Manhattan

From the Gateway Arch in St. Louis to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris to our very own Washington Square Arch, the curved symmetrical formations known simply as arches have a way of lending a certain cachet to even the most mundane structures. And though there is nothing remotely mundane about this sprawling Tribeca loft at 108-110 Franklin Street, its six fully revealed foot-and-a-half-thick brick archways elevate the home’s natural beauty to a new level.
Six gorgeous arches this way

Distinctive Homes

March 25, 2015

Artist Abby Leigh Asks $38M for Her Elevator-Equipped Upper East Side Townhome

Famed artist Abby Leigh has listed her five-story townhome at 49 East 68th Street for $38 million. The 25-foot wide, 12,500 square-foot red brick limestone townhome sets itself apart right at the entrance, boasting a ground-floor round arched arcade that was more commonly seen among commercial buildings of its time. And inside you can catch glimpses of Leigh's own artwork, which can also be found exhibited at the Met, the Guggenheim, the Whitney, and internationally.
Let's have a look inside

Distinctive Homes

Rent Stabilization Demystified: Know the Rules, Your Rights, and if You’re Getting Cheated

Image by Jorbasa Fotografie / Flickr

March 24, 2015

Rent Stabilization Demystified: Know the Rules, Your Rights, and if You’re Getting Cheated

By Michelle Cohen

In New York City there are currently about one million rent stabilized apartments–about 47 percent of the city’s rental units. So why is it so hard to snag one? What are the benefits of having one (other than affordable rent, of course)? According to the New York City Rent Guidelines Board nearly 250,000 rental units have lost the protections of rent regulation since 1994. Why are we "losing" so many of them?
Find out the facts and how they could affect you

March 24, 2015

Enjoy 50 Shades of Grey Brick in This Lovely Upper West Side Pad Asking $715K

Something about this charming Upper West Side pad just won us over from the start, and we’re thinking it has something to do with the gray exposed brick. This two-bedroom apartment at 316 West 82nd Street has some prewar charm and a split floor plan, all for $715,000.
More pics inside

Distinctive Homes

VIDEO: The Fascinating History of the Manhattan Municipal Building

The Manhattan Municipal Building toward the end of construction in 1913, via Shorpy

March 24, 2015

VIDEO: The Fascinating History of the Manhattan Municipal Building

When we think of the city's early skyscrapers, landmarks like the Woolworth Building and Flatiron Building usually come to mind. But there's an equally fascinating and beautiful icon that often gets overlooked–the 1914 Manhattan Municipal Building. One of New York's first skyscrapers, the 580-foot Beaux Arts masterpiece influenced civic construction throughout the country and served as the prototype for Chicago's Wrigley Building and Cleveland's Terminal Tower, among others. A new video from Blueprint NYC (produced by the Office of NYCMedia) takes us into this historic structure, discussing everything from the reason for construction (after the 1898 consolidation of the five boroughs, there was a need for increased governmental office space) to interesting factoids (the building was designed from a rejected sketch of Grand Central Terminal Station) to the turn-of-the-century innovations that made this unique structure possible.
Watch the video

History

March 23, 2015

Two Best Friends Sell Their Massive Midtown Artists’ Loft for $4.83M

Remember this amazing loft we featured on 6sqft back in September? Well it looks like it's found a new owner to fill its cavernous spaces. According to city records, the two-loft combo at 361 West 36th Street sold today for $4.83 million. While when we last wrote about this cool apartment we were going gaga over its beautiful 4,800 square feet of sun-soaked spaces, it turns out the story of the two women–both artists–who once dwelled within its walls is far better anything else found inside.
Find out more here

Real Estate Trends

March 23, 2015

Rob Stuart Interiors Infuses Romantic, Turn-of-the-Century Charm into a Modern West Village Townhouse

Take one look at this Greenwich Street townhouse and you'll likely assume it's a historic West Village brownstone, but, in fact, the stately residence is only a decade old. Rob Stuart Interiors was commissioned by a "fearless family" that wanted a colorful yet calming design "with the detail and nuance of a rarified turn-of-the-century townhouse." The firm achieved this goal by romantically layering vintage mantles, traditional moldings, patterned wallpapers, and colorful fabrics.
Tour the entire West Village beauty here

March 23, 2015

Take In the City from This $2.5M Renovated Chelsea Loft

If you’re looking for an awesome, high-floor loft in a prime location with brag-worthy views, this two-bedroom apartment in the Capitol Building might be just what the doctor ordered. The 1,686-square-foot renovated loft features beamed 10.6-foot ceilings, 7.5-inch wide plank oak flooring, and enviable views of the Empire State Building, all for $2.495 million.
More pics inside

Distinctive Homes

March 23, 2015

$4M Loft in Renowned Hellmuth Building Has Graced the Pages of Architectural Digest

It seems fitting that a turn-of-the-century factory building built by and named after a manufacturer of printer’s ink would one day house an apartment featured in one of the premier design publications in the world. Why, it’s entirely possible that one of Charles Hellmuth’s inks may have even been used to print the very first issues of Architectural Digest, which first debuted in 1920. In any event, we know for sure the two subsequently became intertwined when this striking 2,400-square-foot-home located in the renowned Hellmuth Building graced the pages of the popular magazine.
See more of this Architectural Digest star

Distinctive Homes

March 23, 2015

Carmelo and LaLa Anthony’s UES Rental Hits the Market for $12M

Though their lease doesn't end until August, Carmelo and LaLa Anthony's Upper East Side/East Harlem rental has hit the market for $12 million, according to the Post. Fear not, though, the New York Knicks star and his wife will not be homeless. They inked a deal last month for an $11 million, High Line-adjacent, full-floor unit at Cary Tamarkin’s new complex at 508 West 24th Street. The couple's rental at 1212 Fifth Avenue is a 4,000-square-foot, five-bedroom, pre-war condo with exceptional Central Park views.
Take a look around the former Anthony pad

March 20, 2015

Charming West Village Rental Is Wrapped in Beautiful Brick Walls and Downtown Views

Does it get any more New York than brick walls, hardwood floors and great views of Manhattan's iconic buildings? This wonderful $4,500/month rental located at 237 West 11th Street is a charmer looking for an equally lovely resident who wants to spend a year or more within its sun-soaked spaces. With ample southern light and large windows framing a quintessential NYC scene highlighted by West 11th Street, church-top views and the Freedom Tower, this is the kind of New York apartment that seems to only exist in movies.
Take a look inside

Distinctive Homes

March 19, 2015

DHD Interiors’ Spectacular Tribeca Penthouse Design Is Fun, Fashionable, and Family-Friendly

One of the key challenges to successful design is understanding the day-to-day needs of your client and marrying those needs with a sensorially pleasing aesthetic. When tasked with reconfiguring this 5,500-square-foot triplexed penthouse found in one of New York’s original cast iron façade buildings, DHD Interiors' goal was “to create a cool and chic family home ideal for entertaining but also conducive to a fun family life.”
See more photos of DHD's design

March 19, 2015

$2.7M Noho Loft Flaunts Its Exposed Brick and Beamed Ceilings

These days, the word "loft" is thrown around in real estate for any space with an open floor plan or high ceilings, but if you're searching for a true old-fashioned loft, then look no further than this $2.7 million Noho co-op at 33 Bleecker Street. A myriad of exposed brick walls, chunky wooden beamed ceilings and columns, wrap-around oversized windows, hardwood maple floors and an expansive layout make this two-bedroom apartment the ultimate in downtown loft living.
Take a look around here

Distinctive Homes

March 19, 2015

Sarah Jessica Parker Finally Sells Greenwich Village Townhouse for $20M

After quite a few price cuts and almost three years on the market, Sarah Jessica Parker has found a buyer for her Greenwich Village townhouse at 20 East 10th Street. Originally listed for $25 million in 2012, and most recently re-listed in September for $22 million, the 6,800-square-foot, five-bedroom home finally entered into contract for $20 million, according to the Daily News. Parker and her husband Matthew Broderick bought the townhouse in 2011 for $19 million. They completed a full renovation, but reportedly the family never actually lived there, using the home as a massive closet and residing in another Village townhouse.
Take a look around the house here

It’s a Hip-Hop Revolution! Photos of a Pop Culture Movement Born in New York

Busta Rhymes (Leaders of the New School). 1990. Photographer: Janette Beckman

March 18, 2015

It’s a Hip-Hop Revolution! Photos of a Pop Culture Movement Born in New York

By Diane Pham

New York has long been a haven for creatives, with some of art and music's most iconic producing their most profound works within the borders of our city. But few movements have proved as significant and lasting an influence on global fashion, politics and culture than hip-hop. In a new photo exhibit coming to the Museum of the City of New York (MCNY) next month, three of the most dynamic and renowned photographers of the hip-hop scene, Janette Beckman, Joe Conzo, and Martha Cooper, share their experiences at the height of the movement in the 1980s when it took not only the nation by storm, but the world. The trio of shutterbugs share photos that zoom into hip-hop's pioneering days in the South Bronx, as DJs, MCs, and b-boys and b-girls were inventing new forms of self-expression through sounds and movement. Prominent hip-hop figures such as Afrika Bambaataa, LL Cool J, Run DMC, Salt N Pepa and Flava Flav are just a few of the faces documented, and in the series you'll get a look at the kind of life and vibrancy that permeated the Bronx and Harlem during the 1980s. MCNY recently sent 6sqft a slew of the more than 100 photographs that will be on show starting April 1st. Jump ahead to get a taste of what's sure to be one of your most memorable and nostalgic museum visits.
See all the incredible photos here

March 18, 2015

Construction Update: COOKFOX’s 855 Sixth Avenue Tops Off, Ties for City’s ‘Shortest Skyscraper’

By Ondel Hylton

In the shadow of the Empire State Building, the concrete frame of 855 Sixth Avenue has quietly risen to its full 500-foot height. Spanning the full western blockfront of Sixth Avenue between West 30th and 31st Streets, the 41-story mixed-use tower, designed by COOKFOX Architects and co-developed by the Durst Organization and Fetner Properties, is poised to bring 190,000 square feet of commercial space and 375 rentals to the southern fringe of Herald Square later this year. While unremarkable in design and imperceptible in the city's skyline, the building's small claim to fame may be that its 152-meter (slightly under 500 feet) height is sometimes regarded as the benchmark figure for defining a skyscraper. Therefore, statistically, 855 Sixth could be considered the shortest skyscraper in New York. Huzzah!
More details ahead

March 18, 2015

Rent Tyra Banks’s Massive Battery Park City Apartment for $50,000/Month

The listing doesn't specify if you'll have to walk the runway or strike a pose to be considered for the role of "America's Next Top Tenant," but if having Tyra Banks as your landlord sounds appealing, and if you have $50,000 a month to spare, be sure to check out the supermodel's Battery Park City pad, which just hit the rental market, according to the Daily News. The 7,000-square-foot Riverhouse condo was originally four separate units on the 22nd and 23rd floors, which Banks bought in 2009 for $10.3 million. In 2011, she angered neighbors with the "ear-rattling drilling" and paint fumes from the renovation, which lasted nine months longer than the expected completion date. Hopefully the new renter will be more in line with the low-key, eco lifestyle of the residence, which is known as the greenest residential building on the East Coast.
Find out more here

March 18, 2015

This $1.55M Former Ballroom Is Right out of Cinderella’s Dreams

Trust us. Nothing’s turning back into a pumpkin at midnight here. This two-bedroom loft-style apartment at the Broadmoor used to be an extravagant 1920s ballroom, and it still has a number of the original details. The $1.55 million pad features 14-foot ceilings, original arched windows, original moldings and beams. And probably best of all, it has tons of light streaming in from 11 windows and three exposures.
More pics inside

Distinctive Homes

March 18, 2015

Orlando Bloom Sells Tribeca Loft in Less Than One Month

We speculated last month that Orlando Bloom's decision to list his Tribeca loft for $5.5 million, just five months after purchasing it for $4.88 million, might have had something to do with celebrity neighbor Taylor Swift, and it looks like that's the general consensus. The Daily News reports that the actor has sold his three-bedroom apartment at the Sugarloaf Warehouse building less than 30 days after it hit the market. Apparently, Swift and her A-list pals have turned the building into a paparazzi frenzy, which might have proved too much for the more low-key Bloom.
Take a look around the former Bloom abode

March 17, 2015

Interview: McSorley’s Historian Bill Wander Fills Us In on the Secrets of NYC’s Oldest Bar

Undoubtedly, there are hundreds of New Yorkers and out-of-towners planning to stop by McSorley's Old Ale House today for a St. Patrick's Day round of beers. But beyond the brews and bros, there's a deep history rooted in this East Village institution, and we've found the man who knows it all. The official historian of McSorley's, Bill Wander can give you the full timeline that dates McSorley's to 1854, making it the oldest bar in the city. He can also fill you in on all the tchotchkes adorning the walls of this Irish tavern, none of which have been removed since 1910. But more important than the textbook facts related to McSorley's, Bill has an undeniable passion for this watering hole, for both its important cultural history and the unique social atmosphere that keeps the bar a neighborhood mainstay after all these years. We recently chatted with Bill to find out some of the lesser-known details about McSorley's and what the title of "official historian" entails.
Read our full interview with Bill Wander here

March 17, 2015

Slab of Plexiglass Dislodges at One57 and Falls on Two Cars Below

By Diane Pham

Watch where you walk when treading near supertall towers. The WSJ reports that a stop work order has been issued at One57 after a kitchen table-sized piece of Plexiglass fell from the 22nd floor of the tower on Sunday, smashing into two parked cars down below. Thankfully no one was injured in the incident, but the accident is just one in a slew of construction mishaps that have plagued the building. In late February, glass from the tower landed on a neighboring building’s terrace, and last May, a windowpane fell from the 22nd floor, hitting a truck below. The building was also creating precarious conditions back in 2012 during Super Storm Sandy, when all of New York City looked on in horror as the support cable of an 80-ton crane at the top of the building broke, causing it dangle above their heads.
Is one57 cursed? Find out more here

March 17, 2015

Will the Luck of the Irish Help This $18M, 17-Room UES Maisonette Finally Find a Buyer?

From four leaf clovers to corned beef and cabbage, today’s the day to celebrate all things Irish, and with a bit of luck maybe the seventeen rooms of this grand residence located at 120 East End Avenue at the corner of 85th Street in Yorkville will finally find a buyer. Initially listed in 2012, this magnificent six-bedroom, sun-flooded, full-service cooperative offers an elegant, sophisticated living experience rarely available in Manhattan.
More photos of this exquisite home

Distinctive Homes

March 16, 2015

Looking Back at the Gansevoort Pumping Station, the Building the New Whitney Museum Replaced

By Penelope Bareau

As we all await the opening of the new building of the Whitney Museum for American Art in May, it might be interesting to see what's underneath it—or was. There's an old saying, "To create, you must first destroy," and so long as it doesn't specify how much of one and how good the other, the statement generally slips by without challenge. So it was with the Whitney's new site along the High Line in the Meatpacking District. There wasn't a lot that needed to be destroyed. There was, however, this little building, the Gansevoort Pumping Station, a small, classically inspired edifice with arches separated by pilasters. It was designed by Michael and Mitchell Bernstein, brothers who were widely known for turn of the twentieth-century tenements. Designed in 1906 and completed in 1908, it was built as a pumphouse for high-pressure fire service by the City of New York and later served as one of the area's quintessential meat markets.
Read the entire history of the site here

History

March 16, 2015

$7.25M East Village Building Boasts Rustic Charm (and 12 Income-Producing Apartments)

While it’s true this six-story building located at 276 East 10th Street in the heart of the East Village is an incredible investment opportunity, we think the prospect of actually living here offers a different kind of reward. So, we’ll let the accountants and business gurus of the world calculate the financial upside of the rental income derived from the twelve apartments within, and the expansion potential the additional FAR of 2,306 square feet affords—we’re far more interested in the property’s absolutely gorgeous rustic charm that makes it feel worlds away from the city that never sleeps.
More photos this way

Distinctive Homes

March 16, 2015

Sales Launch at the Long-Awaited 52 Lispenard Street in Tribeca