Renting and Leasing (Real Estate)

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      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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      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