A Mountaintop Bungalow Five Floors Up in the East Village

A Mountaintop Bungalow Five Floors Up in the East Village By , an Emmy Award–winning Curbed writer who has reported on New York City for four years A cottage in the sky looking over Third Avenue and East 13th Street. Photo: Serhant Look up as you walk down Third Avenue near 13th Street and you’ll see a peculiar sight: a quaint country cottage plopped on a roof in the heart of NYU territory. The walls are cedar, the roofline is gabled, and boxwood hedges fence off terraces, putting it on a shortlist of quaint homes planted atop conventional New York buildings. That includes a shingled Cape Cod–style house nearby, a similar little penthouse shed in the West Village, and a rooftop chalet on the Upper West Side. The broker Violetta Weddepohl got the listing through a cold call while trying to help a client find an East Village apartment with a wood-burning fireplace. This one has four. “It’s an absolute one-of-one,” she said. The dining room with views over Third Avenue and East 13th Street. Some of the furniture was virtually staged, but the raw brick walls are what a buyer will find, said Corrin Thomas, the listing agent. Photo: Serhant She is now listing the space on behalf of the current owner, an LLC whose people bought it in 2015 and have rented it out from time to time, asking $19,000 per month in 2017 and $39,700 per month earlier this year. Before 2015, the backstory is a bit of a mystery. The building itself — which you perhaps know as the home of Kiehl’s, the eccentric pharmacy full of motorcycles that has become a global beauty brand — dates to the 1870s, and the apartments above the storefront were renovated in the 1980s and sold as condos. Around 1998, someone filed a permit to take out a spiral staircase that led up to a room on the roof, according to a short write-up in the Times that didn’t name the architect or owner. It described a new “cedar-clad structure … which includes a master bedroom and bathroom, a patio, a darkroom, a small greenhouse and — why not? — a hot tub.” The owner who did that work may have been Thomas Quinn, who in 1987 bought one of the apartments on the fourth floor that is now part of the duplex. Details: Price: $7.5 million Specs: 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms Extras: 1,000 square feet of outdoor space, dressing room, foyer, 10-minute walking radius: Union Square, Penny, Village East by Angelika, Veselka Listed by: Corrin Thomas and Violetta Weddepohl, Serhant The cottage may look tiny, but it’s actually just the upper half of a substantial duplex that stretches the width of the building along Third Avenue. Upon taking the elevator to the fourth floor, you’ll enter what seems like a spacious apartment filled with historic character. There are exposed brick walls, three wood-burning fireplaces, and four windows over Third Avenue. Two smaller bedrooms are on this level. Upstairs, the entirety of the tiny cottage is the apartment’s primary suite, surrounded by outdoor space, including a sitting area with its own wood-burning fireplace. That upstairs suite may get chillier in winter given the exposures, but the listing says there’s “three-zone central air on a smart Nest system,” and Weddepohl shares the listing with Corrin Thomas, a broker–slash–general contractor. He says he can help a buyer navigate a renovation, but he assumes their priority won’t be insulation: it will be the bathrooms, which are older and less luxurious than a $7 million buyer is likely to want.) A seating area outdoors has one of four wood-burning fireplaces. Photo: Serhant The buyers who have been flooding Thomas’s phone have not been dwelling on practicalities. Among the all-cash offers from would-be buyers, Thomas says he’s getting inquiries from influencers who want to film there and neighbors who just want to see inside. He gets it: “If, as a real-estate agent, I could pick anywhere to live in the city, this would be it,” he said. “It really feels like a charming storybook cottage. It doesn’t feel real.” The main entrance to the unit is through this hallway, where visitors open the door to a foyer with a closet then follow this passageway to this open kitchen and dining area. Photo: Rich Kaplan/Serhant The kitchen opens onto a corner dining room. Photo: Rich Kaplan/Serhant Through the brick arch is a living area. Photo: Rich Kaplan/Serhant The living room has a wood-burning fireplace and built-in bookshelves. Photo: Serhant One of the two smaller bedrooms on the lower level. Photo: Rich Kaplan/Serhant Photo: Rich Kaplan/Serhant The primary bedroom, with windows facing east. Photo: Serhant The bathroom of the primary suite has an oversized soaking tub. Photo: Rich Kaplan/Serhant The primary bedroom opens onto a seating area at the corner with 13th Street. Photo: Rich Kaplan/Serhant The smaller outdoor area, at the corner with East 13th Street. Photo: Rich Kaplan/Serhant This is the terrace that looks over Third Avenue, on the north side of the mini cottage. It has its own wood-burning fireplace. Photo: Rich Kaplan/Serhant Connected to the seating area with the wood-burning fireplace, on the north side of the mini cottage, this larger outdoor space stretches around the back of the upstairs unit. Photo: Rich Kaplan/Serhant A Mountaintop Bungalow Five Floors Up in the East Village Your product is saved! You’ll receive emails when your saved products go on sale. Manage preferences.