Home is where you are...

Sooo... there's something that I've been reluctant to share here, but it's the reason why things have been a little quiet on the blog, so maybe it's time.  Whew, that sounds big, huh?  Well, for us it is.  

*drumroll please*

We've been house hunting!

You're thinking, "that's it?!"  Yup.  But reading what Joanna had to say this morning about her own apartment hunt and the unexpected emotional toll it takes, really hit home and made me want to spill the beans.  The house hunt has been a full-blown emotional rollercoaster for me.  That moment  of elation when we finally, FINALLY, found the one.   Getting the key... seeing it from the inside, getting to know it better, mentally assigning rooms to each child, and smiling when you realize that YES, there will finally be a spot for that thing Jeff loves, or that giant painting you've lugged around forever.  You know, really falling in love.  The home (or the idea of the home) takes on a life of it's own inside you.  The colors you'll paint it, the flowers you'll plant there, the memories you'll make...  and then comes the baggage.  And OH, is there baggage...  Competitors vying for it, miscellaneous unforeseen "issues", offers, banks, promises, and lies.  A torrential downpour of red tape, when all you want is to be in it, own it, and make it yours.  I mean, don't these people realize that the house and I are meant for each other?!  Come on!  OK, can I just be totally real with you?  This house hunt has been like all of my worst relationship moments rolled into one, big, witholding jerk.  And I am a completely co-dependent house-crazed, obsessive.  So why not move on, find something else (or *gasp* the "S" word)...  SETTLE?  Because when you find the one, and you know it's right...  you'll put up with a lot of craziness to be together, and that's where we are now.  Weathering the storm, hoping for the best, and praying every day for divine intervention.  

So that's that.  I'm not sure why I was so hesitant to talk about it here, but it's been all-consuming for a few weeks.  And "all-consuming" is my trying-to-be-cool way of saying that I would walk across hot coals and maybe give up a kidney if it meant that we could have this house.  At any given moment, I'm having an internal struggle that looks a lot like this scene... I am both Yolanda and Jules.

I'll keep you posted as to progress, and in the meantime- please send happy house thoughts our way.  ♥

Home Reference: 72-Rooms, 3 people, $102,000

In 1966 , photographer Jay Maisel bought this building at 190 Bowery in New York, for $102,000.  Whaaat???  Yes, the ENTIRE building.  The former Germania bank, built in 1898, boasts 72 rooms, a vault (of course), and original copper elevator!  New York magazine did a great write-up on it in 2008 and at that time, it's value was estimated at between $30-$70 MILLION.  Talk about a return...  

Maisel lives at 190 Bowery with his wife, Linda and their daughter.  3 people.  6 stories.  72 rooms.  

Blows my mind.  Had to share...

Even in the annals of “If only I’d bought that Soho loft in 1974” stories, this is extreme. In 1966, Maisel was a young artist, paying $125 a month for a 2,500-square-foot studio at 122 Second Avenue (his neighbors were Larry Rivers and La MaMa founder Ellen Stewart). But when his landlord raised the rent an unconscionable $50 a month, Maisel went to Jack Klein, a broker who, he says, had found spaces for Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. “We took an instant dislike to each other,” says Maisel. But the first property Klein showed Maisel was the abandoned Germania Bank, built in 1898, when the neighborhood was largely middle-class and German. “I said, ‘You got a lot like this?’ ” Maisel recalls. “Klein said, ‘This is why I hate photographers. They want the Taj Mahal and they want it for six bucks a month. No, I don’t have a lot like this.’ ”

Interpersonal friction aside, Klein convinced Maisel he could raise the money to buy the abandoned bank. That was the easy part. Then he moved in. The main floor was knee-deep in garbage and coated in soot. “I had to shovel shit against the tide,” says Maisel. He wasn’t getting a lot of support either; the Bowery was where people ended up, not where they aspired to live. “My parents cried,” he says. “Every single thing that can come out of a human body has been left on my doorstep. But it was more disgusting than dangerous.”  

Maisel uses the first, second, and third floors as gallery spaces for his photography and art projects. (New York magazine’s first cover was a Maisel photograph.) The fourth floor, which Maisel once rented out to Roy Lichtenstein, is a work-in-progress. The fifth has various workshops.  Bedrooms, bathrooms, and dining are on the sixth floor; the kitchen was once where the staff cooked meals for the bankers.

Linda cooks a lot, but when they do order in, “it’s a riot,” she says. “You have to wait downstairs and watch for the delivery person, because they’ll pass right by. Who is going to think that there is one person ordering from this building? Who wants to leave their bicycle outside?”  The city wants the exterior graffiti-free, but it’s impossible: 190 Bowery is a mecca for street artists, as its neighbor 11 Spring was before it went luxury. Maisel tried scrubbing the building every week, but “it was like I was providing a fresh canvas for them.” Keith Haring used to cover the exterior in chalk babies, says Maisel, and that he liked, both for the spirit of the images and because they washed off so easily.

The building is still giving up its secrets. About a month ago, Maisel's daughter discovered a room she never knew existed. “It’s kind of in the mezzanine between the first and second floors,” she says.

So, will the Maisels ever sell? Or, more to the point, what’s holding them back? By modest estimates, and even in this economy, the building is worth tens of millions of dollars (see the estimates, here), Leonard Steinberg of Prudential New York adds, “I would do anything to get that building.”  The property is so prime that sometimes Linda does reconnaissance before she takes out the trash for fear she’ll have to fend off yet another aggressive agent. “One man called me a bitch because I told him the building wasn’t for sale,” she says.  “I fantasize about never having to worry about money again,” Maisel muses. “It would be great to take the money and run. But let’s face it, where are we going to go? A three-room apartment?”

See New York Magazine's slideshow here.