West Village townhouse with a storied past and light-filled present seeks $18M

Publisher Barney Rossett started Grove Press in the 1960s for only $3,000 and turned it into a major publishing house notable for introducing American readers to authors like Henry Miller, Eugene Ionesco, Tom Stoppard, and Jean Genet. At the time, he was living in a 25-foot wide townhouse at 196 West Houston Street in the West Village, where he entertained creative luminaries like Norman Mailer and John Lennon. In 1989, the townhouse sold to another literary man, publisher Peter Mayer, who brought Salman Rushdie’s controversial “The Satanic Verses” to print. Today, the townhouse is just as inspiring and fresh on the market seeking $17.95 million, or $49,000 a month as a rental.

The residence has been completely renovated by an architect “obsessed with maximizing light, quiet, and incredible finishes,” according to the listing. It spans across three stories (an elevator services all the floors) and 5,780 square feet of interior space, with two of those floors dedicated to entertaining. There are three bedrooms on the third floor, including a master suite with 13-foot ceilings.

The house has three outdoor spaces—including a bamboo garden planted with Japanese trees on the ground level and a terrace with flowering orange trees on the parlor floor—which add up to 1,950 square feet of outdoor space. There’s a yoga room with a sauna and full bathroom in the basement, as well as a two-car garage—one of Rossett’s favorite features in the home, according to this New York Observer article.

[Listing: 196 West Houston Street by Paula Del Nunzio of Brown Harris Stevens]

[At CityRealty]

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Listing images courtesy of Brown Harris Stevens