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      Jamila Norman From “Homegrown” on Why She Recycles Nearly Everything

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      Jamila Norman — a.k.a. Farmer J from the Magnolia Network series “Homegrown” — has a simple home-décor philosophy: “I don’t like buying new stuff.”Jamila Norman has a few houseplants, for the record, all thriving, at her home in the West End neighborhood of Atlanta. But although she has room out back, there is no garden.“My friends shame me for it,” Ms. Norman said. “They shame me for it all the time.”Is she ashamed? She is not. Are those friends kidding? Let us hope.Ms. Norman, 43, a former environmental engineer for the State of Georgia, is the owner of Patchwork City Farms, a 1.2-acre spread in the middle of the city that produces organic fruit, vegetables and herbs flowers for restaurants and local farmers’ markets.She has brought her knowledge and can-do spirit to full flower as the host of the Magnolia Network series “Homegrown.” On each episode, Ms. Norman, also known as Farmer J, helps someone transform an often wild-and-woolly outdoor space into a beautiful, functional backyard farm. (The show’s third season premiered on April 1.)Ms. Norman spent her early years in Queens, New York, eventually moving with her family to Connecticut, then to Georgia. When she got to the University of Georgia, in Athens, Ga., she volunteered with a Boys and Girls Club, sometimes assisting with planting projects.When Jamila Norman is not helping families transform outdoor space into productive gardens, she plants herself at her century-old Craftsman house in Atlanta. “I was looking for an older house, high ceilings, fireplaces, all that good stuff,” she said.Dustin Chambers for The New York Times“I did not grow up gardening at all,” she said. “But while we were living in New York, we spent extended periods of time in Trinidad, where my father is from. That experience taught me to love the outdoors.”A couple of Ms. Norman’s friends at college had property out in the country, where she’d go to “have some hippie moments.”“So I had always kind of dabbled in nature,” she said. “And I’m a double earth sign.” (Specifically, Taurus sun and Taurus rising.)Astrological imperatives notwithstanding, things didn’t go beyond dabbling until 2008, a few years after Ms. Norman moved to Atlanta from Athens — a long-deferred dream — and began helping out in the garden of a church. Later, she leased land for a farm at a middle school. In 2016, she bought the allotment that became the home of Patchwork City Farms. Conveniently, it’s a five-minute drive from her house.“I knew I wanted to be in the West End,” Ms. Norman said. “I was in the neighborhood a lot when I was in high school, because they had a lot of awesome cultural festivals there.”She and her husband (they have since divorced), looked at an array of properties. One place, a Craftsman house built in the 1920s, captivated Ms. Norman while she was sieving through the internet.“I Googled it and sent a link to my Realtor and said, ‘Hey, can I see this house?” she recalled. “I fell for it online, and when I saw it in person, l was like, ‘This is my house.’”Ms. Norman “gravitates toward turquoise,” as the slipcovers on the sofas make clear. Dustin Chambers for The New York TimesJamila Norman, 43Occupation: Farmer, food activist and host of the television series “Homegrown”D. I. Why: “I was like, ‘I’m going to strip the molding all over the house.’ It took months just to do my bedroom using nontoxic stuff like the stuff that’s made from orange peels. Then I was like, ‘Let’s paint everything white.’ So much for all my ambition.”What made it so were the high ceilings and oversized windows, the three fireplaces, the crown and chair molding, and the big, open rooms — plenty of space for her three sons, now young adults. The new roof and the updated electrical and plumbing systems added to the appeal.It’s no big deal that the nails in the old oak floorboards in the living room sometimes pop up, requiring Ms. Norman to knock them back into place. She relishes the sense of history and continuity. “You can tell the house was built in stages,” she said, “because the floors in the newer parts are tongue and groove.”Ms. Norman is also decorating in stages. She has hung the panel of Kuba cloth that she bought years ago from a vendor at a street festival. Also on display are shells from Jamaica, rocks from Greece and artwork by her children and one of her sisters.But her attic bulges with the rugs and lamps and tables she has been collecting over the past decade or so and holding back until the moment is right. “I have boys, and when you have boys, you can’t do all your good things until they’re gone,” she said. “I tell them, ‘As soon as you move out, it’s going to be a new house.’”Ms. Norman makes her own soap. “We grew up as natural as possible, so I make all my own body products,” she said.Dustin Chambers for The New York TimesTo put it in horticultural terms, Ms. Norman’s philosophy of home décor tilts more toward perennials than annuals. “I don’t like buying new stuff,” she said. “I like to find stuff that’s already out there and still useful. It’s about finding value in old things. It’s a hodgepodge, but it’s cute.”An engineering drafting table that Ms. Norman found on Craigslist, for example, was repurposed as the countertop for the kitchen island. The spiral-shaped coat rack near the front door was a vintage sale find. The table, chairs and rug in the dining room were sourced at an estate sale. A friend who was moving passed down the curio cabinet. The desk cabinet sits on a desk that belonged to Ms. Norman’s former husband.Some while back, she spotted three steamer trunks sitting on a neighbor’s porch and made a successful offer. The trunks now store pieces of the quilt she is taking apart to reassemble (when she can find the time) and the essential oils she uses for the homemade skin-care and hair-care products she makes for herself and a few fortunate friends and relatives.“When people in my neighborhood see me, they say, ‘Oh, there’s the farmer girl,’” Ms. Norman said.Dustin Chambers for The New York TimesOne of the two pullout sofas in the living room came from a friend; the other was a rare store purchase. Thanks to Ms. Norman’s mother, Raabia, both were recently refreshed with turquoise slipcovers.“She said, ‘Your couches are looking raggedy. I got you something.’ She comes in and arranges things and rearranges them,” Ms. Norman said fondly.This regard for the old and well used is elemental. Ms. Norman connects it to the land that is her livelihood and her love.“It’s about tending to things,” she said. “The oak floorboards came from somebody’s forest. The bricks — they’re from the earth. It’s an extension of nature in a built environment.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. More

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      Eboni K. Williams and Her ‘Harlem Jewel Box’

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      The broadcaster and author’s brief to her designer was simple: ‘Imagine if Josephine Baker lived in Harlem today. That’s what I want this apartment to look like.’When Eboni K. Williams moved to New York from Los Angeles in 2014, to take a job as a correspondent at CBS News, she knew exactly where she was going to live.“No disrespect to any other borough or any other part of the city, but being a Black woman from the South, it had to be Harlem U.S.A.,” said Ms. Williams, 39, a native of Charlotte, N.C. “It was important for me to walk out my door every day and feel the spirit and energy of the ancestors who lived there — James Baldwin and Malcolm X and Lorraine Hansberry and Josephine Baker.”Ms. Williams, a lawyer, writer and broadcaster (Fox News, WABC Radio and REVOLT and GRIO cable networks), who is probably best known as the first Black cast member of “The Real Housewives of New York City,” landed at Riverton Square, a large rental development near the F.D.R. Drive, between 135th and 138th Streets.“Looking at it, you would think it was a housing project, but it has a real legacy. Baldwin lived there, and so did David Dinkins,” said Ms. Williams, referring to the former mayor of New York. “If it was good enough for them, it was good enough for me.”But life is complicated, and love sometimes requires a change of address. From 2019 to 2021, Ms. Williams, the author of the recently published “Bet on Black: The Good News About Being Black in America Today” and the host of the podcast “Holding Court with Eboni K. Williams,” found herself in TriBeCa, in a three-bedroom sublet at the Four Seasons Private Residences, with her fiancé, a financier. They have since ended their relationship.Eboni K. Williams, an author, lawyer and TV, radio and podcast host, lives in a one-bedroom condo in Harlem with her tricolor Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, Carey James.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesEboni K. Williams, 39Occupation: Lawyer, journalist, authorHarlem on my mind: “It meant something to me, as a Black woman, to land in a neighborhood that has meant so much to Black people.”“I’m glad I had that experience,” Ms. Williams said. “Because as gorgeous as the unit was, when I went to buy a place coming out of the lease, I had learned what was really important to me.”For starters, that meant an apartment that was a little more down-to-earth, literally. “We were on the 67th floor, which was not my jam,” she said. “I have a fear of heights.”An open kitchen was also a must. “That was a $7 million apartment, and it had a galley kitchen,” she said. “I love to cook, so I hated the galley kitchen.”And also: Who needs a dining table? “I never used it,” she said. “I ate in front of the TV.”But having three bedrooms was nice. It allowed for a dedicated office, and she realized she “needed a separate work space.”“Oh, honey, aesthetics are very important to me,” Ms. Williams said. “I know what I want my house to look like.”Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesAnd she will not soon forget the abundance of storage space at the Four Seasons. “That place introduced me to California Closets,” Ms. Williams said, referring to the company that creates custom organizing systems. “I had them do every closet in my new apartment.”About that new apartment: Ms. Williams went into contract two and a half years ago, based on the model unit, in a building under construction in central Harlem — one bedroom, floor-to-ceiling windows, nine-foot ceilings, high-end finishes — and moved in last June after many delays, with her Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, Carey James (named for her grandfather).“It was the only place I looked at. I’m very decisive in that way,” she said.“I’m a girl from the South, and I’m a pageant queen, and the finishes were very important to me,” Ms. Williams continued. “It was important for me to have Carrara marble countertops. It was important for me to have the beautiful white-oak herringbone floors throughout. I’m allergic to carpet. Not really, but you know what I mean.”Ms. Williams’s brief to her interior designer, Ty Larkins, was simple and to the point: “Imagine if Josephine Baker lived in Harlem today. That’s what I want this apartment to look like. I want it to be a Harlem jewel box.”Bunches of flowers add pops of color. (Ms. Williams is partial to pink.)Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesIn something of a nod to Ms. Baker’s adopted city, Paris, a 19th-century French mirror leans against the wall in the living room. A French desk of the same vintage anchors the work space. Baccarat candlesticks catch the light on the coffee table.Ms. Baker sometimes performed in head-to-toe pink. For her part, Ms. Williams used to be “pink, pink, pink, pink, like a 12-year-old lives here,” she said. But she has learned moderation. True, the two velvet accent chairs in front of the tall windows in the living room are dusty rose, the side chair has pink-and-gray stripes, and the grasscloth on the walls is a very pale blush, “but there are also some masculine elements,” she said, pointing to the oversized chocolate-brown tufted sofa.If you want to get invited back, don’t touch the earth-toned Hermès blanket that’s neatly folded over an arm of the sofa. “It’s just for show,” she said.Although Ms. Williams chose her apartment quickly and surely — and although her determination to plant roots in Harlem was unswerving — it was an emotionally complicated business.“I was going to buy a million-dollar condo somewhere in New York,” she said. “But because people are paying that and more in my building, it’s displacing many of those who have called Harlem home for years. That’s the truth. It’s like any privilege — what do I do with that privilege? To me, it’s about preserving the culture that came before me, so it still lives beyond me. The moment you walk through the door, there is this explosion of Black-centeredness and Black celebration.”The canopy bed adds a touch of Hollywood glamour.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesBusts of the journalist Ida B. Wells and the abolitionists Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass are on display in the cozy alcove Ms. Williams uses as her office. The bathroom walls are papered with designer Sheila Bridge’s pattern Harlem Toile de Jouy, which trades France’s classic pastoral motifs for those reflecting an African-American heritage.On one wall of the living room is a print depicting the stowage of a ship carrying enslaved Africans. Almost directly opposite is a painting by the Zimbabwean artist Kudzanai Chiurai featuring a Black woman in front of a line of microphones. “This is about the amplification of the struggle and liberation,” Ms. Williams said.“This place,” she added, “is dripping with Black identity. That’s me. Literally. It’s my name: Eboni.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. More

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      Building a House Is Stressful, Even if You’re Sanjay Gupta

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      The CNN correspondent was traveling for work during construction of his family’s house, leaving the decision-making to his wife. (Yes, they’re still married.)The overwrought and the over-scheduled may be cheered to learn that Sanjay Gupta speaks quite highly of stress.“Often, the aspiration is to reduce it. But what we’ve found is that reducing or eliminating stress is not necessarily the best goal when it comes to brain health,” said Dr. Gupta, 53, a neurosurgeon, Emmy Award-winning chief medical correspondent for CNN, and an author whose books include the recently published “12 Weeks to a Sharper You: A Guided Program.”“We sometimes even need high periods of stress,” he continued. “But you’ve got to have the means in between to decompress. Your environment and how you live, where you live — it all makes a big difference. I come home to find those periods of downtime, which is critically important to energy and brain health.”Sanjay Gupta, 53, a neurosurgeon and the chief medical correspondent for CNN, lives with his wife, Rebecca Gupta, and their three daughters in a custom-built house on almost three and a half acres in Atlanta.Dustin Chambers for The New York TimesDr. Gupta’s recharging station is a slate-shingled, beige-stucco house in Atlanta that calls to mind a grand French Renaissance chateau and, thanks to the Italian windows and small balconies, a cozy Tuscan villa. Curiously, and maybe fittingly, this is a place born of stress. Which is another way of saying that Dr. Gupta and his wife, Rebecca Gupta, had it built.The couple’s previous house — the first they ever owned — was a three-bedroom in Atlanta’s Virginia-Highland district, a highly walkable neighborhood full of children and dogs, close to a hospital and to the highway for speedy trips to the airport. “But by the time we had our third child, we began to realize we were going to need more space,” Dr. Gupta said. “We looked into adding another level or something, because we really loved the house, but it just wasn’t possible.”Sanjay Gupta, 53Occupation: neurosurgeon, author, CNN correspondentNo place like home: “We have three teenage kids, and we wanted to create a place that their friends would want to come to rather than going elsewhere.”Initially, the idea of building a house wasn’t on the table. But then they found the ideal lot: large (almost three and a half acres), flat where it needed to be flat, and full of old-growth trees arrayed so they wouldn’t have to be sacrificed to accommodate an 8,000-square-foot house.Somewhat unnervingly, Ms. Gupta, a lawyer-turned-venture-capitalist, once mentioned to her husband that 80 percent of couples who build a house together end up getting divorced. (A quick Google search turned up slightly rosier statistics.) So perhaps it was fortunate that Dr. Gupta was frequently out of the country on assignment for CNN while construction was at full throttle.“It was really a situation where Rebecca did what she thought was best,” he said. “But the process was hard on her.”Determined not to make it harder, Dr. Gupta tried to limit the “helpful” suggestions and the second-guessing. “I think it’s how you ask that’s important,” he said. “‘I’m sure there’s a really good reason, but why is that wall there?’ rather than ‘Why in God’s name did you….’”“I have three kids and three dogs, so it’s great having a space where there’s not so much noise and stuff,” said Dr. Gupta, explaining the value of his study.Dustin Chambers for The New York TimesIt’s hard to assess the effect on Dr. Gupta’s mental health, but “the few times I was asked for my opinion, basically, the opposite thing was done,” he said.Never mind. He is very happy with the results: the many archways that make it easier for his elderly parents and in-laws to move among rooms when they come visit; the sunroom that seems to bring the outside in; and, most especially, his two-story oval study at one end of the house.A photograph of an old Cuban theater, a gift from Ms. Gupta, hangs over the working fireplace on the upper level. (“I’ve always been fascinated by Cuba,” said Dr. Gupta.) The figure of a medicine man stands sentry just outside the surround. On the shelves: models of a cervical spine, a lumbar spine, thoracic spine, a model of a skull and lots of neurosurgery texts. A hidden staircase presents a challenge for those who aren’t conversant with the phrase “do not disturb.”Dr. Gupta also derives pleasure from what the house is missing — specifically, a dining room. “That was a conscious decision,” he said. “Rebecca and I didn’t grow up in a super formal way. Things were more casual and family-oriented. That’s a metaphor for the house overall.”Three interior designers have passed through since the house was completed 13 years ago. When the family first moved in, the palette was earth tones. These were replaced by neutral tones and soft colors like pale lavender. (Dr. Gupta has a pronounced weakness for purple.) The most recent designer lobbied for white walls and bold pops of color. Castoff saris belonging to Dr. Gupta’s Pakistani-born mother were cut up and made into throw pillows to add a personal touch.The “secret” staircase that connects the upper and lower level of Dr. Gupta’s office is lined with plaques, diplomas and photos. Dustin Chambers for The New York TimesThe grounds have had their own makeover, with the addition of a fountain, a pool, a hot tub and a vegetable garden. On a trip to Xi’an, China, the Guptas became so enamored of the Terracotta Army, a group of terra-cotta soldiers depicting the military force of the first emperor of China, that they had five clay figures made to serve as garden ornaments, each representing a member of the family.Two of the sculptures have since shattered. So be it. Dr. Gupta isn’t especially sentimental.“I knew this would be a good house for raising kids, and that has been true. But whenever I think about the house itself, I don’t have a grand affinity,” he said. “We’ll sell it someday. We don’t need a place this big.”It’s the memories of his three teenage daughters growing up in the house that will have the greatest resonance, he said: “And those memories will exist no matter what, whether we’re here or not.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. More

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      On Gay Street, Another Piece of NYC’s History Is Coming Down

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      Like other vulnerable landmarks across the city, the house at 14 Gay Street — which helped inspire the musical “Wonderful Town” — is being demolished.One Monday in late November, preservationists, politicians, neighbors and looky-loos gathered at dusk on Manhattan’s tiny Gay Street, a slim crescent in the heart of Greenwich Village, to protest the demolition of a nearly 200-year-old house there. The place in question, 14 Gay Street, is one of a clutch of six winsome but precarious early 19th-century buildings on Gay and Christopher Streets that were owned for decades by Celeste Martin, a singular character devoted to her properties and to the often eccentric cast of tenants she nurtured.Ms. Martin died in late 2018, at 94, with no will and no close relatives, so the city took over her holdings, selling 14 Gay Street and its siblings for about $9 million to a buyer who flipped them last April to Lionel Nazarian, a 37-year-old developer, for about $12 million. Since then, Mr. Nazarian has done foundation work that has destabilized 14 Gay Street and imperiled its neighbors, so the city has ordered its demolition, a slow, laborious process that began just before Thanksgiving.Chillingly, this scenario is one that is playing out all over the city, said Andrew Berman, the executive director of Village Preservation and the organizer of the November protest: As developers have been buying up vulnerable landmark properties, they are either allowing them to deteriorate or doing work that compromises public safety. In the last year, he said, more than a dozen such buildings have come down.Celeste Martin, who died in 2018 at 94, owned six historic properties on Gay and Christopher Streets, including 14 Gay Street. A singular character, she doted on her properties and her often eccentric tenants.Harry ZernikeMr. Berman blames the lack of oversight and coordination by city agencies. “As a result,” he said, “our neighborhoods are paying the price, our city’s history and heritage are paying the price, and the irreplaceable historic landmarks that distinguish New York from everywhere else are being lost.”The city, along with the Landmarks Preservation Commission, said in a statement it had approved plans for the work on Gay Street and that Mr. Nazarian’s construction crew did not follow their instructions. Preservationists like Mr. Berman and local politicians like Deborah Glick have cried foul, declaring that the city and the commission should have been overseeing the work and described Mr. Nazarian as a bad actor. In 2017, he was accused of creating hazardous conditions and tenant harassment in a property he owns in the East Village. Mr. Berman wondered if his actions were deliberate, to insure he wouldn’t have to restore his new holdings, but be allowed to tear them down and start fresh. For his part, Mr. Nazarian said the construction workers made a terrible mistake, adding that he loves historic architecture and just wants to preserve the buildings.The doughty but fragile antique buildings that Ms. Martin left behind “are part of this incredible surviving collection of very early houses,” said Andrew S. Dolkart, a professor of historic preservation at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. “Dozens were built in the 1820s, but not many are left — certainly not in groups on a small, intimate street. They are really precious.”The building at 14 Gay Street dates to 1827; its siblings, a year later. “They were originally built for the mercantile class,” Mr. Dolkart said. “They weren’t built for the wealthy. They aren’t pristine museum pieces: You can see they had lived, and been lived in, over time.”That’s significant, because the early 19th century was the last period “that modest people, shop owners and small business owners, could afford to live in a single-family home in a built-up section of Manhattan,” he continued. “You can still see a number of these houses peppering the Village.”By the end of the century, many had evolved into boardinghouses and multifamily dwellings. By then, Gay Street was an integrated block, with a large Black community and a melting pot of immigrants from Ireland, Denmark, France, Italy, Germany and Belgium.Demolition recently began at 14 Gay Street. The city has ordered that the work be done by hand and the material saved for use in a reconstruction overseen by the city and the Landmarks Preservation Commission.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesAll six buildings are landmarked — Gay Street is in the Village’s historic district — but No. 14 is especially noteworthy as a literary artifact, the onetime home of Ruth McKenney, who memorialized her dodgy subterranean apartment there in “My Sister Eileen,” a collection of stories about her adventures as a young writer in the city that was published in 1938 and inspired the fizzy early 1950s musical “Wonderful Town,” with lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and music by Leonard Bernstein. (For years, a longtime tenant of the apartment, David Ryan, was awakened by tourists belting the refrain of the musical’s signature number, “Why, oh why, oh why-oh/Why did I ever leave Ohio?” and peering through the bars of his bedroom window. When the play was revived on Broadway in 2003, he suffered acutely.)Ms. Martin’s father, Edmond, who was French, bought the six buildings that now belong to Mr. Nazarian in the 1920s, along with several other properties in the Village, including a fanciful pink Moorish-looking townhouse on Waverly Place, where Ms. Martin grew up. While his father wanted him to join the family’s sail-making business, Edmond fancied himself a real estate mogul and an artist. With the help of his wife, Ramee, he turned the Gay and Christopher Street buildings into a complex of furnished studio apartments, decorated by Ramee and outfitted with slipcovers and curtains sewn by their nanny.In her short story “Mr. Spitzer and the Fungus,” Ms. McKenney renders Edmond as a pompous landlord with artistic pretensions — his character was called Mr. Appopolous in the musical — and her $45 a month basement flat, where she lived with her sister, Eileen, as a dimly lit dump sprouting with mold, including a particularly aggressive fungus that draped from the ceiling. “Every night we cut it down with Eileen’s manicure scissors,” she wrote, “and every morning it was long enough to braid. Eileen thought there was something shameful about the fungus, and she always carefully cut it down before we had a party.”The building in 2003, the year “Wonderful Town” was revived on Broadway.Harry ZernikeEdmond was said to have been miffed by his portrayal in Ms. McKenney’s work; he felt his artistic talents weren’t appropriately recognized. He was not a bad painter, said Matt McGhee, who for decades sold exquisite Christmas ornaments out of his fairyland boutique at 18 Christopher and lived in a one-bedroom next door.Notably, though, Edmond was a racist, cited by the city for refusing to rent to Black people. At one point, he hung a sign in his office at 16 Gay Street declaring this policy. In 1959, The Daily News reported, he filed a suit against the city, claiming that its anti-discrimination housing law interfered with his “aesthetic freedom.” Needless to say, he did not prevail.When he died in 1985, Ms. Martin inherited his properties, but not his bigotry. However, she was never the most assiduous steward of the houses.As Jeanne Kelly, the former director of fossil preparations at the American Museum of Natural History and a Gay Street neighbor for two decades, put it, they were held together with spit and a prayer, and the haphazard ministrations of a retinue of helpers that at one point included a super who was blind and a physics teacher with a number of aliases.But Ms. Martin was generous to her tenants, offering to waive rent if they were in extremis and delivering Christmas gifts of pink Champagne and sweets. (One year, Mr. McGhee said, the gifts included stuffed animals; he received a dog.)She doted on many of the tenants, but Mr. Ryan, who moved into the McKenney apartment in the early 1970s and decorated it with distinctive, decaying élan, English country style, was a favorite. When “Wonderful Town” was in revival on Broadway in December of 2003, they saw the musical together. A few weeks later, on Christmas Eve, Mr. Ryan died in a fire that consumed his apartment, and Ms. Martin never quite recovered.Instead of renovating the apartment, neighbors said, she left it to rot and to the rats. “It was the beginning of her decline,” Ms. Kelly said.David Ryan was the last tenant of the basement apartment that Ruth McKenney rendered as a dimly lit dump in her short stories.Harry ZernikeMr. Ryan decorated the apartment with distinctive, decaying élan…Harry Zernike….in an English country style that involved layers of Persian carpets, velvet- and chintz-upholstered furniture, classical statuary, candelabras and prints in gilded frames.Harry ZernikeSince 1976, Denise Marsa, a singer-songwriter, has lived in her tidy studio around the corner, in the building Ms. Martin once owned at 18 Christopher Street. (She can still remember the original rent: $174.24.). She tried to help Ms. Martin in her final years, urging her to make a will, but her landlord “lived in a fairy tale,” she said.Today, Ms. Marsa, 68, is the last residential tenant in the building, her cheerful apartment, with its kitchen tucked into a closet, an object lesson in small-space living and the promise of studio life as a launching pad. She, too, has rendered her home in song, as Comden and Green once did, in a number featured in “The Pass,” her one-woman show about making it in the big city, which she performed at United Solo, a theater festival in Manhattan, in the fall of 2021. (The storefronts below her are full; John Derian, the purveyor of his own brand of charming decay, took over the spot occupied by Mr. McGhee four years ago.)Back at the rally organized by Mr. Berman, the mood was festive, despite everything. The growl of a bulldozer interrupted the protesters. Its driver, a private contractor, said he was there to do work under the road in front of 14 Gay Street. When questioned, he said he did not know who had hired him, and beat a retreat. Across the street, Joan Goldberg, a broker with Brown Harris Stevens, was holding a quasi-open house at 13 Gay Street, a modest Greek Revival built around 1840 and owned by Margaret Kunstler, the widow of the civil rights lawyer William Kunstler, who died in 1995 and was known for representing some controversial clients. (The house is on the market for $6.9 million.)“It was a wonderful street to live on,” Ms. Kunstler said. “We had big Halloweens. Sometimes we would shut down the street for birthday parties. The house was open; there were constant comings and goings.”Ruth McKenney memorialized her dodgy subterranean apartment 14 Gay Street in “My Sister Eileen,” a collection of stories about her adventures as a young writer in the city that was published in 1938 and inspired the fizzy early 1950s musical “Wonderful Town,” with lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and music by Leonard Bernstein.These days, from the top floor of Ms. Kunstler’s house, you can see into the dark cavity that is all that’s left of where Ruth and Eileen McKenney once lived: two gaping window frames braced by wooden beams.Representatives from the Landmarks Preservation Commission and the city said that the city will be taking action against Mr. Nazarian for what they say was illegal work done there. Furthermore, the city is requiring that the demolition of 14 Gay Street be done by hand and its material saved for use in a reconstruction that the city and the Landmarks Preservation Commission will oversee.“I never intended to just let them rot,” Mr. Nazarian said of the buildings.Asked to estimate what it might cost to restore them, he said, “More than I thought.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. More

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      In the Village, Another Piece of the City’s History Is Coming Down

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      Like other vulnerable landmarks across the city, the house at 14 Gay Street — which helped inspire the musical “Wonderful Town” — is being demolished.One Monday in late November, preservationists, politicians, neighbors and looky-loos gathered at dusk on Manhattan’s tiny Gay Street, a slim crescent in the heart of Greenwich Village, to protest the demolition of a nearly 200-year-old house there. The place in question, 14 Gay Street, is one of a clutch of six winsome but precarious early 19th-century buildings on Gay and Christopher Streets that were owned for decades by Celeste Martin, a singular character devoted to her properties and to the often eccentric cast of tenants she nurtured.Ms. Martin died in late 2018, at 94, with no will and no close relatives, so the city took over her holdings, selling 14 Gay Street and its siblings for about $9 million to a buyer who flipped them last April to Lionel Nazarian, a 37-year-old developer, for about $12 million. Since then, Mr. Nazarian has done foundation work that has destabilized 14 Gay Street and imperiled its neighbors, so the city has ordered its demolition, a slow, laborious process that began just before Thanksgiving.Chillingly, this scenario is one that is playing out all over the city, said Andrew Berman, the executive director of Village Preservation and the organizer of the November protest: As developers have been buying up vulnerable landmark properties, they are either allowing them to deteriorate or doing work that compromises public safety. In the last year, he said, more than a dozen such buildings have come down.Celeste Martin, who died in 2018 at 94, owned six historic properties on Gay and Christopher Streets, including 14 Gay Street. A singular character, she doted on her properties and her often eccentric tenants.Harry ZernikeMr. Berman blames the lack of oversight and coordination by city agencies. “As a result,” he said, “our neighborhoods are paying the price, our city’s history and heritage are paying the price, and the irreplaceable historic landmarks that distinguish New York from everywhere else are being lost.”The city, along with the Landmarks Preservation Commission, said in statement it had approved plans for the work on Gay Street and that Mr. Nazarian’s construction crew did not follow their instructions. Preservationists like Mr. Berman and local politicians like Deborah Glick have cried foul, declaring that the city and the commission should have been overseeing the work and described Mr. Nazarian as a bad actor. In 2017, he was accused of creating hazardous conditions and tenant harassment in a property he owns in the East Village. Mr. Berman wondered if his actions were deliberate, to insure he wouldn’t have to restore his new holdings, but be allowed to tear them down and start fresh. For his part, Mr. Nazarian said the construction workers made a terrible mistake, adding that he loves historic architecture and just wants to preserve the buildings.The doughty but fragile antique buildings that Ms. Martin left behind “are part of this incredible surviving collection of very early houses,” said Andrew S. Dolkart, a professor of historic preservation at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. “Dozens were built in the 1820s, but not many are left — certainly not in groups on a small, intimate street. They are really precious.”The building at 14 Gay Street dates to 1827; its siblings, a year later. “They were originally built for the mercantile class,” Mr. Dolkart said. “They weren’t built for the wealthy. They aren’t pristine museum pieces: You can see they had lived, and been lived in, over time.”That’s significant, because the early 19th century was the last period “that modest people, shop owners and small business owners, could afford to live in a single-family home in a built-up section of Manhattan,” he continued. “You can still see a number of these houses peppering the Village.”By the end of the century, many had evolved into boardinghouses and multifamily dwellings. By then, Gay Street was an integrated block, with a large Black community and a melting pot of immigrants from Ireland, Denmark, France, Italy, Germany and Belgium.Demolition recently began at 14 Gay Street. The city has ordered that the work be done by hand and the material saved for use in a reconstruction overseen by the city and the Landmarks Preservation Commission.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesAll six buildings are landmarked — Gay Street is in the Village’s historic district — but No. 14 is especially noteworthy as a literary artifact, the onetime home of Ruth McKenney, who memorialized her dodgy subterranean apartment there in “My Sister Eileen,” a collection of stories about her adventures as a young writer in the city that was published in 1938 and inspired the fizzy early 1950s musical “Wonderful Town,” with lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and music by Leonard Bernstein. (For years, a longtime tenant of the apartment, David Ryan, was awakened by tourists belting the refrain of the musical’s signature number, “Why, oh why, oh why-oh/Why did I ever leave Ohio?” and peering through the bars of his bedroom window. When the play was revived on Broadway in 2003, he suffered acutely.)Ms. Martin’s father, Edmond, who was French, bought the six buildings that now belong to Mr. Nazarian in the 1920s, along with several other properties in the Village, including a fanciful pink Moorish-looking townhouse on Waverly Place, where Ms. Martin grew up. While his father wanted him to join the family’s sail-making business, Edmond fancied himself a real estate mogul and an artist. With the help of his wife, Ramee, he turned the Gay and Christopher Street buildings into a complex of furnished studio apartments, decorated by Ramee and outfitted with slipcovers and curtains sewn by their nanny.In her short story “Mr. Spitzer and the Fungus,” Ms. McKenney renders Edmond as a pompous landlord with artistic pretensions — his character was called Mr. Appopolous in the musical — and her $45 a month basement flat, where she lived with her sister, Eileen, as a dimly lit dump sprouting with mold, including a particularly aggressive fungus that draped from the ceiling. “Every night we cut it down with Eileen’s manicure scissors,” she wrote, “and every morning it was long enough to braid. Eileen thought there was something shameful about the fungus, and she always carefully cut it down before we had a party.”The building in 2003, the year “Wonderful Town” was revived on Broadway.Harry ZernikeEdmond was said to have been miffed by his portrayal in Ms. McKenney’s work; he felt his artistic talents weren’t appropriately recognized. He was not a bad painter, said Matt McGhee, who for decades sold exquisite Christmas ornaments out of his fairyland boutique at 18 Christopher and lived in a one-bedroom next door.Notably, though, Edmond was a racist, cited by the city for refusing to rent to Black people. At one point, he hung a sign in his office at 16 Gay Street declaring this policy. In 1959, The Daily News reported, he filed a suit against the city, claiming that its anti-discrimination housing law interfered with his “aesthetic freedom.” Needless to say, he did not prevail.When he died in 1985, Ms. Martin inherited his properties, but not his bigotry. However, she was never the most assiduous steward of the houses.As Jeanne Kelly, the former director of fossil preparations at the American Museum of Natural History and a Gay Street neighbor for two decades, put it, they were held together with spit and a prayer, and the haphazard ministrations of a retinue of helpers that at one point included a super who was blind and a physics teacher with a number of aliases.But Ms. Martin was generous to her tenants, offering to waive rent if they were in extremis and delivering Christmas gifts of pink Champagne and sweets. (One year, Mr. McGhee said, the gifts included stuffed animals; he received a dog.)She doted on many of the tenants, but Mr. Ryan, who moved into the McKenney apartment in the early 1970s and decorated it with distinctive, decaying élan, English country style, was a favorite. When “Wonderful Town” was in revival on Broadway in December of 2003, they saw the musical together. A few weeks later, on Christmas Eve, Mr. Ryan died in a fire that consumed his apartment, and Ms. Martin never quite recovered.Instead of renovating the apartment, neighbors said, she left it to rot and to the rats. “It was the beginning of her decline,” Ms. Kelly said.David Ryan was the last tenant of the basement apartment that Ruth McKenney rendered as a dimly lit dump in her short stories.Harry ZernikeMr. Ryan decorated the apartment with distinctive, decaying élan…Harry Zernike….in an English country style that involved layers of Persian carpets, velvet- and chintz-upholstered furniture, classical statuary, candelabras and prints in gilded frames.Harry ZernikeSince 1976, Denise Marsa, a singer-songwriter, has lived in her tidy studio around the corner, in the building Ms. Martin once owned at 18 Christopher Street. (She can still remember the original rent: $174.24.). She tried to help Ms. Martin in her final years, urging her to make a will, but her landlord “lived in a fairy tale,” she said.Today, Ms. Marsa, 68, is the last residential tenant in the building, her cheerful apartment, with its kitchen tucked into a closet, an object lesson in small-space living and the promise of studio life as a launching pad. She, too, has rendered her home in song, as Comden and Green once did, in a number featured in “The Pass,” her one-woman show about making it in the big city, which she performed at United Solo, a theater festival in Manhattan, in the fall of 2021. (The storefronts below her are full; John Derian, the purveyor of his own brand of charming decay, took over the spot occupied by Mr. McGhee four years ago.)Back at the rally organized by Mr. Berman, the mood was festive, despite everything. The growl of a bulldozer interrupted the protesters. Its driver, a private contractor, said he was there to do work under the road in front of 14 Gay Street. When questioned, he said he did not know who had hired him, and beat a retreat. Across the street, Joan Goldberg, a broker with Brown Harris Stevens, was holding a quasi-open house at 13 Gay Street, a modest Greek Revival built around 1840 and owned by Margaret Kunstler, the widow of the civil rights lawyer William Kunstler, who died in 1995 and was known for representing some controversial clients. (The house is on the market for $6.9 million.)“It was a wonderful street to live on,” Ms. Kunstler said. “We had big Halloweens. Sometimes we would shut down the street for birthday parties. The house was open; there were constant comings and goings.”Ruth McKenney memorialized her dodgy subterranean apartment 14 Gay Street in “My Sister Eileen,” a collection of stories about her adventures as a young writer in the city that was published in 1938 and inspired the fizzy early 1950s musical “Wonderful Town,” with lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and music by Leonard Bernstein.These days, from the top floor of Ms. Kunstler’s house, you can see into the dark cavity that is all that’s left of where Ruth and Eileen McKenney once lived: two gaping window frames braced by wooden beams.Representatives from the Landmarks Preservation Commission and the city said that the city will be taking action against Mr. Nazarian for what they say was illegal work done there. Furthermore, the city is requiring that the demolition of 14 Gay Street be done by hand and its material saved for use in a reconstruction that the city and the Landmarks Preservation Commission will oversee.“I never intended to just let them rot,” Mr. Nazarian said of the buildings.Asked to estimate what it might cost to restore them, he said, “More than I thought.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. More

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      Why the Queen of Christmas Refuses to Leave Battery Park City

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      Home is important to Elizabeth Chan: “Every Christmas song I’ve written has been written here.”Elizabeth Chan is very clear on the matter: Christmas is not a competition.“You can love whatever you want about it as much as you want,” Ms. Chan, 42, said. “It’s how much it fills you with joy, and everybody has different levels of joy in their heart. But that doesn’t mean one way of being is better than another.”These are all very reasonable points. Very gracious, too. But there is no altering the fact that Ms. Chan wins Christmas. Hands down. Game, set and match.It is not because she named her daughters Noelle and Eva (for Christmas Eve). Or because the palette of her apartment in Lower Manhattan tilts toward a rich dark red and celadon green. Or because she has half a dozen Advent calendars in heavy rotation. Or even because the fragrance of the liquid hand soap in her kitchen and bathrooms is generally limited to gingerbread, peppermint, pine fir and such. (Ms. Chan stocks up when the holidays are over and everyone else has moved on from spiced plum and winterberry.)“My goal when I write Christmas music is to inspire thoughts of love, family and home to anyone who listens,” said Elizabeth Chan, who lives with her family in a two-bedroom rental in Battery Park City.Andrea Mohin/The New York TimesElizabeth Chan, 42Occupation: Composer and performer of Christmas songsA new perspective: “When I became a mother, my music changed immediately, because suddenly the story of the birth of Jesus and the story of trying to find a place for the baby became very relatable.”It’s because of this: Since leaving her job as a marketing executive a decade ago for what, at the time, seemed like a quixotic pursuit, Ms. Chan has written more than 1,000 Christmas songs (she stopped counting at 1,200) in assorted genres — pop, jazz, disco, electronic, you name it — and recorded 12 albums of her holiday-themed compositions. Some have turned up on Billboard’s adult contemporary and holiday charts. She also ghostwrites Christmas songs for performers who need a Santa’s helper.Like its predecessors, her latest collection, “12 Months of Christmas,” released in October, plays around the country in malls and stores like Walmart, Ikea, Pottery Barn and Williams Sonoma, providing Ms. Chan with an annual income that she says is in the high six figures — there’s no business like Ho-Ho-Ho business — and prompting some in the industry to refer to her as the Queen of Christmas. (Last year, when Mariah Carey, she of “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” filed an application through her company to trademark the phrase “Queen of Christmas” for future use on products like music, perfume, sunglasses and even coconut milk, Ms. Chan opposed the registration, believing that no one should have exclusive and permanents rights to the title. Ultimately, she prevailed.)Ms. Chan’s office, two floors down from the family home, is perennially decked out for Christmas.Andrea Mohin/The New York TimesCreatively and fiscally, Ms. Chan has gone far. Geographically, it’s a different story. She grew up in Battery Park City and has remained there even after 9/11 caused many, including her traumatized parents, to relocate.“I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go,” said Ms. Chan, who found a one-bedroom rental blocks away from her childhood apartment. “I thought it was going to be temporary. I think I’ve stayed because every Christmas song I’ve written has been written here.”When Ms. Chan married 13 years ago, her husband, Andy Fraley, who designed her website and also designs her album covers, joined her in the apartment. And when she decided to ditch corporate life and become a struggling artist, the couple stayed put, although it meant making room for six keyboards, three guitars, a ukulele, a Chinese stringed instrument called a gu zheng, speakers and then, eventually, their first child, Noelle, now 5, and the attendant baby paraphernalia. Oh, and did we mention the dog?Four years ago, through a local mothers’ group, Ms. Chan learned that a family in the building was moving to New Jersey and was hoping to find someone to take over their two-bedroom apartment.“My husband went to look at it, and things were in a crazy state of affairs,” Ms. Chan recalled. “There were crayon and magic-marker marks on every wall, and he said, ‘We’ll take it.’ He knew I was never going to leave the neighborhood — that I was never going to leave the building — because it’s home.”Shelves have been stripped of books to make space to display a Lego Christmas Village scene.Andrea Mohin/The New York TimesMs. Chan puts a heavy emphasis and great value on home. Many of her songs have the word “home” in the title or the lyrics. Home frequently figures in conversations with her. Dilating on the topic, she gets unapologetically weepy.Even though the family has settled fully into the more spacious apartment — their numbers now include Eva, 2 — Ms. Chan clings to the other space because that, too, is her home. It’s easily identified by the sleigh bell-encrusted Christmas wreath.“In the way you walk into your house and it smells familiar — that’s this place, for me,” she said.There she wraps and hides her children’s Christmas presents, writes songs, does business Zoom calls and records promos for the radio stations that play her music. Ms. Chan gets inspiration from the fully decorated artificial Christmas tree that, like the wreath, remains in place year-round; from the decorative holiday pillows, of which there are many; and from a photo of her maternal grandmother presiding over a Christmas pageant in her village in the Philippines. “She taught me what matters,” Ms. Chan said.“I usually take January off and start writing Christmas songs again in February,” Ms. Chan said.Andrea Mohin/The New York TimesOn a Friday morning in early December, the holiday spirit was ascendant two floors up, in the family quarters. The bookshelves had been given over to displays of Lego Christmas Village scenes and a Fisher-Price Little People Nativity set. Red stockings were hung with care over the red-painted wood console. A “Santa Stop Here” tree-topper was ready to be put in place, and the marble-topped dining table where Ms. Chan sat, a decade ago, to map out her business, had been cleared off to make room for a gingerbread house or two.“This is what Christmas looks like to me,” she said, gazing around the living room. “I wouldn’t feel comfortable living anywhere else. Since my songs are focused on love and family and home, uprooting would affect my music.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. More

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      Rupert Holmes, on Creating a Victorian-Flavored Escape in Upstate NY

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      The artist you know from ‘The Piña Colada Song’ has a new play about Ruth Bader Ginsburg and a new novel coming out next year — but still no plans to live in the city.Over the decades, the playwright, novelist and singer-songwriter Rupert Holmes has collected quite the haul of trophies and treasures. They include — deep breath, now — two Tony Awards (for the book and score of his 1985 musical “The Mystery of Edwin Drood”), two Edgar Awards, 16 gold records, and 15 platinum records, including for his 1979 earworm “Escape.” (You undoubtedly know it as “The Piña Colada Song”).In his home studio, Mr. Holmes has a framed thank-you note from Barbra Streisand, for his contributions to her 1975 album “Lazy Afternoon,” as a composer and co-producer, and a signed Rosebud matchbook from Orson Welles, whom he met on a talk show. He also has a piano bench that belonged to Marvin Hamlisch, a gift from Mr. Hamlisch’s widow.But there is one thing that Mr. Holmes does not have — has never had and never wanted to have — despite all of his Times Square-centric pursuits: a permanent address in New York City.“When I’m working on a show, I get some sort of accommodations in Manhattan for a couple of months,” said Mr. Holmes, 75, whose new play, “All Things Equal: The Life & Trials of Ruth Bader Ginsburg,” will be at the Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor, N.Y., from Nov. 3 to Nov. 27, and whose thriller “Murder Your Employer,” the first book in a new series, is due out in February. “But for me, New York has always been a place that’s like a thermonuclear reactor, where everything interesting and exciting happens. And then you want to leave at the end of the day and calm down.”Rupert Holmes, the Tony Award winning writer and composer of the 1985 musical “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” and “The Piña Colada Song,” lives with his wife, Liza, in a colonial-style house in Cold Spring, N.Y.Andy Ryan for The New York TimesRupert Holmes, 75Occupation: Playwright, novelist, singer-songwriterLost in translation: “When I was three and a half, my parents told me we were moving from England to a place called Long Island. I thought, ‘Oh, pirates and lagoons.’ And it turned out to be Levittown, Long Island.”In 1980, Mr. Holmes and his wife, Liza, a lawyer, settled in Tenafly, N.J. They had a snug house they loved in a nice community that was within quick reach of the city. But when the couple’s 10-year-old daughter, Wendy, died suddenly from an undiagnosed brain tumor in 1986, “we couldn’t stay there,” he said. “Her friends would walk by the house; her bedroom was empty. We just couldn’t do it. So we moved to Scarsdale.”Again, nice house, quiet street, easy commute. There they stayed for 22 years. “Then, once again, a child issue,” Mr. Holmes said.Timothy, the younger of the couple’s two sons, is “severely autistic,” he said. “He doesn’t have language, really,” and he was aging out of a local care facility. There was an excellent adult-treatment program farther afield, but it was open only to residents of Putnam and Dutchess Counties. Relocating was less than ideal, “but we tried to make the most of it,” he said. “We wanted this to feel like a good thing.”Thirteen years ago, the Holmeses moved to a hillside colonial-style house in Cold Spring, N.Y., where, depending on the room and the window, they could see woods, gardens, the Hudson River, Storm King Mountain, Crows Nest Mountain, West Point or some fine combination.The piano bench in the basement studio once belonged to Marvin Hamlisch, with whom Mr. Holmes collaborated on a stage adaptation of the 1963 movie “The Nutty Professor.”Andy Ryan for The New York TimesThe couple chose Cold Spring in part because of a key resemblance to Nyack, where they both grew up and were high school sweethearts: The main stem in both villages slopes down to the Hudson. The house was also appealing for its proximity to the train station — a 12-minute walk, critical for Mr. Holmes, who has never learned to drive. “One of my eccentricities,” he said.But the move was not without drama. The couple stayed in Scarsdale for several months after closing on the property so that Mr. Holmes could finish a project in Manhattan. It was winter, and the pipes in the new house froze and burst, flooding the place. To focus on the good news, the house was insured. And because they hadn’t yet shuttled their possessions upstate, nothing was lost. Plus, they now had an opportunity to make some design adjustments.Borrowing square footage from a porch, they built a sunroom adjacent to the dining room. On the second floor, a wall between two small bedrooms came down to make a more expansive office for Mr. Holmes. Soil was excavated so that he could have a window — let there be light — in his basement studio. And the powder room was redone in a symphony of black-and-gold lacquer to serve as a color-appropriate backdrop for his many framed gold records. When a plumber comes to do repair work, Mr. Holmes said ruefully, “his quote changes after he’s been in the bathroom.”The British-born Mr. Holmes began life as David Goldstein; he changed his name when he got into the music business in the late 1960s. “Rupert” was a nod to the poet Rupert Brooke. “Holmes” was a tip of the deerstalker to …. well, it’s pretty elementary.A kidney-shaped platform is a favorite spot where Mr. Holmes likes to read al fresco.Andy Ryan for The New York TimesWith its show posters, Hirschfeld caricatures, framed sheet music and shelves of scripts, awards and branded mugs, the house could be viewed as celebration of Mr. Holmes’s life in the entertainment business. But really, it’s a valentine to Victoriana and to Baker Street’s most famous resident.The Victorian hat stand in the foyer sets the tone. Three rare Sherlock Holmes movie posters and an Inverness cape hang in the dining room, along with a painting of the legendary detective and Dr. Watson that Mr. Holmes commissioned. The Victorian cabinet that he and Ms. Holmes bought early in their marriage sits in the living room. A rose-colored globe lamp on a marble-topped Victorian-style table keeps the theme going in the sunroom. A Victorian student lamp helps light the office.Just before the pandemic, Mr. Holmes’s next-door neighbor decided to sell his house and an adjoining parcel of land. “I realized this was the last piece of property in Cold Spring with a view of the Hudson that did not have a house on it,” Mr. Holmes said. “And I was probably the only person in the world who wouldn’t want to develop that land and build a house on it to sell or live in.”The view from the bay window in the living room takes in the Hudson River and Storm King Mountain.Andy Ryan for The New York TimesHe knew that if he didn’t buy the land, someone else would. Hello bulldozers, goodbye expansive water views. “Without a moment’s thought, I offered him well above what he was asking,” he said. “So now I’ve gone from having a house with a small footprint to having around three acres.”Cleared of scrub and weeds, the terrain has become a sloping pocket park complete with a gazebo. A small platform beneath towering oaks is a favored destination for Mr. Holmes when he wants a break. Or, as he once so lucratively put it, an escape.For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. More

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      Sarah Steele, of ‘The Good Fight,’ on Finding Love in Brooklyn

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      The actress, who plays Marissa Gold on the legal drama, fell hard for her new Brooklyn Heights co-op — and for her new partner, a lawyer.During her 20s, like countless other New Yorkers in that age group, Sarah Steele “bopped around apartments that mostly, you know, weren’t so nice,” she said.Ms. Steele’s résumé of rentals includes studio apartments in Prospect Heights and Williamsburg, Brooklyn, as well as a diminutive one-bedroom in Williamsburg that she shared with a longtime (now ex) boyfriend.A few years ago, when a college roommate went through a breakup of her own, “I saw it as an opportunity to live with an old friend. We moved in together in October of 2019, so we did the whole pandemic together basically watching ‘Sex and the City,’” said Ms. Steele, now 33, who plays the fearless secretary turned P.I. turned lawyer Marissa Gold on the Paramount+ legal drama “The Good Fight.” Its sixth and final season begins Sept. 8.The two-bedroom apartment in Park Slope, Brooklyn, was a strange place: The oversized bathroom with its Jacuzzi and red light seemed to have been conceived with Russian oligarchs in mind. And it was a strange, troublous time.“I haven’t talked about this publicly much, but I had cancer,” Ms. Steele said. “I had a sarcoma in my leg — which, you know, knock on wood, I’m cancer-free now — but I had to have surgery and couldn’t walk for the first, like, two months we were in the apartment.”Sarah Steele, 33Occupation: ActorHome sweet home: “A couple of months ago, there was a really, really long, hard day on ‘The Good Fight,’ where I didn’t get home until like 3:00 in the morning or something. I put my bag down and starting sobbing with gratitude that I have this place.”She continued: “We were like, ‘We are due for some good luck.’ And my roommate got up one day and said, ‘We are both going to find amazing love while we’re in this apartment.’”Sure enough, two months later, both found “incredible partners,” Ms. Steele said. Then, in the summer of 2021, she found an incredible co-op in Brooklyn Heights. And barely a week ago, her incredible partner, Sean Patrick Smith, a lawyer, moved in with her.Sarah Steele, who plays Marissa Gold on the Paramount+ series “The Good Fight,” lives in a two-bedroom co-op on the fifth floor of a walk-up building in Brooklyn Heights. “I walked in and fell completely in love,” she said. Regan Wood for The New York TimesThere are two love stories to unpack here, and one quite stunning coincidence.Love story No. 1 involves the apartment: a light-filled, two-bedroom walk-up with a wall of casement windows in the living room, two decorative fireplaces, a kitchen with a skylight, and a washer and dryer (no more lugging sacks of dirty clothes to the laundromat). But the most persuasive selling point was the array of built-in bookcases. “I was an English major, and I’m totally book-obsessed and so is my partner,” Ms. Steele said.“I walked in and I was like, ‘I really want to buy this place,’” she said. “I asked my parents to come look at it, because I was like, ‘I can’t tell if I’ve just gone insane and can’t see what’s problematic,’ because it is a fifth-floor walk-up. But then my parents came and they were like, ‘Nope, you’re not insane. Get it right now.’”Love story No. 2 stars Mr. Smith, whom Ms. Steele met on Tinder. On their first date, the two learned they were from the same neighborhood outside of Philadelphia. But there was another, far more rom-com-ready real estate connection: The house Ms. Steele grew up in had previously been owned by Mr. Smith’s grandmother, who turned it into a day care center after raising 10 children there.“The plates look like they’re trying to escape,” she said of the wall display in the kitchen.Regan Wood for The New York Times“Through talking to Sean, I was like, ‘Wait, are you talking about this house in Philly where I grew up?’ I was like, ‘Wait, I know your family!’” Ms. Steele recalled. “I told him, ‘I was like 5 years old and putting on a little concert for your grandmother.’”Among Mr. Smith’s contributions to the ornamentation of his new home: a portrait of said grandmother with a background that Ms. Steele recognized as the first floor of her parents’ house. The painting now hangs over the fireplace in the living room.The apartment represents Ms. Steele’s first stab at serious nesting. “Before, it was like, ‘I know I’ll only be here for a couple of years,’” she said. “And when that’s true, you don’t want to buy crazy expensive furniture, because who knows if it’s going to fit in your next place.”A bit at sea, she enlisted the aid of Adam Charlap Hyman, a designer and artist. Their first conversation went something like this:Mr. Charlap Hyman: Could you tell me some things you like in other people’s houses?Ms. Steele: I really like when people hang up Christmas lights all year long.Mr. Charlap Hyman: We’re not doing that.Ms. Steele: OK. Well, I really like tie-dye.Mr. Charlap Hyman: No.The built-in bookcases were a big selling point for Ms. Steele.Regan Wood for The New York TimesBut Mr. Charlap Hyman took note of the bohemian aesthetic his client was after and offered up a version that was, as he put it, classier, with an adroit deployment of patterns on the sofa and on a pair of recently acquired stools. The two had a meeting of the minds about a custom-made daybed under the living room windows (perfect!) and an arrangement of pottery plates on a wall in the kitchen. “They’re awesome,” said Ms. Steele, who independently elected to go with beaded curtains to conceal the washer-dryer unit.“I grew up with a beaded curtain in front of my childhood bedroom,” she said. “But they were pink and plastic, and from Hot Topic.”Star-struck bargain hunters hit pay dirt this past weekend: Ms. Steele and Mr. Smith had a stoop sale to divest themselves of duplicate pots, pans and other kitchenware. But the couple have seamlessly commingled their books, their art (much of it covers the walls of the second bedroom) and their greenery.“But I’m a plant killer,” Ms. Steele confided. “All the ones that look good are Sean’s.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate. More