Renovated in Greenwich Village

Tour a West Village townhouse believed to be the handiwork of 19th century architect James Renwick Jr. The seven-floor New York City home was converted from an apartment building in 2002. It's on the market for $17.995 million. (Visit the House of the Day homepage.)

 

Located at 34 West 10^th Street, this seven-floor townhouse is believed to have been designed by James Renwick, Jr., the architect behind such Manhattan landmarks as St. Patrick's Cathedral and the arch at nearby Washington Square Park. The Landmarks Commission of New York says that the home is part of a row of buildings known as Renwick Row, but can't verify that the renowned designer was involved in its design.

 

When Mr. Whalen, now retired from his work on Wall Street, bought the home for $3.5 million in late 2002, it had six studio apartments and one triplex apartment. Mr. Whalen says he waited for the tenants' leases to expire and then did not renew them. He hired architect Steven Harris to restore the building to a single-family home.

 

The home measures 8,000 square feet. It's listed for $17.995 million. There is an apartment at the ground level that is rented out.

 

It has six bedrooms, five full bathrooms and two half bathrooms.

 

The layout of the home is what attracted Mr. Whalen and his family. Other homes they looked at did not flow very well. "It was always a series of odd rooms that you don't know what to do with," he says. In this home, "each floor is laid out with two major rooms and ancillary space in the middle of the building where the stair is."

 

"We took a lot of our lead from two things: Balancing the domestic requirements of a modern family, and looking carefully at what the bones and the original parts of the house suggested," Mr. Harris says.

 

At the top of the home is a glass and steel sitting area that opens up to a terrace landscaped with grass and trees.

 

Mr. Whalen is selling in order to relocate to Rome with his wife and two young sons. The children have studied Italian for several years and the move would help them gain fluency in the language, Mr. Whalen says.

 

Sara Gelbard and Joseph Dwyer of Corcoran have the listing.