Dumpster-diving Village artist asks $1.3M for zero-bedroom, half-a-kitchen apartment
Here's a classic on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand real estate listing.
On the one hand, you've got a prewar apartment in a fantastic location: right in the heart of Manhattan's Greenwich Village, on Thompson Street between Bleecker and Houston. There are a couple of exposed-brick walls, if you like that sort of thing, and the floors are aged hardwood. The artist who lives there, Stuart Ross, has also filled the apartment with installations, most prominently a kitchen/workspace clad in antique redwood salvaged from a torn-down rooftop water tower nearby. Ross and his home were profiled in a Village Voice shelter article about 10 years ago, when he was subletting the place for $1,100 a month.
On the other hand:
The apartment has zero bedrooms, and what we'll generously call half a kitchen (mini-fridge, microwave under the sink, no stove). Ross' artistic niche is "guerrilla artist": He's an "avid Dumpster diver," "wildebeest in the jungle of Manhattan," and "self-proclaimed engineer and inventor without even a day's worth of formal art training," according to promotional material for a 2008 feature-length documentary about him, "The Survival of the Wildebeest." The Village Voice profile was overly generous in deeming the unit 400 square feet; it's really more like 300, the listing agency tells Yahoo Homes.
Asking price: $1.3 million.
If that sounds like a lot, it is. Two other units in the building are listed at $499,000 and $465,000 — a 500-square-foot apartment with "gorgeous morning sunlight" and a one-bedroom with "a southwest exposure that brings [light into] every room" — and another one-bedroom unit listed at $395,000 is under contract.
We asked Ross' listing agency, Sotheby's International Realty, about the ambitious ask. "The art installations are all included, which accounts for the price," the brokers said. "A buyer would really be purchasing a piece of art by a noted artist."
Click here or on a photo for a slideshow of artist Stuart Ross' studio apartment, listed at about triple the price of similar-size units in the building (also shown in the slideshow, for comparison purposes).
And thanks to our friends at Curbed for their post calling attention to this intriguing listing.
Related on Yahoo Homes:
• 2 couples, 1 guy test out a 112-square-foot tiny house
• This house was tiny enough to steal -- but too big for thieves to hide it
• 13 ways to stop hating your minuscule bathroom
Guess who else lives in the Village (in a much different home):
