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Second Priciest Listing
Heralded as a holiday superlative by real estate rags like Curbed and The Real Deal, 19 East 70th Street has become New York's second-most-expensive residential listing at $59.5 million, a slim $500,000 behind the Mark's penthouse.
The floor plan of the 10-level townhouse is a neatly tailored game of luxury real estate dominoes: each rectangle, or floor, connected by a common delicately drawn oval, indicating the sprawling spiral staircase, in lieu of matching numbers of inverse Braille dots (as goes the layman's game).
Currently used as the Knoedler Gallery, the 1909 Italian Renaissance creation was previously a private residence, and the Sotheby's listing suggests a hope that it will be used this way again. But upon closer examination of the floor plan, labeled with the current gallery designations, it becomes clear that the property will demand more than a few suitcases of cash from its prospective buyer. If he or she intends it to be used as a private residence, the buyer will need a healthy dose of creativity, ingenuity and patience—or a doyenne decorator possessing those traits. — Chloe Malle
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Garden Patio
It makes sense that with eight livable floors, either the basement or the sixth floor would be the service quarters—a maid's room, or two, and an extensive laundry suite—but if those quarters are on the basement floor, the owner sacrifices the benefits of the sub-street-level garden patio.
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Potential Bedrooms
The second, third, fourth and fifth floors are ideally configured for bedrooms, with large closet space (currently the gallery's art storage) and multiple bathrooms.
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An Elevator!
Fortunately for any prospective buyer with knee problems or hip replacements, there is an elevator—and not the kind Charles Laughton rides up and down the staircase in his office in Witness for the Prosecution—no, a real elevator, large enough to move paintings—or a treadmill.
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Stairmaster It Is
The seventh floor and mezzanine was formerly configured as a gym when the house was used as a private home, and could be again. It is currently used as a library, which sounds a lot more romantic to this Whartonian wannabe, but then again neither Edith nor I are currently in the $60 million townhouse market, so stairmaster it is.
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Voyeuristic Opportunities
If the maid's quarters are on the sixth floor, one not only sacrifices one of the home's two walk-out terraces but takes the risk that the proposed maid's terrace on the sixth floor, which is slightly recessed back and looks out over the fifth-floor terrace, would present voyeuristic opportunities that could easily jeopardize a bathrobed morning coffee with a spouse or ... one of the nannies.
