Photos and reporting by Stacie Joy
We recently had the opportunity to tour 25 Stuyvesant St., a five-story Anglo-Italianate townhouse for sale on one of the best blocks in the East Village — and NYC.
This corridor between Ninth Street and 10th Street features homes dating to the 1860s.
The home, believed to be designed by James Renwick Jr. (the architect behind St. Patrick's Cathedral), has been on the market since the spring.
Nina Munk, the writer and photographer, and her husband, artist Peter Soriano, and their three kids have lived in the townhome they bought and restored in 2013. The couple purchased the property from the estate of Jean Schoonover about a year after she died.
They said it was beautiful and kooky — they loved it right away — but it also desperately needed a total renovation.
Let's take a look inside... starting with this parlor/den...
Peter's gallery is in France, so the couple has decided to move there. The two are also now empty nesters. (Their youngest is starting freshman year in college.)
Nina told us the home is "beautiful, joyful, comfortable — a wonderful combination of a traditional, historic East Village townhouse yet also a comfortable and casual place to live, relax, raise kids, and have great dinner parties."
Why hasn’t the home been snatched up immediately? Speculation runs from the location (despite Nina's assertion that the East Village is the best neighborhood); perhaps people are looking at townhomes in other areas like the Upper East Side or Brooklyn, rising mortgage rates, and uncertainty about the election.
Also, two previous buyers fell through, one at the last minute.
Last week, the price dropped from $7.25 million to $6.75 million.
The family hopes that an artist, author, or playwright — someone who appreciates the East Village artistic community and the historic block — will buy the home they put so much love and attention into restoring.
