Where: 200 Mercer Street, 2-A
Size: 4 bedrooms/4 bathrooms
Asking: $4,500,000
Listed by: Patrick Mills and Evan Greenberg

This SoHo triplex makes the best use of combining the loft style with a more traditional, townhouse-like layout, creating a common area that is expansive and open but still allows the privacy of a separate floor for bedrooms and an informal media room. What really makes the place special, however, is the third level which simply consists of a large bedroom or office and a huge private outdoor terrace.

Where: 56 Warren Street, 5-E
Size: Currently configured as 1 bedroom/1 bathroom
Asking: $2,395,000
Listed by: Tom Postilio & Natalie Rakowski

Formerly industrial TriBeCa is well known for its lofts, perhaps being one of the neighborhoods most responsible (along with SoHo, of course) for bringing the style into prominence. This floor-through unit lets your configure at your whim, with a 3-bed/2-bath layout being one suggested outcome. Whatever you choose, 12 foot ceilings and a great skylight in this landmark 126-year-old-building really make the place feel like you’re living in a slice of history ushered into the new century.

Where: 7 East 17th Street, 8th Floor
Size: 2,800 square feet
Asking: $3,595,000
Listed by: Emily Beare

Searching for great raw loft space is like hunting for truffles. It’s hard labor and often goes unrewarded, but when a great specimen is found, it makes all the dirty work worth it. This 2,800-square-foot loft near Union Square is as authentic as it gets. Totally untouched, it’s a blank canvas of sorts, with the buyer having control over what their dream home ultimately will be. The full floor in the turn-of-the-century building also includes 2,700 square feet of private outdoor space to customize.

The Columbus Circle Holiday Market

Is it too late to find a fantastic holiday gift for someone special? Or two? Or ten? Not in New York City, of course. We asked some of our top CORE agents to share their last-minute picks for great holiday shopping. Procrastinators can thank us, well, later.

Columbus Circle Holiday Market [link]
Neighborhood: Columbus Circle/Central Park South
Tips: This is my favorite market for holiday gift shopping since you will find a wide range of unique goods such as handmade clothing, jewelry, toys, ornaments, artwork and gourmet foods from boutique vendors and craft purveyors. You’ll be sure to find something for everyone on your list! It’s only open until Christmas Eve.–Lisa Graham

C. Wonder [link]
Neighborhood: SoHo
Tips: Co-founder of Tory Burch mixes with Chanel and Goyard. It’s a fun, chic store that’s super affordable…there’s something for everyone, including guy stuff. I purchased a tote bag that offers a monogram, palm tree cocktail plates for a Yankee swap party with a “beach style” theme, nylon attaché cases, and monogram wine corks and cheese boards.–Lawrence Treglia

Tiffany & Co. [link]
Neighborhood: Midtown
Tips: When racking one’s brain for the perfect gift, last minute or otherwise, Tiffany always shines. Even at its busiest, it radiates a calming energy. Their personal shoppers take the drag out of holiday shopping, as there are no lines or bargain hunters to contend with. And let’s face it, even the most jaded New Yorker must admit that the timeless mystique of Tiffany’s legendary blue box is intoxicating. (Holly Golightly knew this.)–Tom Postilio and Mickey Conlon

Lord and Taylor [link]
Neighborhood: Murray Hill
Tips: They have everything in every price range for women, men, and kids. It’s one-stop shopping, and there are no crowds!–Susan Rubell

The Shops at Columbus Circle [link]
Neighborhood: Columbus Circle/Central Park South
Tips: Particularly Sephora, Whole Foods, Williams-Sonoma and Godiva. I love the convenience of having a variety of options all in one place in my neighborhood. For example, I can run down to Whole Foods and have a basket of cheeses made with delicious meats and pick up a gorgeous bouquet of flowers. Then I can easily run up to Williams-Sonoma and Godiva to help complete the gift baskets. And in the midst of shopping madness you can take in a coffee and a pastry at Bouchon.–Adrian Noriega

Chelsea Market [link]
Neighborhood: Chelsea
Tips: There are vintage vendors in a pop-up space. In addition, there are additional pop-up stores at 19th street and 10th avenue and 15th street and 10th avenue offering various items. I bought cool vintage belt buckles, a knife set and a vintage mink wrap.–Lawrence Treglia

The Upper Breast Side, Bank Street Bookstore, J. Crew, American Apparel and Paul Smith
Neighborhood: Upper West Side
Tips: The Upper Breast Side for cute baby gifts like swaddle blankets, socks that look like Converse sneakers, ballet slippers and awesome headbands. The Bank Street Bookstore for the best kids’ and teen books and the most knowledgeable sales people. J. Crew and American Apparel for scarves, gloves, and hats. And Paul Smith has the best stocking-stuffers and men’s gifts.–Natalie Rakowski

West Elm [link]
Neighborhood: Chelsea
Tips: There is something for everyone’s home here. I often walk through the block-long store, entering on West 17th Street and exiting on West 18th Street (even after the gift-giving season, just to warm up).–Stuart Sussman

House of the Day: Chelsea, Storage, Space
Wall Street Journal (12/15)
A cool apartment in Chelsea with high ceilings, private outdoor space, all sorts of added storage and a “hiding space” behind the kitchen was the subject of a great Wall Street Journal “House of the Day” slideshow. CORE’s Stuart Sussman and Tom Postilio have the listing at 246 West 17th Street.

Just Sold!
New York Post (12/14)
The $1.6 million sale of a 2-bed/2.5-bath condo in SoHo’s Urban Glass House at 330 Spring Street made the Post’s weekly roundup of big sales around New York City. CORE’s Adrian Noriega had the deal.

House of the Day: Federal Style in Chelsea
Wall Street Journal (12/13)
A very unique one-bedroom co-op apartment in Chelsea at 130 West 16th Street was also the subject of a “House of the Day” story last week. The apartment’s owner, a home furnishings designer, created some of the apartment’s pillows, furniture and built-ins himself.

Oak Room Contractor Ready to Flip Redone Candela Condo
Curbed (12/13)
Curbed grabbed the subject of last week’s What’s New listing, a Candela classic with a modern twist at 44 East 67th Street, and dived into the condo’s recent renovation.

“Chelsea’s Sleeping Giant Remade as Luxury Condos With 14-Foot Ceilings”
Curbed (11/14)
Curbed also jumped on the Walker Tower news early, cementing the building’s status as a spring blockbuster-to-be. Here’s a taste: “One of the more remarkable features is its lofty ceiling heights—since each floor is nearly 15′ tall, the whole building looms over its neighbors, affording gobsmacking panoramic views to the south, west and north.”

“$849,000 for an 1830s 1BR With a Very Cozy Footprint”
Curbed (11/11)
For its “Six Digit Club” feature, highlighting the best listings priced under $1 million, Curbed took a look at Ivana Tagliamonte’s co-op listing at 47-49 King Street, which is a landmarked 1830s Federal-style brick rowhouse. Wrote Curbed, “OMG, cute.” We concur.

Where: 140 Thompson Street
Size: 1 bedroom/2 bathrooms
Asking: $1,695,000
Listed by: Elise Ward and Liz Dworkin

Ask anyone what New York City neighborhood they think of when they hear the word “loft” and you’ll almost always hear “SoHo” as the response. It’s the romance of high ceilings, wide-open living spaces and buildings with incredible history that drives people to crave the SoHo loft lifestyle, and this Thompson Street listing delivers on those cravings. The dining area, living room and kitchen all flow together to create a vast space that evokes the drama of the old-school bohemian loft, but with updated and luxurious appliances and fixtures (and don’t forget about those sleek Poliform built-ins). The best touch of all? The preserved wooden columns and beams that simply cannot be replicated, giving the loft a sense of history and authenticity. Check out another great photo of the space below.

The building located at 345 Grand Street is believed to have been built around 1900.  It is a SOHO-Style Cast Iron that somehow was transplanted to Lower East Side.   Before the building was converted to a  Condominium in 2002, it had a quite an interesting history.

During the 1910’s the second floor was a dance hall.  The ticket pictured below was found under the floorboards on the 2nd floor, which has  13′ ceilings and used to have a wide staircase down to the ground floor, also 13′ high.  That stair is still there in the space that is for sale or rent as retail or gallery — but it is covered over now by the 2nd floor’s new flooring.

In the early 1900’s it became a distribution outlet for for H W Perlman Pianos.  1950’s it was a warehouse for Sun Ray Yarn.  As demonstrated in the photo below, Sun Ray Yarn used to be housed in the building next door to 345 Grand Street.  You can see that 347 the original home of Sun Ray Yarn was next door, while H W Perlman Pianos took up most of 345.  It was a warehouse and sales showroom, probably not a factory.  The lady’s long dress and the lack of wire suggest the date was around 1910, right around the time the “Grand Hall” Ballroom Dance was held.

Allen and Alice Freidman, the owners of the building put the building on the market in 1999.  Phillip Frazer and 5 other partners bought it as a Co-op.  They kept  the commercial spaces downstairs  where there was one tenant Grand Sterling Silver, operated by Grand Sterling Co Inc, now on 14th Ave Brooklyn.

AFTER the group brought together bought the building, in 1999, they chose an architect and builder and filed plans for a total rehab — new electrical, plumbing, HVAC, elevator, intercom and alarms.  A new roof enabled higher ceilings for the 5th floor and an entirely new apartment to be built on top — this 6th floor penthouse was designed and built by the present owner and seller Phillip Frazer.

For property details, visit: http://www.corenyc.com/en/listings-345-grand-street,18,163788.html

First Open-house 12-3PM, Sunday June 14th.

Frazer had found the building, negotiated its purchase, and invited friends and business associates to join him in buying and developing the building.  That original group supervised renovations to get a new Cert of Occupancy and, in May 2005, converted to a condominium at which time three new owners took over floors 1, 2, and 3R.  (All floors are single apartments except the third which is divided into two.)

Over the next 2 years floors 2, 4 and 5 were sold as white boxes and, over the last 2 years the current owners have all built out their spaces into 6 unique and highly personalized luxury apartments.

The 2nd floor is a photo studio and home for a high-end fashion photographer.  The 4th floor owner and his soon-to-be bride have filled their space with custom cabinetry and quirky appliances picked up during his commutes between Manhattan and the factory he built in China.  The 5th floor space has reverted to early last-century mode, with pressed tin ceilings, concertina elevator gates, wood and zinc cabinetry, and recycled steel fire doors.  Its owner, a globe-trotting model, explains that she needs a home with a hand-made feel to balance the endless 5-star hotel rooms in which she spends so many of her days.  The new 6th floor penthouse is quirky too.  Frazer says he designed it while he was building up his political newsletter business and raising two teenagers.  ”I remember sketching the mezzanine bedroom on an envelope, and telling the architect to make it as large and high as the City code allowed.”  He built the dining area, which also became his office, as an all-glass greenhouse, in part because the code permitted more square footage for greenhouses.  Then the City began disallowing rooftop greenhouses, but the building got a variance that allowed more than enough square feet for the solarium room to be a fully legal living space.

Many of the apartment’s features were inspired by ideas Frazer had tried in two previous renovations. Most of the woodwork was built by his artist/builder friend Steve Paul, using wood from several of the building’s original joists that had been cut to make room for the new elevator shaft.  For the kitchen counters Frazer asked Paul to join slabs of the 120 year-old Douglas fir (that made up the original support columns for the building)  side by side, so that the long edges of the 13 foot counter-tops would show off the wood’s distinctive end-grain rings.  ”If you like the end grain so much,” said Paul, “I’ll make the entire counter-top end-grain.”   He cut the joists into hundreds of wooden bricks and glued the together, raising some areas up an inch to form butcher-block cutting boards. Meanwhile, the owner-builder team searched the internet for interesting wood for the cabinets and found a trove of Australian Jarra salvaged from a rough-hewn sheep-shearing shed and being sold in upstate New York for decking.  Frazer, who grew up in Australia, knew that Jarra is actually a rich and beautifully grained hardwood, which Paul combined with Plexiglas and dark brown African Wenge to make cabinets for the gourmet kitchen, both bathrooms, and the living room’s floor to ceiling bookshelves.

For the flooring, Frazer invited another artist friend, Joseph Riza, to render each room with his trademark acrylic cement.  Riza has combined this quintessentially industrial material with a vast palette of artist’s colors to create floors for restaurants, offices, and homes around the City.  For the penthouse, Riza’s instructions were:  For the living room, use these photographs of Australian outback clays and rocks.  For the greenhouse/dining room, take off from this Aboriginal drawing of fish and other natural symbols.  And,  for the teenage daughter’s room,  she wants large checkerboard squares in the dark brown and light beige colors of the family’s Siamese cat Smudge.

Last year, the ground floor’s silver shop tenants moved out to Brooklyn where most of their traditional Jewish customers now live, and since then co-owners Frazer and Manhattan artists David Rankin have played with many ideas for the raw space. They kept much of the 1950s steel shelving and the rolling library-ladder, and are now interviewing possible buyers or renters, eager to find newcomers who will add yet more character and creativity to a building that already is home to a remarkable gathering of lower east side talent.  David Rankin, whose large, earthy canvases are in galleries and private collections all over the world, wants to show a series of portraits of his wife, novelist Lily Brett, in the Silver Shop space, in its raw and very pre-modern mode.  Some musician friends from New Orleans might play at the opening, and Frazer’s teenage daughter might swing from the 13 foot ceilings in her role as a professional trapeze artist… at 345 Grand, you never know what’s next!