Actor and director Mitchell Lichtenstein and his husband, Vincent Sanchez, have listed their restored, 170-year-old row house in Manhattan’s West Village for $25 million.
It’s the first time the 24-foot-wide Greek Revival townhouse has been listed in the public market, according to brokerage Stribling & Associates. Mr. Lichtenstein, who is the son of renowned pop art painter Roy Lichtenstein, and Mr. Sanchez bought the home from family friends Diana Burroughs and art gallery owner Jason McCoy in 1997, according to property records.
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Where the previous owners hosted art-scene soirees and rented the historic home out for filming and photoshoots, Mr. Lichtenstein launched a multi-year, museum-quality preservation effort to bring the old home back to its 19th century roots.
Behind the brick exterior, the four-story home reflects the dynamic tastes of pre-Civil War New York, which includes a blend of Classical and Gothic Revival influences. Sometime in the late 1870s to early 1880s, owners built an addition onto three floors that included three formal entertaining rooms and a sunny breakfast room on the garden level, according to the listing with Stribling.
The home is co-listed by agents Vals Osborne, Steven Sumser and Lee Ann Jaffee.
Mr. Lichtenstein, who is preparing the commercial release his 2015 movie "Angelica" this summer, relined all seven fireplaces (six wood-burning and a gas fireplace in the dining room). He stripped layers of paint from the ornate interior moulding, and overhauled the electric, plumbing and HVAC systems. In 2010, he had the fourth-floor terrace rebuilt, careful always not to destroy the home's original details, Mr. Lichtenstein told Mansion Global.
"We love how old world the house feels," he said. "It’s the synthesis of the many original details and it really can’t be duplicated today; in even the most assiduous reproduction, there’s always something off."
Some of the home's 13 rooms blend ornate, period architectural elements with the whimsical art of Mr. Lichtenstein's father—a leader of the 1960s pop art movement who is known for his parodies of comic strips, like the famous "Drowning Girl" that hangs prominently at the Museum of Modern Art on West 53rd Street.
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One of Mr. Lichtenstein's favorite aspects of the house are the large, double parlors and the wall space they offer for hanging artwork.
For instance, a primary-colored piece of pop art sits on a column pedestal surrounded by a set of elaborate, gold-leaf mirrors likely dating to the 1880s. There’s also a stained-glass skylight on the fourth floor, and the garden design dates back to the 1930s, when owners converted a basic yard into a "cloister garden." Among the 1933 plantings is a crabapple tree that releases a "glorious, scented bloom every April," Mr. Lichtenstein said.
Though the owners love the "human-scale" row houses of the West Village, these days they are looking to downsize.
"We really don’t need all of the space this house offers," Mr. Lichtenstein said. "Now we’ll be spending more time in the country, we figured it was a good time to downsize."
They still plan to keep a home in the neighborhood, he added, saying: "We love the Village."