step inside new york's narrowest townhouse, under nine feet wide

a slender west village landmark is listed

Among the 19th-century rowhouses of Bedford Street in New York‘s West Village its enduring, the city’s narrowest townhouse stands that just 8 feet, 7 inches wide. Fronted by a three-story brick facade, the unusual home at 75 1/2 Bedford Street was built in 1873. Now listed by Sotheby’s International Realty, the renovated residence distills a century and a half of adaptation into a vertical sequence of precisely composed domestic spaces.

The townhouse’s slender proportions heighten visitors’ sense of spatial awareness. Sunlight and circulation take precedence over volume. A Dutch door opens directly into the kitchen, which shows custom millwork and Italian marble surfaces. Floor-to-ceiling French doors extend the interior toward a small, landscaped garden, creating a rare moment of openness amid the dense urban fabric of lower Manhattan.

images © Sotheby’s Realty

vertical living in new york

Inside, the plan unfolds as a continuous stair sequence that links intimate rooms arranged along the narrow footprint. Each level is anchored by working wood-burning fireplaces framed in travertine. Oak floors run the length of the home, emphasizing its linear geometry, while a large skylight floods the upper story with daylight that filters through the stairwell.

The primary suite on the second level balances simplicity and comfort. A small balcony overlooks the rear garden, and the bathroom, finished in mosaic tile with marble sinks and Lefroy Brooks fixtures, shows the same attention to scale and proportion that guides the rest of the renovation. All throughout, modern interventions remain secondary to the townhouse’s historic structure, and create a sense of continuity between eras.

75 1/2 Bedford Street is recognized as NYC’s narrowest townhouse at just under nine feet wide

the star-studded past of NYC’s narrowest townhouse

The narrow house has long captured the imagination of the city’s creative community. In the 1920s, it was occupied by a group of actors performing at the nearby Cherry Lane Theater, among them Cary Grant and John Barrymore. Anthropologist Margaret Mead, cartoonist William Steig, and poet Edna St. Vincent Millay — whose residency gives the building its nickname, the Millay House — each left their imprint on its history. The modest scale, paired with its setting along one of the West Village’s most intact blocks, has made it a small but lasting emblem of residential architecture in New York.

the three-story, 1873-built home stands on one of the most historic blocks in the West Village