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      in Music

      For Chloe Flower, the Décor Always Serves the Music

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      With a few exceptions, the composer and social media influencer’s walls are bare. But who needs art when you have Liberace’s piano?The test of a first-rate intelligence, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time while still managing to function.Chloe Flower (neé Won), the composer, pianist and influencer can relate: For the past three years, she has lived happily on the 63rd floor of New York by Gehry, an apartment tower in the financial district. And yet, she is also “really scared of heights.”But Ms. Flower, 35, the spirited, couture-clad presence at the keyboard when Cardi B performed “Money” at the 2019 Grammys, is nothing if not pragmatic. The music videos she shoots in her two-bedroom rental — the cityscape a key element — have helped her build a robust following on social media.“I took one for the team because of Instagram,” said Ms. Flower, whose repertoire includes hits by the likes of Drake, Nicki Minaj and Kendrick Lamar, played in the style of Bach and Beethoven — or, as Ms. Flower characterizes it, pop-sical. “But really, when you look out the window and straight across, you don’t have a sense of depth.”Chloe Flower was born Chloe Won, but was nicknamed Flower as a child, and flowers are always close at hand. An arrangement sits atop the bedazzled Baldwin concert grand, a loaner from the Liberace estate.Katherine Marks for The New York TimesChloe Flower, 35Occupation: Composer and pianistSpecial Delivery: “During Covid, I was buying cabinets online from Restoration Hardware, and I forgot to remove the bed I had put in the shopping cart. When the guys from the shipping company arrived, they said, ‘We have your bed,’ and I said, ‘What bed?’ So now I have an accidental blue bed.”Also, up there in the stratosphere, Ms. Flower is at a considerable remove from ambient street noise. She was, thus, able to record most of her self-titled debut album at home. It’s due out July 16.Location. Location. Location. So goes the real estate mantra. To which Ms. Flower responds: Who cares? Who cares? Who cares? “Whenever I’m looking for an apartment, I’m never concerned where it is, because I’m either working from home or working in a studio,” she said.“I prefer certain areas of New York, of course,” added Ms. Flower, who previously rented in Union Square and Gramercy Park. “But New York has everything everywhere. Same with Los Angeles.”In fact, she was living in L.A. when she and her boyfriend, Michael Sepso, a New York-based entrepreneur, decided to move in together and began looking for suitable quarters.It was the musician Questlove who introduced his pal Ms. Flower to New York by Gehry. He is a tenant, “and when I saw his place, that was it,” she said. “I was, like, ‘Wait. Hold on. The view.’ I was so excited.”One attraction was the bay window in the living room, which “makes the apartment feel much bigger,” Ms. Flower said of the space, which is almost 1,400 square feet.Much of it is ceded to the Steinway Spirio|r, a piano that can record and play back performances, and to a Baldwin SD10 concert grand with a transparent lid and a cladding of hundreds of glass tiles, a loaner from the estate of Liberace to add flash to those Instagram videos. The man known as Mr. Showmanship often took it on tour. “Aesthetically, it doesn’t look like any piano you’ve ever seen. It’s really, really cool,” Ms. Flower said.“I love Liberace,” she added. “I know he’s not a traditional classical pianist, but he used his flair and drama and passion to break into the mainstream pop world. I like to celebrate him.”Ms. Flower loves having friends and family visit. Pre-Covid, everyone in her orbit referred to the second bedroom, now an office-slash-workout area, as Hotel Chloe. But visitors don’t have too many places to perch. There are no easy chairs, and Ms. Flower ditched her purple Ligne Roset sofa two years ago, when the Liberace joined the Steinway.“It was beautiful,” she said. “But when I had to choose between a second piano and a couch, it was, like, ‘A piano, of course.’”To be sure, there are other things in the living-and-dining room: a wood dining table; a teak tree-trunk console, a Yamaha keyboard, a pair of sculptural bookshelves, a vase or three of flowers, and many white candles. Ms. Flower buys them by the dozen from Amazon, lighting and shuffling them around as the spirit moves her.“I love their glow. I like the way they look when they’ve burned down,” she said. “They’re romantic and I think they set a mood, especially at night against the city lights.”But the décor must always serve the music. “When I’m composing, I don’t like to have a lot of distractions, and clutter is distracting,” she said. “I like the space to be clear, so I feel I have a clean slate.”Ms. Flower wrote her latest composition, “Tamie,” on the Steinway.Katherine Marks for The New York TimesConsequently, with the exception of a gilded mirror and a TV screen that doubles as a canvas to display digital art, the walls are bare. So are most surfaces.The annotated piano books and sheet music that Ms. Flower has had since childhood — “if there were a fire, I’d take them out first” — were briefly on a shelf in the living room.“But they just looked a little messy, a lot of loose paper,” she said, so she consigned them to a Restoration Hardware cabinet in the couple’s bedroom. She even turned down the offer of a candelabra from the Liberace estate because it would block the view — a key source of inspiration during the creative process.Ms. Flower describes herself as a homebody. But she would be that much happier at home if it had a dedicated recording studio and sufficient space to show off some of her mother’s artwork.“And,” she said, “there’s a third piano I want to buy. I asked my boyfriend, ‘What if we got rid of the dining table?’”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate. More

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      in Theater

      National Black Theater Plans Next Act in a New Harlem High-Rise

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      The pathbreaking company plans to replace its Harlem home with a 21-story building with apartments, retail and a new theater.It was more than 50 years ago that Barbara Ann Teer rented space in a building at 125th Street and Fifth Avenue in Harlem that would serve as the home of a nascent organization called National Black Theater.The theater blossomed into an important cultural anchor, presenting productions by, and about, Black Americans when their stories rarely appeared on mainstream stages, and hosting artists including Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, Nina Simone, Nikki Giovanni and Maya Angelou. When the building was destroyed in a fire in 1983, many feared that the theater was doomed, said Sade Lythcott, Teer’s daughter. But Teer had another idea: She decided to buy the damaged 64,000-square-foot building on Fifth Avenue, with a vision of revitalizing it and trying to use real estate to help pay for the theater’s work.Sade Lythcott, the theater’s chief executive, sees the development as a continuation of the plans that her mother, Barbara Ann Teer, made after founding the theater.Braylen Dion for The New York Times“She saw it as the next piece of this temple to Black liberation, which is ownership,” said Lythcott, the theater’s chief executive. “Ownership would allow the real estate to subsidize the art, which was a model that would disrupt the standard practice of nonprofit theater funding.”The move did not solve all their problems. There were struggles over the years, and a series of financial disputes that at one point left the theater on the brink of losing its home, but the work continued. Now National Black Theater is getting ready for its next act: It is replacing its longtime home with a 21-story building that will include a mix of housing, retail and, on floors three through five, a gleaming new home for the theater.Lythcott and other National Black Theater leaders see the $185 million project, and the partnership they are entering with developers, as a new chapter with the financial and institutional backing to allow them to live out the dream of Teer, who died in 2008: to nurture a space where Black artists can thrive, and the company can work to bring a deeper sense of racial justice to the American theater industry.“What we’re building today really has been informed in all ways by this blueprint that Dr. Teer put into place starting in 1968,” Lythcott said. “It feels like what our community of Black artists and the community of Harlem deserve.”To realize the development project, National Black Theater has partnered with a new real estate firm, Ray, which was founded by Dasha Zhukova, a Russian-American art collector and philanthropist. Also joining the project are the subsidized housing developer L + M, the architect Frida Escobedo, the firm Handel Architects, and the design firms working on National Black Theater’s space, Marvel, Charcoalblue, and Studio & Projects.The planning for the new development has come at a turning point in the theater world. With theaters closed for more than a year because of the pandemic, many institutions have been called on to turn inward and interrogate their own histories of racism and inequity, with many prominent voices calling for change when theaters reopen. It is the kind of discussion National Black Theater has been involved in for decades. This year Lythcott has advised Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on reopening the arts and, as chair for the Coalition of Theaters of Color, has spoken up about racial justice in arts budget negotiations.Before they decided to work together, Lythcott and Zhukova had to have a frank conversation early on about a high-profile misstep in Zhukova’s past.On Martin Luther King’s Birthday in 2014, an online fashion magazine published a photo of Zhukova sitting on a chair — designed by the Norwegian artist Bjarne Melgaard — that was constructed from a cushion arranged atop a sculpture of a partially clothed Black woman laying on her back, in some sort of bondage. Zhukova apologized for the photo, saying that using this artwork in a photo shoot was regrettable, “as it took the artwork totally out of its intended context.”Lythcott learned of this photo just before she met Zhukova for dinner for the first time — in fact she was Googling Zhukova on her phone at the restaurant before they met to discuss the development project. At the dinner, Zhukova brought up the incident first, Lythcott said, explaining that she would understand if the episode cast too much of a shadow on the project. But Lythcott wasn’t fazed by it, she said, because it was clear all that Zhukova had learned from the incident.“Perhaps that chair was the best thing that ever happened to Dasha,” Lythcott said, “because it was catalytic in expanding the lens by which she sees the world.”In an email, Zhukova said that she was “deeply sorry” for the photo and said that it had started her on a “journey of continued learning and education.”“I am so grateful that Sade sees the person I am trying to be on my continued journey toward personal growth,” she wrote.Barbara Ann Teer, center foreground, founder of National Black Theater, with the cast of one of her productions in 1970.via National Black Theater ArchivesThe new building being planned, for 2033 Fifth Avenue, is slated to include 222 units of housing, an event space and a communal living room where people might eat, work and hang out; a news release says “amenities will include health and wellness programming.”The development project is more than a decade in the making, with several false starts. Lythcott and her brother — Michael Lythcott, who is the chair of the National Black Theater’s board — see it as a realization of their mother’s dream, while recognizing that she might not have taken some of the paths they chose.“She never would have partnered with someone like Ray; she never would have had financing from Goldman Sachs,” Michael Lythcott said, noting that Teer had wanted full control over the building, and preferred to keep involvement limited to those inside the community.But it is all a means to an end that their mother energetically championed throughout her life: an “ecosystem by which Black people in particular are full-throated, full-voiced, fully rooted in their own liberation,” Sade Lythcott said.By the time construction starts this fall, theater in New York is likely to be back in full force. While the new building is going up, National Black Theater will use the Apollo Theater’s office space and two of its performance spaces. And by the time construction is slated to end, in spring 2024, National Black Theater leaders hope that the space will become a place to convene, both for art and the kind of community interaction that was sorely missed over the past year.“In the wake of this pandemic,” said Jonathan McCrory, National Black Theater’s executive artistic director, “there’s going to be a kind of psychic grief that is going to need to have a healing center.” More

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      in Television

      Krysta With a Y Plays Liza With a Z

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      For Krysta Rodriguez, who stars as Liza Minnelli in the new Netflix series ‘Halston,’ acting and decorating aren’t that far apart.Krysta Rodriguez got her first look at New York City through the windows of the motor home that was ferrying her family around the country on an extended road trip. Along the way, there was a stop to take in a show — the 1990 Broadway revival of “Fiddler on the Roof.”“And that set me on the path to where I am today,” said Ms. Rodriguez, now 36, whose CV includes the musicals “Spring Awakening” and “The Addams Family,” as well as a number of television series, among them “Smash” and “Quantico,” and Netflix productions like the post-apocalyptic comedy-drama “Daybreak” and the five-episode bio-drama “Halston,” which debuts on May 14.Ewan McGregor stars as the fashion designer whose minimalist cashmere and Ultrasuede women’s wear became synonymous with 1970s elegance, and whose hard-partying ways became synonymous with ’70s decadence. Krysta with a Y plays Liza with a Z, one of Halton’s best friends.Ms. Rodriguez, who lives in a two-bedroom condominium in Harlem, has designer chops of her own. “My mom is a realtor in California, and I’m her decorator,” she said. “When I was growing up, we would buy and renovate houses and sell them, which I didn’t love because it always meant that you were moving into the worst house in the neighborhood, and then leaving the best house. It wasn’t great for status at school.”She added: “But then I found myself decorating everywhere I went.”Krysta Rodriguez, one of the stars of the new Neflix series “Halston,” recently redid her condo in Harlem, in a homage to the 1970s designer. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesKrysta Rodriguez, 36Occupation: ActorNew stages: “I’m launching an interior design business. I’ll always be an actor — I love acting — but I think there are parallels with the two professions: You inhabit a character the way you inhabit a space.”Whenever Ms. Rodriguez is in a Broadway show, for example, she paints and furnishes her dressing room, then leaves it all behind for the next presumably grateful trouper. During the “Daybreak” shoot in Albuquerque, while some of her castmates opted for luxury apartments, she went for an adobe house, moved all the furniture into one room and outfitted the rest of the rental to her own taste. “I have a passion for beautifying,” she said.Ms. Rodriguez was cast in her first Broadway musical, the short-lived “Good Vibrations,” in 2005, while she was an undergrad at New York University. The roles that followed enabled her to buy a tiny studio apartment in Chelsea. She held onto it for seven years before selling in 2017 and buying the sunny, high-ceilinged condo in Harlem, and moving there with her boyfriend. (The relationship has since ended.)The space, almost 900 square feet, put an end to ever so carefully maneuvering around this object or that piece of furniture, so much a part of life in Chelsea.“Things fit, and that’s been a big upgrade for me,” said Ms. Rodriguez, who has renovated the bathroom, adding a Japanese toilet (“it is so civilized,” she said), and replaced several bifold doors. The washer and dryer are now concealed by an old sliding door from a piano factory. “I love that it’s a little stained and has a patina,” she said. The front closet has a carved Moroccan door.“The dressing room is very not neutral,” Ms. Rodriguez said. “I want it to feel very glamorous.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesOf course, now that Ms. Rodriguez is the apartment’s sole occupant, her needs are the only ones that must be addressed, her sense of style the only one that must be accommodated. “I can explore the space in a new way,” she said.Inspiration for the do-over came during the “Halston” shoot. She had always thought of the 1970s as the Dark Ages of design: shag carpeting and a baffling celebration of orange. But while on set she discovered a more chic aspect of the decade, an aesthetic that was glamorous and tactile, tidy and streamlined, monochrome and luxe.“I remember thinking, ‘This is my style,’” said Ms. Rodriguez, who committed fully, even buying into the discrete charms of fluffy rugs.“My apartment is an homage to Halston and Liza,” Ms. Rodriguez said. “I wanted it to feel like the place you go after the party where you danced all night long. That was Halston’s townhouse — the swinging place to be.”At Chez Rodriguez, revelers at some post-pandemic, wee-small-hours gathering will disport themselves on the tufted, off-white-velvet sofa, lie on the off-white shag-wool area rug or lean against the sculptural, camel-colored Ultrasuede poufs. Paintings by Keren Toledano hew to the room’s limited color palette. Overhead lighting and sconces were recently installed; they have been outfitted with Philips Hue bulbs, “so I can choose different colors to set different moods,” she said.The floating white-lacquer wood shelf in the living room displays the building blocks of an artsy jet-set life: a reproduction vintage record player, retro barware, a functional vintage Polaroid camera, a bowl of foreign currency and an ashtray complete with a “Halston” prop cigarette.“I’d rather have fewer things, and have them in the space where they belong, rather than storing shoes in the oven because there isn’t enough room elsewhere,” Ms. Rodriguez said. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe apartment’s second bedroom embodies the more glam, anything-but-neutral side of the ’70s. She painted the walls plaster-pink, and there’s a vanity table, a rust-colored velvet bench and — hello, Studio 54 — a rust-colored disco ball.The space has been carefully thought out, from the entryway — vintage metal chair slung with a shag cushion; mirror with white-plaster frame — to the corners of the room, “where people can sit and hang, and feel fabulous,” Ms. Rodriguez said.“I want everything to feel very much of a piece. I am curated. I am meticulous,” she added firmly. “I am not eclectic.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate. More

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      in Television

      A ‘Blue Bloods’ Regular on the Importance of ‘Yes’

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      For the actor Vanessa Ray, what makes a one-bedroom near Lincoln Center home are a few essentials: Bill Nye, blankets and one three-letter word.Vanessa Ray has lived in New York City on and off for the past decade, renting or subletting in the theater district, on the far reaches of Upper West Side, in Brooklyn and, more than once, in Lincoln Square.“I had always watched the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on television, and when I was starting to pursue being an actor, I was like, ‘I’m going to shoot my shot in New York,’” said Ms. Ray, 39, who plays feisty policewoman Eddie Janko, now a regular around the Reagan dinner table, on the long-running CBS police procedural “Blue Bloods.” (The Season 11 finale airs May 14.)It was the beginning of a great love affair.“This is where my heart is,” said Ms. Ray, who was raised in Portland, Ore., and subsequently moved to Los Angeles where, thanks to roles on “Pretty Little Liars,” “Suits” and “Blue Bloods,” she owns a house in the hills. “I love California. When I have three months off, I go and soak up the sun and swim in the pool, and then I come back here to real living.”Ms. Ray is very big on the affirmation of “yes” signs. She is equally big on photos of family and friends. Haley BondVanessa Ray, 39Occupation: ActorLip service: “When I was first on ‘Blue Bloods,’ I was subletting a place in the theater district. You walk around there and you run into just about every actor you know. I was dating different people, and one guy went to kiss me on Ninth Avenue, and I was like, ‘You can’t kiss me on Ninth Avenue. That’s saying something. Let’s take it to 10th Avenue when it’s a new relationship.’”Not long after her 2015 marriage to Landon Beard, a Los Angeles-based musician who comes to New York as frequently as possible, Ms. Ray took it into her head to try Brooklyn on for size. It didn’t fit, even if the two-bedroom she rented in Williamsburg, near McCarren Park, was an easy walk to the “Blue Bloods” set in Greenpoint.“I was going through a tough time emotionally, and because of that I knew I needed to return to Manhattan,” Ms. Ray said. Fortunately, one of her best friends, Jessica Waxman, is a real estate agent. Ms. Waxman presented three or four options, all near Lincoln Center and all near her own apartment, so the two women could easily meet for morning coffee and walks in Central Park.The light tan sectional, bought several years ago at Crate & Barrel, was Ms. Ray’s first big furniture purchase.Vanessa Ray“Jess was like, ‘OK, Vanessa, you need a kitchen that’s big enough to cook all the things you like to cook and big enough for me to watch you while you’re doing it,’” Ms. Ray said. “She also knew I needed outdoor space and a view of some kind.“I like to wake up and look outside and think, ‘I’ve got to get in it. I’ve got to get out there,’” she said. “That’s the driving force of any success I’ve had in New York.”A year and a half ago, Ms. Ray moved into what she describes as “a nice, healing space”: a one-bedroom apartment with a balcony in a full-service postwar building, where she can see the Hudson River from the windows in the living room and bedroom.In the entryway, there is a photo of Ms. Ray and Mr. Beard walking on the beach in Santa Monica in the early days of their courtship, and another of them on their wedding day in Pala, Calif. Make no mistake. They look very happy.But (and you’re reading it here first): She has a thing for another guy, a science guy. His portrait — and it’s a big one — also hangs in the entryway.“I love Bill Nye,” said Ms. Ray, who bought the likeness at a vintage shop in Portland. “I was home-schooled as a kid. Bill Nye did a segment on ‘The Mickey Mouse Club,’ and he was always doing stuff and blowing things up. It got my brother and me excited about science, and we’ve really leaned into it over the years. If I could meet Bill Nye, I would be speechless.”When it comes to blankets, she can’t possibly say no.Vanessa RayUntil then, she’ll take what she can get. Some years ago, when her “Blue Bloods” co-star Will Estes met Mr. Nye at an industry event, he scored an autographed coaster for Ms. Ray. It’s tucked into a corner of the picture frame.When Ms. Ray became a series regular in 2013, she latched onto a very substantial tan sectional from Crate & Barrel. “This couch is huge. It’s practically a twin bed,” she said. “It was the most expensive thing I had ever bought in my life.”Perhaps in the interest of getting her money’s worth, Ms. Ray has brought it along to every apartment she has rented in the intervening years. “I will say, I don’t need a lot,” she said. “If I have a couch and a blanket, I’m pretty thrilled.”Those who know Ms. Ray will laugh at the above declaration about “a blanket.” She has, at last count, about a dozen blankets in the apartment, all stashed in baskets — among them, Mexican blankets, Pendleton blankets, camp blankets and a white polyester number from Restoration Hardware of surpassing softness and coziness.“My husband is like, ‘Enough blankets, babe,’ but I like to switch things up,” she said.She feels the same way about kitchen towels. She has them for every holiday: Valentine’s Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, Halloween. “I’ve got them all,” Ms. Ray said. “I think I was a school receptionist in another life.”Her collection of essential kitchen utensils is, by contrast, positively austere. The most frequently used are a citrus squeezer (she squirts lemon on pretty much everything) and a couple of pairs of tongs: “You can stir with them. You can sauté with them. You can toss a salad. You can flip a steak. You can use them to get something out of the oven real quick.”Those tools are stored in the drawer of a butcher-block-topped kitchen cart that also holds a Nespresso machine and an Aicook juicer, a recent acquisition. “This is the key spot,” Ms. Ray said of the cart. “It was the perfect size. The story of my life is that I’m always one inch off, but this really nailed it.”Ms. Ray doesn’t require many kitchen tools, but she’d be utterly lost without tongs and a citrus squeezer. Vanessa RayWatching over her in the kitchen are photos of her grandfather, a master of the barbecue, and her uncle, Scott Smith, who taught her the joys of spices and sushi.If the kitchen is the apartment’s center of activity, the living room is a place for reflection. There, Ms. Ray sits on a pouf near the TV cabinet, writes in her journal and reads. If affirmation is what she’s after at the end of a tough day, she need look only as far as the table next to the sectional, where “yes” is spelled in wood blocks.“I have ‘yes’ signs everywhere,” she said. “When I first moved to Los Angeles, I had a friend who did that growing up, and I was like, ‘I want to do that, too, so I can remember to stay positive.’”There’s another ‘yes,’ in brass letters, in the bedroom. Ms. Ray and Mr. Beard are currently in talks about getting a neon ‘yes’ sign. “But,” she said with a sigh, “we haven’t said yes to it yet.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate. More

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      in Television

      The ‘Sentimental Excess’ of Sarah Stiles

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWhat I LoveThe ‘Sentimental Excess’ of Sarah StilesThe actor, who stars in the Netflix series ‘The Crew’ and is a regular on ‘Billions,’ is like a slightly goofy sitcom neighbor with an otherworldly home.Sarah Stiles’s Otherworldly Style14 PhotosView Slide Show ›Katherine Marks for The New York TimesMarch 16, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETSarah Stiles’s first address in New York was the Stratford Arms, an Upper West Side building that serves as campus housing for students at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy. Fittingly, the experience had its share of theatrics.The year was 1999. Ms. Stiles’s parents, though long divorced, jointly shepherded her from “the hippie woods of New Hampshire” to the urban jungle of West 70th Street. “And when we got there, there was a giant inflatable rat in front of the building, and people were picketing,” said Ms. Stiles, 41, a star of the new Netflix comedy series “The Crew” and a recurring cast member — Axe Capital trader Bonnie Barella — on Showtime’s “Billions.”The room at the Stratford Arms was too small to accommodate a standard twin bed, and at the time, some of the building’s nonstudent residents were being treated for mental illness, she recalled.“There was a guy who would scream ‘Maria’ at me every night in an angry voice,” said Ms. Stiles, a two-time Tony nominee — for her performance in the play “Hand to God” and her showstopping turn in the musical “Tootsie.” “Things could only go up from there.”The Upper West Side apartment shared by Sarah Stiles, a two-time Tony nominee and a star of the new Netflix series “The Crew,” and her husband, Jeff Dodson, has an otherworldly feeling. She prefers the term “sentimental excess” to describe her style.Credit…Katherine Marks for The New York TimesSarah Stiles, 41Occupation: ActorHome comforts: “I’m the kind of person who makes a home out of anywhere I go. If I’m working regionally or shooting a movie far away, I bring things like photos.”And they did. After bouncing around the boroughs, followed by a brief marriage that landed her in Washington, D.C., and a lot of couch-surfing when she returned to New York, Ms. Stiles got the fairly steady use of a two-bedroom rental not far from that Upper West Side residence hall. Now she lives there full-time — and officially — with her husband of almost six months, Jeff Dodson. (The second bedroom has been outfitted to accommodate Mr. Dodson’s two daughters, Lily and Addy, who spend part of each week there.)“This place has major history for me,” Ms. Stiles said.It began almost 20 years ago, when she visited the apartment as a plus-one for a game night; her future first husband was a pal of the host. Soon, Ms. Stiles became the host’s pal, too. The friendship survived the breakup of her marriage, and Ms. Stiles often used the apartment as a crash pad.“When ‘Hand to God’ came around, my friend’s roommate was moving out and my friend was spending a lot of time in Los Angeles,” she said. “So, basically, it was my own place for this really incredible time in my life both personally and professionally. I did a lot of growing up here.”In the fall of 2018, two years after she met Mr. Dodson, who is the head electrician at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater, Ms. Stiles moved from the apartment she loved to the Inwood apartment of the man she loved. Three months later, just about the time she had finished redecorating Mr. Dodson’s apartment, and right before the start of rehearsals for “Tootsie,” her friend called. He was vacating the apartment for good and wanted to sign the lease over to her. “He said that he wanted me to live there with Jeff and Jeff’s daughters,” recalled Ms. Stiles. She was happy to oblige.Ms. Stiles has a thing for squirrels, so the acorn lamp makes perfect sense.Credit…Katherine Marks for The New York Times“We moved everything in, like, a weekend,” she said. “We repainted. We got some furniture, and now it’s our house.”Several years and several rentals ago, Ms. Stiles made an unsuccessful stab at minimalism. Recently, she has contemplated following the example of a friend whose apartment was done in shades of cream and gray. “It was beautiful,” she said.But she knew perfectly well that the red plastic chair that is part of her reading nook in the main bedroom, and the layered, multicolored tasseled rugs and pea-green side chair in the living room would be out in the cold with such a restrained palette. She loves bright colors. She loves bold patterns.Ms. Stiles is the square root of a charming but slightly goofy sitcom neighbor. Her apartment reflects those qualities. The aesthetic may best be summed up as otherworldly woodland: tarot cards and an abundance of crystals mix with tiny figures created from sticks and twigs. A bird made of straw seems poised for flight in one window. In another, there’s a plush pigeon — a gift from Mr. Dodson, who, when he was first courting Ms. Stiles, saved the day when an actual pigeon flew into the apartment. Squirrels and their accouterment are represented in many forms: The base of a bedside lamp, for example, is shaped like an acorn.Ms. Stiles prefers the term “sentimental excess” to describe her style.Paintings by her aunt, her grandmother and great-grandmother hang in the living room and the main bedroom. Every window sill has a vignette, composed in part of drawings by Ms. Stiles’s niece and nephew, keepsakes from friends and tender mementos like the pine cone from a hike Ms. Stiles and Mr. Dodson took the day before their wedding.“This apartment, the way it is with Jeff and his kids and me, is the most comfortable space I’ve ever had,” said Ms. Stiles (in Riverside Park with Mr. Dodson and her stepdaughters, Lily Dodson, left, and Addy Dodson).Credit…Katherine Marks for The New York TimesA map of Oklahoma, Mr. Dodson’s home state, hangs in the bedroom. “Everything is here for a reason, and it all means something to me,” Ms. Stiles said.The apartment isn’t perfect, and she’d be the first to say so. It’s either too hot or too cold. No matter how often she scrubs the bathtub, it doesn’t look clean. Because of a wall, the refrigerator barely opens a foot.And yet. “It feels like I’ve been waiting my whole life to feel as safe and comfortable in a physical place as I do in this apartment,” Ms. Stiles said. “The things that my family and I love are here. We don’t think, ‘Oh, we’ll get nicer versions when we have more money.’ We’d choose them regardless.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      in Theater

      Rescuing an Off Off Broadway Theater With a Storied Past

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      Preservationists hope to save the 13th Street Repertory Company building, with a little help from the Underground Railroad. When Edith O’Hara, the mother hen and indefatigable leader of the eclectic 13th Street Repertory Company for nearly half a century, died last fall at age 103, the future became decidedly shaky for one of Off Off Broadway’s longest-operating stages.In an effort to ensure that it’s not the end of the run as well for the antebellum brick house where both the theater and Ms. O’Hara made their homes, preservationists are urging the city to grant landmark protection to the three-story Greek Revival structure.The city Landmarks Preservation Commission told an advocacy group in January that the quaint 1840s rowhouse with the intricate cast-iron portico at 50 West 13th Street was not distinguished enough to warrant landmark protection on its architectural merits, noting that further study was needed to determine the building’s “cultural significance within the context of Off Off Broadway theater.” Consequently, the group, Village Preservation, has dived into the archives to try to demonstrate that the building is a worthy cultural landmark based not only on its theatrical history but also on an intriguing, newly unearthed piece of African-American history involving a prominent 19th-century Black businessman and abolitionist.The new research “is very helpful and we have added it to our records,” Kate Lemos McHale, the commission’s research director, wrote the group on Feb. 24.A commission spokeswoman added in a statement to The Times that the city “is absolutely committed to recognizing Black history in the urban landscape,” which is why the agency recently launched Preserving Significant Places of Black History, “a world-class story map and educational tool.” She said that the city would “continue to review” 50 West 13th Street.Edith O’Hara, the leader of the 13th Street Repertory Company for nearly half a century, at the theater in 2006. Ms. O’Hara died last fall at age 103.Ruby Washington/The New York TimesA place of opportunity for generations of theatrical neophytes of varying talents, the quirky, no-frills 13th Street Repertory Company was an early stop for such performers as Richard Dreyfuss and Chazz Palminteri. “Line,” a one-act play by Israel Horovitz, ran there for more than 40 years, an Off Off Broadway record. And “Boy Meets Boy,” New York’s first hit gay musical, was first staged there in 1974, the brainchild of Bill Solly, an Englishman whom Ms. O’Hara had taken in and allowed to live upstairs from the theater.Whether the show will go on is unknown. The building is owned by White Knight Ltd., of which Ms. O’Hara’s three children collectively own a little over a third. The balance of the shares are owned in equal proportion by Stephan Loewentheil, a bookseller, and his ex-wife, Beth Farber. The O’Haras and Mr. Loewentheil previously fought a bitter, yearslong real estate battle that ended, in 2010, with an agreement that allowed Ms. O’Hara and her theater to remain in the building until her death. There is no provision for what comes next.The Thirteenth Street Repertory Company has been placed in the hands of its artistic director, Joe John Battista, who has vowed to continue making theater under the group’s name. But whether that will happen on 13th Street or elsewhere — and whether the building will ultimately be sold — depends on the outcome of an offstage drama.Jill O’Hara, one of Edith O’Hara’s two daughters, at the theater in 2017. Ms. O’Hara is a minority shareholder of the company that owns the building.John Taggart for The New York Times“It’s all still in the air at this point,” said Jill O’Hara, one of Edith’s daughters, who sits on White Knight’s board. “It’s a complex situation that’s not made any easier by the history with this guy,” she added, referring to Mr. Loewentheil.The building is managed for White Knight by Nate Loewentheil, the son of Mr. Loewentheil and Ms. Farber.“As someone who cares deeply about cities, I appreciate the history of 50 West 13th Street,” Nate Loewentheil said, “but the building has fallen into very significant disrepair over the past 15 years, so we are trying to figure out our next steps.” (Both his parents declined to comment.)Ms. O’Hara said that her mother believed that the building was once part of the Underground Railroad, the network of activists who helped enslaved African-Americans flee north to freedom before the Civil War. That belief has been perpetuated in local lore because a trap door in the theater’s dressing room leads to a hidden basement chamber unconnected to the rest of the basement.Although no evidence has emerged to support the Underground Railroad rumor, new research, performed by Village Preservation and supplemented by an independent historian and a reporter, suggests that the claim may not be outlandish.From 1858 to 1884, city directories and other records show, the house was owned by Jacob Day, a prominent African-American businessman active in abolitionism and other civil rights efforts. By 1871, Day was one of the wealthiest Black residents of New York City, according to The New York Times, with a net worth of more than $75,000, or around $1.6 million in today’s dollars.The Greek Revival house has an intricate cast-iron portico.Katherine Marks for The New York TimesThe building has fallen into disrepair, and its future is uncertain.Katherine Marks for The New York TimesAn 1880 issue of The People’s Advocate called Day “the fashionable caterer of East Thirteenth Street” and identified him as a leading member of “a colored aristocracy” in the city. “Beginning as a waiter, by economy and thrift after years of struggle he saved money enough to go into business himself,” the paper noted, adding that Day owned “several fine houses.”Newspaper articles appear to document Day’s involvement in civil rights causes over more than 30 years. In 1885, the year after his death, his efforts to further African-American self-determination were recognized in a history of Black Americans. “The Colored population of New York was equal to the great emergency that required them to put forth their personal exertions,” wrote George Washington Williams, spotlighting Day, along with his fellow Greenwich Village resident and abolitionist Dr. Henry Highland Garnet, for doing “much to elevate the Negro in self-respect and self-support.”Born in New York around 1817 to parents who were also born in the city, Day appears to have been publicly active in Black civil-rights efforts as a young man. Along with such prominent abolitionists as the New York publisher and Underground Railroad leader David Ruggles, a man named Jacob Day was among a group in 1840 that called, in the pages of The National Anti-Slavery Standard, for a “National Reform Convention of the Colored Inhabitants of the United States of America,” an effort to combat the colonization movement that aimed to resettle Black Americans in Africa.Day was also a prominent member and the longtime treasurer of the Abyssinian Baptist Church, the city’s second oldest Black church, which moved to nearby 166 Waverly Place shortly after Day bought his house and place of business on 13th Street.Tom Calarco, the author of several books on the Underground Railroad, said that an 1852 article in The Standard suggested a strong connection between the church and leading Underground Railroad figures.The newspaper report detailed an anti-colonization meeting at the church that had been called by the Committee of Thirteen, a vigorous Underground Railroad organization. The Rev. John T. Raymond, the church’s pastor, was a member of the committee and served as president at the 1852 meeting.The entrance to the 13th Street Repertory Company, which was shuttered last March because of the coronavirus. Edith O’Hara lived upstairs until her death last fall, and tenants still occupy the building.Katherine Marks for The New York TimesDay was “a major leader of the Black community, and he was connected up with other important people that were in the abolitionist movement,” Mr. Calarco said. “We know for at least 26 years, he was still participating in these important meetings with people who were leaders of the movement, so you have to make that assumption that he, if not directly, was indirectly involved in the Underground Railroad.”Mr. Calarco also shared a document showing that in 1846, Day was one of a roster of African-Americans given land grants in the Adirondack region of upstate New York by Gerrit Smith, a major underwriter of the Underground Railroad.Mr. Calarco speculated that Day may have used his wealth to fund Underground Railroad operations, whose conductors were often pressed for cash. “They needed the money,” he said, “to pay for the food, to pay for the travel, to pay for the clothes, to pay for people who helped transport” fugitives on boats and trains.After the Civil War, with slavery abolished, Day worked to secure the vote for all Black people in New York State. In 1866, The Standard reported, he was one of a group that called for a convention to remove the discriminatory provision in the state constitution that barred Black people from voting unless they owned property valued at the considerable sum of $250. “The war of steel is over … but the war of ideas must go on until in this country true democratic principles shall prevail,” the group wrote, echoing today’s battles over voter suppression.In 1871, a year after the 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution finally prohibited the federal government and the states from denying or abridging the right to vote based on race or color, a massive jubilee parade of Black citizens wended its way uptown from Washington Square, with throngs of Black and white New Yorkers lining the route. At a “grand mass meeting” at the Cooper Union, The Times reported, Day was among the officers who issued a resolution declaring that the 15th Amendment could only improve the lot of Black Americans if “the exercise of the ballot shall at once be made safe, and our right to exercise it be maintained by civil authority.”In 1880, when the Black civil rights leader Frederick Douglass spoke at a rally for the Republican presidential candidate James A. Garfield at the Cooper Union, Day was among the prominent citizens, Black and white, assembled onstage around him.During the period Day lived on 13th Street, the city’s largest African-American neighborhood, known as Little Africa, had developed nearby south of Washington Square, around Minetta Lane and Minetta and Bleecker Streets. The Abyssinian Baptist Church, whose finances Day managed, had moved to the Village to serve this population. So did the Freedman’s Savings Bank, an institution founded to help former slaves after the Civil War. Day kept an account at the bank, perhaps to support its mission.Reflecting on Day’s house on 13th Street, Sylviane A. Diouf, a historian of the African Diaspora who curated a digital exhibit called “Black New Yorkers” for the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, said: “It’s important to preserve and show that there was an African and then an African-American presence in that area from the Dutch years and that they had institutions and businesses. It’s important to stress that, contrary to what people think, African-Americans didn’t just arrive in Harlem during the Great Migration, but they had a presence for 300 years before that.”By the late 19th century, fierce competition for housing from Italian immigrants was already pushing Black residents uptown from the Village to the Tenderloin district. And some of the lingering physical remnants of Little Africa were demolished in the 1920s by the extension of Sixth Avenue from Carmine Street to Canal Street.“Virtually all of the great institutions and landmarks and homes of leading figures of the 19th-century African-American community of Greenwich Village have been lost or highly compromised,” said Andrew Berman, the executive director of Village Preservation. “50 west 13th Street is one of very few remaining homes of a leading African-American figure, not just in business but in the civil rights arena, that is largely intact from the many decades that he lived and worked there in the 19th century.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate. More

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      For a ‘Cobra Kai’ Star, There’s Nothing a Good Basket Won’t Fix

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWhat I LoveFor a ‘Cobra Kai’ Star, There’s Nothing a Good Basket Won’t Fix‘I have a hard time saying no to a basket,’ said the actor Courtney Henggeler, explaining her approach to decorating her family’s Long Island rental.Courtney Henggeler’s Evolving Aesthetic13 PhotosView Slide Show ›Adam Macchia for The New York TimesFeb. 16, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETSmart mothers know better than to bring their young children on trips to the grocery store. The little ones tend to lobby vigorously for things that, in the end, will benefit no one but the family dentist. And they probe, at high volume, matters that Mommy may not want to discuss in public.Courtney Henggeler can speak with some authority on this topic. Not long ago, she was wheeling her cart through the supermarket when her 4-year-old son, Oscar, loudly asked, “Why do we have so many houses?”“People who were listening must have thought we were very wealthy,” said Ms. Henggeler, 42, who co-stars in the hit Netflix series “Cobra Kai,” a spinoff of 1984’s “The Karate Kid.” (She also appeared on “The Big Bang Theory” as Sheldon’s twin sister, and had a recurring role in the first few seasons of “Mom.”) “It’s just that we move around. I film ‘Cobra Kai’ in Atlanta, and we were in a house for three months one year, and the next year we were in another house.”Oscar may be relieved to know that his family — until recently based in Los Angeles, also in a series of rentals — is zeroing in on a permanent address. A year or so ago, Ms. Henggeler, who grew up in the Poconos and in Seaford, Long Island, and her husband, Ross Kohn, a movie producer who was raised in Westchester, decided to move back to New York and settle there to be closer to Ms. Henggeler’s ailing mother.The plan: to rent for a few years and then build their dream house.Courtney Henggeler, 42, one of the stars of the Netflix series “Cobra Kai,” lives with her family in a rented house in Huntington, N.Y. “I love the doors, I love the moldings, I love the big windows,” she said.Credit…Adam Macchia for The New York TimesCourtney Henggeler, 42Occupation: ActorIn the pink: “It was very important to me to have a soft-pink bedroom for my daughter. Poor kid. She’s probably, like, ‘I just want a blue wall, Mom.’”“I’d been to a million weddings before I got married, so I kind of figured out what I wanted and didn’t want for my own wedding,” said Ms. Henggeler, who married Mr. Kohn in 2015 and had a second child, a daughter, Georgie, almost two years ago. “I felt the same about houses. I’ve lived in so many that I kind of knew what I wanted.”What she wanted from a rental “seemed kind of absurd, and my husband looked at me as if I had five heads. But I said, ‘We’ll find it.’”They found it — and more — in the form of a brand-new transitional colonial in Huntington, N.Y. It had four bedrooms. She would have settled for two bathrooms, but got four and a half. A light, bright kitchen with a six-burner stove? Check. Crown moldings? (In abundance.) Dark hardwood floors? (Be still, her heart.)“I never knew how important flooring was,” she said. “My previous homes had orange-y wood. I stay up at night looking at wood flooring on Instagram.”The backyard is smaller than she would have liked, as is the sole bathtub. Family baths, a favorite routine, are now on hold. But those deficiencies were offset by the basement exercise room (“I was like, ‘Who am I, with a gym in my house?’”); the radiant-heat floors in the bathroom (“My children are now, like, ‘I can’t live without heated floor, Mommy,’ and I’m, like, ‘Me, too,’”); the central vacuum system (“What a princess I’ve become; I can’t live without this now, either”); and the kitchen’s instant hot-water dispenser.The foyer is “actually my favorite little spot in the house,” she said.Credit…Adam Macchia for The New York TimesBut Ms. Henggeler was thrilled practically senseless by the foyer, which she has outfitted with a bench and a pillow. “It’s actually my favorite little spot in the house,” she said. “In the house we left in Los Angeles, you walked in and you were immediately in the living room, and that drove me bonkers.”But wait! There’s more: a mudroom. “I always wanted one,” she said. “I love what people do with them. A mudroom is a functional space, but you can have fun with it.”Her idea of fun, in this case, centers on baskets — on coat hooks, under the bench, holding gloves and scarves and grocery bags. “I have a hard time saying no to a basket,” she said. “It’s probably the thing I bought most of for this house. My attitude is: Let’s make it beautiful.”Mr. Kohn’s outerwear apparently falls well short of that standard. “Ross wants to hang his jacket in the mudroom, and I tell him to put it in the closet,” Ms. Henggeler said.Another example of their differing views on décor: He likes a modern look with clean lines, while she gravitates toward old houses and feminine touches. “I came into the relationship with a lot of sparkly things,” she said.Out of regard for her husband’s feelings, she has designated Georgie’s room her “girlie-girl outlet,” painting it a blush-rose and using it as a repository for treasures from her own childhood, among them a mirror, some books and framed pictures. Ms. Henggeler sums it up nicely: “The room looks like my apartment would look now if I hadn’t married a man who doesn’t want to live in a house with pink.”Ms. Henggeler painted the nursery for her daughter, Georgie, pink — her own favorite color.Credit…Adam Macchia for The New York TimesBut she understands the appeal of a different palette. She loves how the slate-gray walls in the dining room set off the collection of Jim Marshall rock-star photographs she inherited from her godfather.She says her aesthetic is evolving — though how exactly she isn’t quite sure, apart from moving in the direction of the California-chic look embodied by the designer Jenni Kayne.She is contemplating the acquisition of a chaise longue for the living room. It will take over the spot that was, until recently, filled by a mattress that she and Mr. Kohn bought for the first home they shared. “We didn’t want to take it to the curb until garbage-collection day, so we put it in here. But our kids loved jumping on it, and it stayed for another seven months,” Ms. Henggeler said.“At the moment,” she added, “I’m in the there’s-nothing-a-throw-blanket-won’t-fix phase of design.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Getting to Know You, Again

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeExplore: A Cubist CollageFollow: Cooking AdviceVisit: Famous Old HomesLearn: About the VaccineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyGetting to Know You, AgainThe pandemic has sent many people back to their parents’ homes, giving both generations new insight and a chance at a different kind of relationship.Before the pandemic, the comedian Nikki Glaser, left, pitched a show about moving back in with her parents, E.J. and Julie Glaser, as an adult. The pandemic made what seemed like an unlikely scenario into a reality.   Credit…Whitney Curtis for The New York TimesFeb. 5, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETPatricia Mitchell was newly widowed, still grieving and adjusting to living alone after 50 years of marriage, when her daughter, Emily Mitchell-Marell, called last March. It was the early days of the coronavirus pandemic and lockdowns. Ms. Mitchell-Marell had recently given birth to a baby girl. She also had a 4-year-old son, and the schools in Brooklyn, where she lives, had been closed.Ms. Mitchell, a 74-year-old retired family therapist, heard the stress and panic in her daughter’s voice. “Having a baby, a job, a son and a pandemic was completely overwhelming to her,” she said. “Emily asked to come here.”And so, in the kind of surprising life upheaval the pandemic has made almost commonplace, Ms. Mitchell’s youngest daughter, her son-in-law and two grandchildren moved into her rambling old house outside Woodstock, N.Y. Eleven months later, the family is still there, eating dinner together every night and amazed to be doing so.“I have not spent this kind of time with Emily in 20 years,” Ms. Mitchell said. Her tone was that of someone who had received a complicated gift.For Patricia Mitchell, living with her granddaughter, Vera, has been “a real treat.”Credit…Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesLast July, a remarkable survey by the Pew Research Center found that more than half of people between the ages of 18 and 29 were living with their parents. Not since the Great Depression had so many adult children dwelled at home. It wasn’t only young adults, either. Job losses, school closings or other pandemic-induced reasons have driven many older children like Ms. Mitchell-Marell, who is 40, back to the nest.Because the young dominate the public’s attention, and because they own the bully pulpit of social media, the demographic phenomenon has been told largely from their viewpoint. The consensus attitude was perhaps best expressed by the young woman who made a TikTok set to the tune of “New York” by Alicia Keys, describing her quarantine with her mom and dad in the ’burbs. Sample lyric: “My parents won’t let me use their car/My friends all live too far/Twenty-five minutes from Dallas, Dallas, DALL-ASSSSSS!!!!!!!!”But as a middle-aged woman named Randi Cohen, whose 30-year-old daughter moved home to Columbus, Ohio, last spring, said, in what sounded like mild aggrievement, “There is another side to all of this.” Ah, yes, the side that doesn’t express themselves on TikTok.Imagine you have dutifully raised your children and released them into the world, growing accustomed to infrequent visits around the holidays, and then suddenly they’re back, a decade or more later, sleeping in their old bedrooms and sacking the fridge. It’s the sort of whiplash plot Hollywood movies are built on. Yet for millions of parents during the pandemic, it became a reality.Whether it played as a domestic comedy or psychological thriller depends on individual family dynamics. But every parent-child relationship is, to varying degrees, an emotional minefield. Navigating it successfully only grows harder when the child living in your house is all grown up: How do you make a 30-year-old pick up his dirty laundry?Getting ReacquaintedPatricia Mitchell, far right, who was recently widowed, finds herself living with her daughter, Emily, her son-in-law, Ben, and her grandchildren, Maximus and Vera.Credit…Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesReflecting on her experience over the past year, Ms. Mitchell expressed both gratitude and fatigue. She’s had the chance to observe, up close, her daughter’s happy marriage and mature approach toward work and motherhood, which has been gratifying as a parent. Helping raise her granddaughter from birth has been “really a treat,” and a welcome distraction from her grief and loneliness. Her son-in-law became the man of the house, doing chores and repairs.But living in a crowded, active, child-centered household again at her age can be exhausting. “There’s more food shopping and dishes and cleaning and laundry,” Ms. Mitchell said. “The noise level. The house wakes up very early. The level of activity is a bit shocking to my system, if you want to know the truth.”Parents have had to make adjustments of all kinds, as they welcome back children whose lives may have diverged widely from their own, and of which they may have only a vague idea. Empty nesters, they’ve been plunged back into hands-on parenting and asked to fulfill seemingly exotic requests.“He has a trainer that he works with and this trainer also has a specific diet” for him, said Janet Schaffler, 65, about her 34-year-old son, Kyle, who lives in Manhattan and came home to Indianapolis for two months at the start of the pandemic, and then again for weekslong stretches. Ms. Schaffler, who handles the cooking and shopping, found herself running what amounted to an Equinox juice bar out of her kitchen.“Everything had to be weighed. It was high protein, no bad carbs,” she said. “I needed to go to Trader Joe’s to buy this, another supermarket for that,” on top of shopping and cooking for herself and her husband. “Making sure everyone had what they needed, I never had any rest.”Ms. Cohen discovered that her daughter, Hannah Berkeley Cohen, while living in Cuba as a freelance journalist and tour guide, had evidently became a gourmet, because back home in Ohio, she now objected to her parents’ more simple meals.“She comes in and she’s a foodie and she’s appalled by what we eat. We don’t spend an hour preparing food and adding sauces because that’s what she and her boyfriend do,” Ms. Cohen said. “We had some talks about, ‘This is how we live. If you want to make dinner for us, that’s lovely.’”Bill Vien, 58, welcomed his daughter and son, both in their 20s, back home to Vermont for several months last year. His daughter, Corinne, co-hosts, “Two Girls One Ghost,” apodcast about ghosts and the paranormal. Mr. Vien and his wife were asked to maintain complete silence — no talking, no TV, not even shoes on the hardwood floors — while she recorded for three hours twice a week.“My wife never lets laundry get ahead of her,” Mr. Vien said. “Of course, we have one of those washers and dryers that make a chime.”Diane Camara welcomed her son, Jared Alexander, back home after his theater tour was canceled.Credit…Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesFor Diane Camara, whose 25-year-old son, Jared Alexander, an actor and writer, moved back into her home in Stratford, Conn., after the show he was scheduled to perform in was canceled, the adjustment was more internal, one of perception.“When he came back, I went into mom mode. I was thinking to myself, ‘I’m taking care of you. What do you have to worry about, you’re just a kid,’” Ms. Camara, 50, said. “It took me a minute to realize, ‘No, he’s an adult. And he’s going through it just like I’m going through it. And in some ways worse than me. He’s the one displaced, he lost his tour.”A Gift of TimeIndeed, these were not like the carefree stays of a summer home from college. Nor were they brief visits with the pressure release valve of a known end date. The children returned during a year of health risks, economic ruin and social and political upheaval, and with their own careers and adult responsibilities to manage through a global pandemic that has stretched on without end.But once the shock of events wore off and everyone found a routine, many parents said they were brought closer to their grown children. For the first time in years, and with a different feeling, there were family dinners, game nights, watching TV together, exchanging ideas as mature adults.“We drink a glass of wine and talk. We sit and watch movies,” Ms. Cohen, whose daughter remains at home, said. “We’ve never done that before. She can be a girlie girl, so she does my nails. It is lovely spending time with her.”Ms. Camara and Mr. Alexander in the garden they planted together last summer.Credit…Jared AlexanderLast summer, Ms. Camara and her son planted a flower garden in her backyard, the first garden for both of them. “We just got out there. We worked together as a team really well,” Ms. Camara said.A reluctant gardener initially, Mr. Alexander said watering the flowers and watching them slowly grow became a way to not only bond with his mother but come to terms with his interrupted life. He wrote an essay about the experience for a website.“It helped me adjust,” he said. “This isn’t going to be two weeks, two months. It’s going to be awhile. It wound up turning into something special.”There was, for parents, the added marvel of really seeing who their children had become as adults. Back under the same roof, they had a window into their children’s work and social lives and relationships.Leroy Rutherford has watched his daughter, Chrissy, start a business while back home. “That was nice seeing her start up something of her own,” he said.Credit…Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesLeroy Rutherford, 72, watched his daughter, Chrissy Rutherford, start a brand consultancy out of her childhood bedroom in Bedford, N.Y., where she’s been staying since giving up her apartment in Manhattan last April. He may complain about the dirty dishes Ms. Rutherford leaves in the sink, but he admires her work ethic. “She gets up from 8 in the morning and starts working. And 7 or 8 at night, she’s still on her phone or her computer,” Mr. Rutherford said. “That was nice seeing her start up something of her own.”Ms. Schaffler, the mother in Indianapolis, concurred. “You always think they’re never going to be able to grow up and cope by themselves,” she said. “Well, he can and he has. Just listening to him on his work calls. Not eavesdropping but just listening. He’s sounding just like his dad now. I could appreciate and be quite proud of that.”More than anything, there was time. Precious, unexpected time. In the summer months, Mr. Vien, his wife and two children would stop working each day and have lunch together on the deck. He got to watch his son and daughter, four years apart and usually living on opposite coasts, develop a tighter relationship over their stay. His daughter had gone off to college in California at 17 and stayed there during breaks to do internships, and Mr. Vien and his wife had felt time with her had been “stolen.” The pandemic gave it back.Shannon Holtzman, whose grown daughters, Carolyn and Larkin, both returned home to New Orleans for several months (Carolyn remains there), echoed the sentiment. “I regret the pandemic and wish it had never happened,” Ms. Holtzman said. “But for us, this has been a gift. We’ll likely never have this time again.”She marveled aloud, “This was the first birthday of mine where I had both daughters home since 2004.”The Stuff of Comedy“I thought this would destroy us,” said Nikki Glaser of moving back in with her parents, E.J. and Julie Glaser. The opposite has been true.Credit…Whitney Curtis for The New York TimesIf there could be a poster family for quarantining together during the pandemic, it would be the Glasers — that is, Nikki Glaser, a 36-year-old stand-up comedian and actress, and her parents, E.J. and Julie Glaser. When the pandemic struck, Ms. Glaser was in Los Angeles on a work trip. She had invited her parents along, and so she decided not to return to her New York apartment but to go back with them to her childhood home, in St. Louis. As the pandemic grew worse and her comedy gigs and other projects were canceled, she stayed. “I thought this would destroy us, me living there for 10 months,” she said. “But I didn’t want to leave.”Ms. Glaser has turned being back in her Midwestern childhood home as a single woman and famous person into an extended bit. In TV interviews, like one with Conan O’Brien last May, she appeared on Zoom from her father’s home office. When she guest-hosted Jimmy Kimmel Live!, in July, she booked her parents as the house band, cutting to them in their living room (Mr. Glaser plays acoustic guitar and Mrs. Glaser sings). A show Ms. Glaser had been writing before the pandemic, in which she gets canceled by the internet and has to move back home to St. Louis — “Which used to be some, like, kind of sci-fi thing,” she told Mr. O’Brien — became her lived experience. Meanwhile, her parents have become minor celebrities through their appearances on TV and on her social media channels.“I have 16,000 followers on Instagram,” Mr. Glaser said.His wife chimed in, “He had two before this.”More important, the couple have reconnected with their daughter, who for years saw her family infrequently as she built her comedy career on the coasts. “I’ve tried to get her to sing with me ever since she was a small child,” Mr. Glaser said. “She started learning guitar and we played and sang together a lot during the last few months.”After 10 months living with her parents, Ms. Glaser recently moved out and rented her own apartment again — in St. Louis. Nikki Glaser in a stand-up performance.Credit…Ben Vogelsang“I always argued that it was for the best,” Ms. Glaser said about choosing to live away from home. “This year has made me reflect upon what actually makes me happy. I love my family and I love being around them.”Shifting RelationshipsAs the pandemic stretches on, some parents, including Ms. Mitchell, continue to house their grown children. Her newborn granddaughter is nearly one, and she and Ms. Mitchell-Marell are closer than ever. In fact, Ms. Mitchell-Marell and her husband are considering relocating to the Hudson Valley. “I do want to be near her now in a way that wasn’t as important to me,” Ms. Mitchell-Marell said. “And I don’t want to separate her and my baby.”Said Ms. Mitchell, “They wouldn’t have come back without the pandemic. I do think they’re going to find a place in the valley. And be nearby. And that will be very great.” Other parents are empty nesters again.Marilyn LaMonica, 76 and a psychoanalyst, welcomed her 48-year-old son, daughter-in-law and 5-year-old grandson into the Brooklyn house she shares with her husband for three months last spring.At first, to be together seemed like a fantasy fulfilled, a return to the large Italian family of her childhood. But between cooking for five people three times a day, worrying about her loved ones getting the virus and balancing the competing needs of everyone in the house, the experience was something more complicated. Ms. LaMonica called those months “a blur” and “a bundle of mixed feelings,” summing up how other parents said they felt.And yet, when it was over, and her son and his family returned to their Manhattan apartment, Ms. LaMonica admitted to a sense of sadness, as if she were letting her child go all over again.“It’s not rational,” she said. “But I felt a very deep sense of loss.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More