543 Manhattan Avenue

The tax rolls put 543 Manhattan Avenue at 1901, and the date matters: it went up in the last quiet stretch before the IRT reached Morningside Heights in 1904 and touched off the speculative rowhouse boom that filled the side streets. This is one of the earlier houses, on the Harlem edge of Morningside Park.

Inside it reads more like a loft than a rowhouse: exposed brick and beamed ceilings run floor to floor, a grand piano anchors the parlor, fireplaces repeat upstairs, and a planted garden sits behind. Five bedrooms, four baths, 3,420 square feet across a two-family layout.