Who are townhouse aficionados?
Those of us who live in townhouses in New York City belong to a small circle. We choose townhouse living because we want the autonomy and privacy it affords. Some of us love townhouse architecture and craftsmanship and share a profound sense of participating in our city’s rich history.
- For some, townhouse living represents having achieved the pinnacle of success and our homes become testaments to luxury living.
- For some, the income from our building’s multiple units offsets the mortgage, affording a gracious home in our owner’s unit.
- For some, townhouses are an investment vehicle, with an astounding return rate.
- For many, townhouse living is a source of enormous curiosity.
As townhouse residents and investors, we designed Vandenberg to provide the resources that owners and sellers need, to foster happy and successful townhouse living. Because that is what it is all about.
For our Townhouse Living insights:
1. Attend our Seminars
We offer quarterly seminars with in-depth information. We bring you experts on relevant issues: lowering your taxes, doing a 1031 exchange, how to interact with contractors, the latest in rent regulation.
2. Watch our videos
Watch our videos for in-depth details and what it’s like to live in a townhouse.
3. Follow our Instagram @TownhouseExperts
To see the beauty and realities of townhouse living.
4. Subscribe to Monday’s with Dexter (put on right side)
Start the week with Dexter and the Vandenberg team’s market insights and information on new listings.
5. Read our Blog
Read our blog for new stories and updates on townhouse living and listings.
6. Contact us for referrals to experts.
Resources: The Townhouse living requires particular resources. Some represent the fun of townhouse living: hiring a colorist to enhance the light, One townhouse might not have been properly deregulated,. Tenancies, repair, capital, etc (fill in) and to satisfy the curiosity of the interested townhouse community – referral to other experts for expedient solutions
7. Improve the value of your home.
Call Dexter and Nicole for strategies to maximize your building’s value.
8. Attend our Open Houses.
Why not see what townhouse living is all about?
Read our Blog
Read our blog for new stories and updates on townhouse living and listings:
Vandenberg in the New York Times
Once again Dexter lent his expertise to the New York Times, as Manhattan’s townhouse expert….
Vandenberg Mentioned on Curbed.com
Monday, July 26, 2010, by Sara, as posted on curbed.com
Dexter Guerrieri: The 2010 Townhouse Market
The Brownstone Revival Coalition was pleased to have Dexter Guerrieri as host and one of it’s three special guest speakers for its 23rd Annual Brownstone Market Seminar.
Dexter is the founder and principal of Vandenberg, Inc.–The Townhouse Experts TM. In this video he talks about what’s happening in this extremely active townhouse market.
For more information on the Brownstone Revival Coalition, please visit: www.brownstonerevival.org
The event was sponsored by Vandenberg, Inc. — The Townhouse Experts.
For more information on Vandenberg, Inc.– The Townhouse Experts, please visit: www.townhouseexperts.com
New Vandenberg Listings
For Showings: Cathy@TownhouseExperts.com
Two New Townhouse Listings Coming Next Week!
West Side Townhouses New to the Market This Week
August 9 1 Townhouse
July ’10 0 Townhouses
June ’10 12 Townhouses – 1 Vandenberg Exclusive
May ’10 2 Townhouses
2007 54 Townhouses
2005 102 Townhouse
Hiding Divya!
The Cosby House: Brownstones in Pop Culture
The façade of the Huxtable Home located at 10 Leroy Street/ 10 St. Luke’s Place
Where is the Cosby House in NYC?
Here is a fun fact: even though the show was set to take place in Brooklyn, the exterior façade was actually of a brownstone townhouse located in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village at 10 Leroy Street/ 10 St. Luke’s Place. In reality the home was not a single family home, rather it was a private residence that was divided into an owner’s duplex and four tiny one-bedroom apartments.
The identical townhouses that define St. Luke’s Place and Leroy Street in Greenwich Village
The Huxtable brownstone is situated in a stretch of 15 identical townhouses that were built in the 19th century. The builder is unknown, but he created a top-notch cookie cutter, aesthetically speaking, using the Renaissance and Greek Revival styles popular with the upper crust at the time. These townhouses are what defines St. Luke’s Place and Leroy Street between Seventh Ave. South and Hudson Street. The confusion in the street name comes from back when it wasn’t uncommon to rename a portion of a block to boost its supposed prestige. Trinity Church, which owned all the land here, renamed this block before selling it all off starting in 1851. The 15 residences along St. Luke’s Place are numbered sequentially. And who knew that the Huxtable family was neighbors with Monica, Joey and Ross? The building used as the apartment building for Friends is just around the corner at the corner of Bedford and Grove.
Leroy Street is often used for filming, because the other side of the street has no buildings to obstruct light. Besides The Cosby Show, the street has been used in Autumn in New York, Law & Order, The Job, Wait Until Dark.
Would you like to live in a Brownstone like the one featured on The Cosby Show? Vandenberg—The Townhouse Experts TM have many townhouses for sale in New York City. Check out our Townhouses that are available in our Townhouses for sale gallery. Contact Vandenberg with any questions.
Brownstones in Pop Culture: Nero Wolfe
44 West 76th Street used for exteriors of the A&E TV series A Nero Wolfe Mystery
The plaque infront of 454 West 35th Street
What is my Townhouse Worth?
Knowing the value of your townhouse is the cornerstone to properly pricing it for today’s market. In fact, even if you’re simply investigating ways to increase its investment value for the long-term, this current market value information is vital to your decision-making process.
We’ve created a form that allows you to give us the primary, unique details of your townhouse. As you probably know, the more details you can give us, the better we can conduct a thorough Comparative Market Analysis (a CMA) on your property, based on sales of similar residential and investment properties in and around your neighborhood. It’s followed by a short questionnaire for those who own multi-unit townhouses.
We verify that you are the owner of the property before providing the information. To further ensure your privacy, we’ll be sending your CMA directly to the e-mail address you provide.
If you would prefer to speak with us in person, just call us at (212) 769-2900, extension 211.
Olivia Guerrieri in HIDING DIVYA
–Dexter
Vandenberg in the New York Times!
By FRED A. BERNSTEIN
New York City Brownstones for Sale
Two New Townhouse Listings Coming Soon! Get ready for two new Vandenberg exclusives! One is a single family townhouse on the East Side, and the other is a multi-unit brownstone on a gorgeous park block!
Nineteenth Century Intercoms: Speaking Tubes and Bells
By Everett H. Ortner
Reprinted from The Brownstoner
(A Publication of Brownstone Revival Coalition)
Spring 1993
It is 1885 in a fine New York City townhouse on West 75th Street, or maybe it is in Park Slope or Fort Greene in Brooklyn. No matter – they are all much alike.
The doorbell has just rung.
The cook is out shopping, and it is the maid’s afternoon off, so the lady of this typical brownstone house with its typical two servants responds. She slips the brass disc covering the mouth piece of the speaking tube to one side and speaks into it. “Yes? Who is it?” she asks.
At the service entrance beneath the stoop, a youngster speaks into the flared bronze tube next to the iron gate: “It’s the butcher boy, Ma’am. I have your crown roast.”
Although the intercoms of the last century couldn’t deliver music, they could handle ordinary household business with great effectiveness. There were two major components: bell systems and speaking tubes.
At the outer doors, both below and above the stoop, bells were activated through a knob next to the door that the visitor pulled. A long wire, run through a tube and attached to a tongue that struck the bell, announced the visitor’s presence. There were separate bells for basement and parlor floors.
The interior bell system was more complicated. Wires for separate bell-pulls in different rooms-parlor, dining room, master bedroom, perhaps other bedrooms or a library, ran through the walls to separate bells in the kitchen, these bells, quite small, were suspended from large spirals of coiled springs. A pull on the wire from an upstairs room could start a bell jingling on its spring for a considerable length of time-a minute or two-long enough for a servant, hearing it, to look over, or come in perhaps from the extension where she might have been doing the laundry, to identify the bell and thus the location of the summoner.
The late Joseph Roberto, the architect who, with his wife, supervised the magnificent restoration of the Old Merchant’s House on East Fourth Street, encountered one of his most difficult problems in finding wire coils to restore the kitchen bells authentically.
I suspect that the brownstone speaking tubes operated like those in the pre-electronic Navy, with a whistle and a “Now hear this!” to start the system going. But brownstone speaking tubes, I believe, were of lead and ran through the walls from the outer entrances to the hallways of the parlor and bedroom floors. The “mouth-pieces,” as they were called, still can be seen in many houses, and it is likely that the old lead tubes still snake through thousands of brownstone walls-although because lead deforms so easily they would no longer be of any use.
The flared brass mouth-pieces in my 1886 Brooklyn brownstone still exist, although they no longer work. But sometime back I had the opportunity to visit a brownstone in Prospect Heights that did have an operating speaking-tube system, I was amazed at the quality of sound: slightly muffled but clear, with the voice at the other end easily identifiable and all the words perfectly intelligible.
What amazing houses these New York brownstones are!
Luxury Townhouse Rental
615 West End Avenue, New York City, New York – $18,000 Per Month
Please call Khatera Ahmad at 212.769.2900 ext. 221 or email her at Khatera@TownhouseExperts.com for more information and other townhouse rentals.
Townhouse Sold!
45 West 95th Street – Contract Signed!
Townhouse Video: Preservation Volunteers in the News!
Waxing with the Goddess Minerva: Volunteers Clean Famed Brooklyn Statue
The volunteers are headed to the Bartow-Pell Mansion in the Bronx next week.
From one-room schoolhouses in Colorado mining towns to 12th century churches in the heart of France, Preservation Volunteers provides volunteers to work with that community’s own volunteers, contractors and craftsmen in a partnered effort of restoration. In addition, through an agreement with REMPART, French volunteers often work on American projects while Americans travel to France. Even language barriers fall to the wayside as people come together, focusing one heart and mind on breathing new life into structures that represent our walk through time.
The projects offers a significant technical and cultural experience for both hosts and volunteers.
Townhouse Video: Townhouse Gardens
Friends,
We are thrilled to launch our new video series for townhouse owners and buyers!!! Over the next few weeks we will be featuring highlights from all three speakers at the Brownstone Revival Coalition’s Spring Market Seminar — including me! Today, in our first video clip, James Stephenson, a hardscaping artist, talks about hardscaping issues you need to address when building your townhouse garden. Please let me know what you think, pass it on to your friends, and let me know what topics you’d like us to cover in the future. Click here to see our video.
–Dexter
Designing Your Townhouse Garden: Hardscaping
The Brownstone Revival Coalition was pleased to have James Stephenson as one of its three special guest speakers for its 23rd Annual Brownstone Market Seminar. James specializes in “hardscaping,” a garden”s infrastructure (stone work, lighting, and irrigation).
This year, experts addressed the unique design, horticulture, and logistical challenges of New York City gardening. Attendees learned how to create a refuge of lush tranquility in their urban backyards.
Vandenberg is the sponsor of the Brownstone Revival Coalition Annual Market Seminar and we are delighted to produce these videos.