Former writing studio of poet Robert Lowell asks $1.2M in Lincoln Square

It doesn’t get much more romantic than living in an apartment off Central Park once used by a famous poet as his writing studio. That’s the case here at 15 West 67th Street, the historic Lincoln Square cooperative that poet Robert Lowell once used as his writing atelier. Lowell worked in here during his time in New York, prior to his 1972 move to England. As the years passed, of course, the one bedroom was mostly renovated, selling in 2012 for $712,000 and hitting the market again for $1.185 million. According to the listing, the current owner “fondly brought back the luster of the woodwork,” while adding wine storage and other modern amenities.

The cooperative, known as the Central Park West Studios, is a wonderful historic building decorated with murals by an original resident and artist, Robert V. Sewell, in the lobby. Lowell’s second wife, acclaimed author and co-founder of the New York Review of Books Elizabeth Hardwick, whom he divorced in 1972, owned a third-floor apartment in the building, where she lived until her death in 2007. Interestingly, when Lowell’s apartment sold in 2012 it was owned by Anne Ellsworth, daughter of the late A. Whitney Ellsworth, who worked with Hardwick as the first publisher of the New York Review of Books.

Modern elevators take you to the eighth floor, where the former writing enclave awaits.

The space isn’t huge, but it’s lined with a striking atelier window with built-in storage and a seating underneath. Flooded with northern light, the apartment is the only in this line to have an eastern-facing window, as well as a bonus sleeping and storage loft.

Wine storage was added to the open kitchen, located underneath the sleeping loft. The woodwork throughout is meant to complement the original 1905 heart-pine floors.

On top of the sleeping loft, there’s a formal bedroom with its own large window adjacent to the bathroom.

Besides the historic nostalgia the full-service building offers, amenities include a laundry room, storage units and a roof deck. Maybe it’s the building and the apartment, as the listing suggests, to “inspire you to write the next chapter of your Manhattan life.”

[Listing: 15 West 67th Street, #6RE by Victoria Vinokur for Halstead]

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Photos courtesy of Halstead