131 1/2 Charles Street

In 1834 the stone cutter David Christie put up a Federal row house at 131 Charles Street for roughly $2,600. It still stands, and it has been an individual New York City landmark since April 19, 1966, listed on the National Register in 1972 and standing inside the Greenwich Village Historic District Extension I. This is not that house. This is the building at the back of its yard, raised in 1889 as a stable and carried on the tax rolls ever since as 131 1/2.

When it was built the only way in was the horse walk, the narrow passage that ran alongside the front house from the sidewalk to the yard, and that arrangement is why the block has never really seen the place. From 1959 to 1968 the photographer Diane Arbus rented it and lived here with her two daughters. Those are the nine years that made her: the Guggenheim Fellowships of 1963 and 1966, and New Documents at the Museum of Modern Art in 1967.

The house has since been taken back to the frame. The lower floor is a single room of about nineteen by twenty six feet, whitewashed brick to the sides and painted joists overhead, with a galley kitchen in black counters, white lacquer and Miele appliances at one end and a powder room beside it. Two bedrooms and the full bath sit upstairs, along with a walk-in closet and a Miele washer and dryer.

The front door gives onto a bluestone courtyard, twenty four feet by eleven, fitted with an outdoor kitchen and a grill. It is walled in old brick on three sides, which is the reason the block has never really seen the place, and the reason the place has never had to see the block.

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