Breaks Ground

Model and Kardashian friend Gigi Hadid checks out an apartment on the East Side. [NYDN] Greenpoint Landing broke ground today. The half-mile, 22-acre stretch along the East River will include 1,400 affordable housing units, a new 640-seat public school, and four acres of resilient public green space along the waterfront. [6sqft inbox] Why it’s a renter’s market and […]

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