{"id":378881,"date":"2025-11-14T18:16:44","date_gmt":"2025-11-14T18:16:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/378881\/"},"modified":"2025-11-14T18:16:44","modified_gmt":"2025-11-14T18:16:44","slug":"life-at-75%c2%bd-bedford-the-citys-skinniest-townhouse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/378881\/","title":{"rendered":"Life at 75\u00bd Bedford, the City\u2019s Skinniest Townhouse"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

\n The fa\u00e7ade of 75\u00bd Bedford Street.
\n Photo: MW Studio for Sotheby\u2019s International Realty\n <\/p>\n

75\u00bd Bedford Street is a beautiful thing to behold. Its stepped-gable roofline tops three stories of nubby brick, while inside there are warm wood-beam ceilings, multiple working fireplaces, and a Dutch door that opens to a rear garden shared with neighbors, including the Cherry Lane Theatre. Its pedigree is romantic: the former home of Edna St. Vincent Millay, Cary Grant, and John Barrymore. Even the address \u2014\u00a0that half \u2014 is whimsical. But like so many beautiful, expensive things, it is often bought and left unused. Almost none of the recent owners of 75\u00bd\u00a0have actually lived there. Or at least not for very long.<\/p>\n

The house is, technically, the skinniest townhome in Manhattan \u2014 a unicorn<\/a> that somehow seems to make it more alluring to buyers, even as it\u2019s less alluring to their tenants, who have to contend with rooms that are just over eight feet wide and an oddly placed staircase. \u201cThe bumping of the head between the second and the third floor \u2014 I\u2019ll always remember that,\u201d says Juan Carlos Arcila-Duque<\/a>, a designer who lived at 75\u00bd in the mid-1990s. He was a self-professed \u201cdowntown boy\u201d and thought of the $800 rental as an ideal artist\u2019s garret \u2014\u00a0never mind the cramped layouts or the difficult stairs. He had romances there, became a citizen, and designed his second line of furniture from a desk overlooking Bedford Street. \u201cSo it is very special in my heart,\u201d he says. \u201cBut for someone to live there, they have to not care about how uncomfortable it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Specs: <\/strong>3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms<\/p>\n

Price: <\/strong>$4.195 million ($1,765 in monthly taxes)<\/p>\n

Extras: <\/strong>Finished basement with rec room and laundry, private garden and shared outdoor space, two balconies<\/p>\n

10-minute walking radius: <\/strong>Cherry Lane Theatre, the Eighty Six, Stonewall Inn<\/p>\n

Listed by:<\/strong> Cortnee B. Glasser, Sotheby\u2019s International Realty <\/a><\/p>\n

The slim little building on Bedford just listed for $4.195 million<\/a> \u2014 not a price point at which buyers tolerate words like uncomfortable. Per square foot, it is about 2.5 times more expensive than the average Manhattan townhouse to close last quarter, according to appraiser Jonathan Miller. Even in this neighborhood, it seems to command a premium, like a misprinted coin that\u2019s useless to someone feeding the dryer but interesting to a certain kind of enthusiast. \u201cThe irony is that premium is what priced it out of the hands of people who would actually use it,\u201d says Miller.<\/p>\n

The building wasn\u2019t always a luxury item. It was \u201cdilapidated and disgusting\u201d when the architect Christopher Dubs first saw the place in the early 1990s. The seller said<\/a> it had been vacant for a decade, but Dubs guessed it had been longer \u2014 hints of its age included its ruddy color scheme, abundance of stucco, and bad tile that he dated to the 1960s. He bought it anyway<\/a>, for $270,000, made structural repairs, and put in a working kitchen. But instead of moving in, he moved to Florida<\/a> and leased the building to his personal assistant, Barbara Vigilante, asked her to watch his cat, and installed a Murphy bed on the second floor for a roommate. 75\u00bd Bedford was \u201cfun,\u201d Vigilante says of her time there. But it was also \u201cbarely usable.\u201d Drafty, with winds that would knock down the curtains, electric lines that sparked, and an issue with the sewage. (And she had reason to believe it was haunted, but that\u2019s a different story.)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n The garden is shared with neighbors, including the Cherry Lane Theatre, now run by A24.
\n Photo: MW Studio for Sotheby\u2019s International Realty\n <\/p>\n

In the late 1990s, Dubs embarked on the kind of renovation that he had dreamed of doing when he studied historical preservation. He invested about $200,000 to peel back the ugly stucco and bad tile to the original wood and hand-point the fa\u00e7ade with bricks from the appropriate era. Once that renovation was complete, Dubs was pleased. \u201cA feather in my cap,\u201d he says. So was a new plaque out front<\/a>, which marked St. Vincent Millay\u2019s time in the home. But even she had spent barely any time there, renting it for just over a year between 1923 and 1925, during which she went on a<\/a> 20-city American book tour and a round-the-world honeymoon<\/a> by way of Honolulu and Japan.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n The entry. One tenant told the press they tried to keep coats behind the swinging door, but even those would get brushed so often they would fall to the floor.
\n Photo: MW Studio for Sotheby\u2019s International Realty\n <\/p>\n

When Dubs listed the townhouse in 2000, there was a bidding war<\/a>. He recalls a man flying in on his private plane to view the place after seeing a story in the New York Times about the building. The buyer who won out in the end, Stephen Balsamo, ultimately paid $1.6 million, or $3 million today \u2014 the first to apparently pay a premium. He didn\u2019t respond to calls and emails, but there\u2019s reason to suspect he didn\u2019t live there much, either. His daughter, Lindsay E. Balsamo, described him<\/a> as a \u201cgeneric businessman\u201d who used it as a pied-\u00e0-terre when he worked in the city, then handed her the keys. She moved in with her boyfriend, and told a reporter they planned to stay \u201cuntil my parents kick us out.\u201d The fateful day came in 2010, when Balsamo sold it for $2.175 million<\/a> to a buyer who reportedly<\/a> \u201cnever moved in.\u201d Like Dubs, Balsamo had made a nice profit. The next owner did, too, selling for $3.25 million in 2013. The buyer was a professional real-estate investor, George Gund IV, a scion of the billionaire Gund family who runs its property arm. He wrote in an email suggesting that he might not be a good person to ask about the house, since over a decade of ownership he \u201conly spent a few months there.\u201d Instead, he suggested I call one of the relatives he rented to, his cousin through marriage, Jupira Lee, who owns Casa<\/a>, the Brazilian restaurant that was across the street and who lived in the building for a spell during the COVID lockdown.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the cutest house to live in,\u201d she tells me. \u201dYou feel like a little princess.\u201d Still, she admits, \u201dI don\u2019t really like living vertically.\u201d Take the problem of her reading glasses. \u201cNo matter how many glasses I would buy, they\u2019d end up on the wrong floor \u2014 up there or down there,\u201d she says. Plus having a bathroom on a separate floor from her bedroom wasn\u2019t ideal. \u201cFor me, who wakes up at least three times a night to go to the bathroom, it was a little bit of a nightmare.\u201d But the price was right: just the $1,500 or so per month that Gund was paying in property taxes.<\/p>\n

In 2023, Gund sold it for $3.41 million<\/a>, or $3.7 million today, to Tandra Hammer, a doctor who moonlights as a real-estate investor. Her daughter, Donte Calarco, sells with Sotheby\u2019s International<\/a>. They were living in a condo across from the St. Vincent Millay house; when Gund put the house on the market in 2023, they \u201cwent in and fell in love,\u201d Calarco says. But their plan to use it as a pied-\u00e0-terre went sideways: They needed more space for all the relatives who wanted to visit, and fewer stairs, Calarco says. Plus, like Gund and Dubs, they\u2019re house collectors whose interests are now elsewhere \u2014 in a 16th-century Tuscan villa. So this month, they put the house up for sale, for $4.195 million.<\/p>\n

When I asked Dubs why he, like so many other owners, bought and sold the house without ever really living there, he had a theory. \u201cIt\u2019s like one of those things you see at Sotheby\u2019s,\u201d he says. \u201cThe saber<\/a> sword from Star Wars or the banana<\/a> or something.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n The kitchen. Famous tenants include Ann McGovern, an author whose book Mr. Skinner\u2019s Skinny House imagines a tenant in a home so thin it can\u2019t fit anyone else: \u201cWhen he ate spaghetti, he ate alone.\u201d
\n Photo: MW Studio for Sotheby\u2019s International Realty\n <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n The Dutch door leads past a shaded private garden to a larger area shared with neighbors.
\n Photo: MW Studio for Sotheby\u2019s International Realty\n <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n The patio.
\n Photo: MW Studio for Sotheby\u2019s International Realty\n <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n The tub in a bathroom on the second floor faces the back garden.
\n Photo: MW Studio for Sotheby\u2019s International Realty\n <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n The second-floor bathroom is the only one above street level, accessible via a twisty staircase from the third-floor primary suite.
\n Photo: MW Studio for Sotheby\u2019s International Realty\n <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n The home is staged with a bedroom on the second floor, though many renters chose not to sleep here \u2014 preferring to use this room as an office.
\n Photo: MW Studio for Sotheby\u2019s International Realty\n <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n The home has four wood-burning fireplaces.
\n Photo: MW Studio for Sotheby\u2019s International Realty\n <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n On the top floor, a door leads to a slim balcony.
\n Photo: MW Studio for Sotheby\u2019s International Realty\n <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n The basement is finished and labeled as a rec room but has been used off the books as a second bedroom, since it is a larger, uninterrupted space with a small bathroom on the same floor.
\n Photo: MW Studio for Sotheby\u2019s International Realty\n <\/p>\n

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