Utopia may be nearly impossible to find, but now you can rent Nutopia — John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s fictional “conceptual country”, housed in a townhouse at 1 White Street in NYC — for just $19,500 per month. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.
On April Fools’ Day in 1973, John Lennon and Yoko Ono announced the birth of Nutopia, “a conceptual country” with no boundaries and “no laws other than cosmic,” according to the New York Times, because at the time Lennon was being threatened with deportation for a 1968 marijuana conviction in Britain. As Nutopian ambassadors, they asked for diplomatic immunity and United Nations recognition; giving 1 White Street as the embassy address.
Imagine all the feelings, staying in the historic micronation in the middle of what’s now Tribeca — a microcosm of not just rock n’ roll history but the height of sixties political activism. The one-time embassy of peace and micronation in was purchased by an architect and his wife in 1980, shortly before John Lennon’s death — where they continued to get fan mail up until a few years ago, both for The Beatles and The Who, because the architect’s name is also Peter Townsend (no relation).
The Townsends renovated the four-story apartment building into a single family home (where they raised their two daughters), but put the building up for sale in 2010 for $3.25 million. It was sold again in 2013 and then gut-renovated, getting the full whitewash treatment — perhaps a nod to the all-white Nutopian flag, designed by Lennon — and most recently was the home of not a family but a conceptual men’s clothing store, reports Curbed NY.
Now, in a listing profiled this week on 6sqft, the legendary building is available to rent for $19,500 a month as a single-family townhouse, featuring 2,600 square feet across four floors plus a 750-square-foot roof deck that overlooks Tribeca. Each of the four floors gets great natural light to refract all that white paint with seven large windows, and there are four bedrooms plus a main floor with an open-concept kitchen and original wood-burning stove.
Superfans and spendy travelers looking to rent the historic home — within walking distance of the Hudson — should check out the full listing with more photos, floor plans, amenities, and details for 1 White Street over at CORE NYC.
Are you a major Beatles fan but with a much smaller budget? Not to fret: Stay the night at the recently renovated John & Yoko suite (made famous by their legendary “Bed in for Peace” in 1969) at the Fairmont Queen Elizabeth in Montreal.6