Brown Harris Stevens
Imagine a row of 20 yellow-painted wooden townhouses — each dressed with pine green shutters, double-door entries and ornate brown cornices — lining a cobblestone path to a grand mansion built in 1765.
This scene may seem more appropriate in colonial America, but today it remains far uptown in Washington Heights. Sylvan Terrace, long regarded as one of the city’s coveted “secret streets” — otherwise known as one of the mews and alleys tucked away from the residential street grid, where carriage houses and horse stables later converted into houses — is a world apart from the surrounding area.
There, those 20 three-story homes — developed in 1882 for working-class residents — flank a carriage lane to the Morris-Jumel Mansion, the oldest surviving residence in Manhattan. It may also seem those townhouses rarely become available for sale or rent, which is largely true. But now, three of them seek new residents — marking a prime chance for New Yorkers on the house hunt to move into one of the city’s most charmingly exclusive enclaves.
“It’s really tight-knit, everyone looks out for each other — and you don’t typically find that in New York,” 56-year-old Alexander Scheirle, the executive director of the Grammy-winning Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, told The Post of the Sylvan Terrace community. Scheirle has owned No. 7 since 2012, when he purchased it for $913,000, and now has the two-bedroom spread on the market for rent with Lori Huler Glick and Lisa Marie Abrahamson of Brown Harris Stevens for $6,800 per month. “People are constantly moving — you have one-year, two-year contracts — and you don’t really make an effort to get to know your neighbors. That’s so different in Sylvan Terrace, and I was surprised when I moved there.”
It’s different on Sylvan Terrace because residents tend to stay there.
Since 2018, according to sales records reviewed by The Post, only seven homes there have traded hands. What’s more, only four of those have sold since 2021 — the last time the street saw a mini-boom in availability. The $1.58 million deal for No. 16 marks this year’s only sale. The remainder of the townhouses, the sales records also show, have stayed in the same hands for decades.
For his part, Scheirle plans on keeping his home there. He began renting out the light-filled dwelling — with 11-foot ceilings on the parlor level, a mahogany staircase, exposed brick and fireplaces — in 2021 following a family move to Connecticut because his two children, now both adolescents, needed more space to grow.
“It’s just too beautiful and too special, and so many great memories,” he said of the property. “I don’t think anyone should ever sell once you have a house like that.”
Still, one of his neighbors is.
The townhouse at No. 8 is Sylvan Terrace’s most recent listing. Last week, that three-bedroom spread listed for sale with Compass’s Grace Steel, asking $1.82 million. Its marketing images show wide-plank wooden floors, wood-beamed ceilings, exposed brick and several fireplaces. Steel’s listing description adds the parlor level’s ceilings have recreated decorative medallions, a master suite with 15-foot-tall ceilings — and the potential to create a two-family building by renting out the garden level for additional income.
That exact potential is what’s also up for grabs on the block.
At No. 18, an 850-square-foot one-bedroom rental apartment listed in early August for $2,750 per month with Michel Madie and Richard Lehman of Michel Madie Real Estate Services. Not a full townhouse, this residence has an open living/dining space, an original brick fireplace, a roomy kitchen and double-pane insulated windows.
Whether someone owns or rents, everyone benefits from the block’s community embrace.
Scheirle recalls holiday parties, summer parties — even emails that go out when deliveries are left on homes’ stoops asking for a neighbor to retrieve them. Since 2021, he’s had two tenants reside in his home. They departed for personal reasons, but “Everyone said ‘oh, it’s so bittersweet’ because they really wanted to stay, but couldn’t, and they had that same experience, connecting with the neighbors. I don’t think you find that particularly in the city, and I think that makes it so beautiful.”