Cozy Pair of NYC Townhouses Are True Art

The two brick homes at 183-185 West Fourth St., are on the market for $7.5 million.

“It’s an amazing house. I’ve done this for 32 years, and I have never seen anything like it,” says the listing agent, Deborah Korb with Sotheby’s International Realty-Downtown Manhattan. “It’s quite unusual for New York—and it’s very much like a house you might see in London.”

Each home has its own front door, but they’re connected on the inside, which creates a unified living space with two bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms.

The smaller of the two structures was once a shack, and dates to around 1897. It became a brick house in about 1917. The larger of the two homes was then built in 1919.

“You go up a step from the smaller [home] into the larger [home], and you’re in the large room,” Korb explains.

Together, the vintage homes offer a total of around 1,300 square feet.

“The current owners are architects and applied the golden ratio when they renovated it, so the proportions of the rooms are just perfect,” Korb explains. “The ceiling height of the larger of the two buildings is just soaring.”

Although the square footage is not high, the volume of space is so expansive, she says, that it feels far larger.

The architects, of Fairfax and Sammons, bought the structures 22 years ago from the estate of Armand Hammer, the petroleum company owner, business executive, and art collector, who died in 1990.

“The current owners purchased it and completely gutted it, so it has all the modern things you want, but it really feels like an old house and has a real cozy feeling,” Korb explains.

The larger house with the high ceilings features a balcony that wraps around the entire living area. In the smaller house, there are lower ceilings and one main room, with a fireplace.

Two houses also means two kitchens.

“One kitchen is more of a bar area, and the other one is where you would prepare meals,” the agent says.

French doors lead from both houses into a garden.

“The garden is done in ways a lot of English people do. Since they are small footprints, they put mirrors up on the garden walls, which makes the garden feel bigger,” Korb says. “It’s a brick garden with mirrors and topiary trees everywhere, so it just looks very manicured. It’s nice out there.”

Korb says the soundproof windows make you forget you’re in the heart of the city on a busy street.

“When you’re in there, you just don’t know where you are,” she says.

These are the only two houses on this part of the street, which is surrounded by commercial storefronts.

“Everyone who goes into it gasps. They can’t believe it exists in this town,” Korb adds.

She says the price may seem high for folks who are focusing only on the price per square foot.

“That’s not what you’re buying,” she says. “This is more or less a work of art. It’s like buying a painting. The painting could be tiny, but it could be worth millions, just because it’s so unique and beautiful to be with. This is a beautiful place to be in.”