when bad things happen to high ceilings: 250 Mercer Street loft sells at $650/ft

layout does not lay out very well [edited for grammar and typos]
Even for a building that often has sales at relatively low values for the Greenwich Village market, the December 18 sale of the “1,200 sq ft” Manhattan loft #C301 at 250 Mercer Street stands out, not in a good way. Regular readers of Manhattan Loft Guy do not need an updated Master List of Manhattan Lofts Sold Since November 2008 to know that $650/ft is a value not often “achieved” in a good many years. The outstanding feature of the loft is the ceiling height, at “13′-8"+”, but there’s a catch: about half the loft cuts that height in half (the “loft” in the loft has a ceiling height of “6′-8"+”, leaving the same height downstairs if the numbers are right and the mezzanine floor takes up 4 inches). In other words, it does not feel very loft-y, except in the mezzanine sense.

Apart from those ceiling heights, there are no dimensions given on the floor plan or in the broker babble. Eyeballing the photos, the ceiling height seems about as tall as the “living room” is wide, which is not one of those “classic proportions” you sometimes see bragged about in prewar spaces. (All those hard surfaces make me worry about the echo factor in this unusual space.)

The listing claims those “1,200 sq ft”, which can only be arithmetically derived by giving full credit for the front half of the loft having two sets of ceilings under 7 feet. Which may be efficient, but hardly gives a sense of volume. If accurate, that “1,200 sq ft” implies a footprint no greater than 800 sq ft, but someone decided long ago that this vast cubic rectangle was more valuable broken up into a bi-level front. That this calculation is undoubtedly correct is small consolation (to outsiders, at least) when the result is a constant head ducking, even from simply looking at the photos.

At this point it is mere piling on to point out that there are only two windows in the loft. Two nearly 10 foot windows, but only two. And you don’t even get the full benefit of these very tall windows until you’ve gotten out from under the overhang mezzanine.

it’s not the height, its the narrow
It is hard to say what one could do with loft #C301 apart from what you see. The babble calls it (caps omitted) an “architect’s dream”, but perhaps I hang with the wrong architects. “Nightmare” seems more fitting.

The essentially contemporaneous #D804 is a fascinating, if painful, contrast to #C301. That one has ‘only’ 12 foot ceilings, so there is no temptation to double up some space. But that floor plan is much more rich, with two walls of windows, permitting a real bedroom and a living room with proportion, volume and light. My eyeballs ballpark that footprint as smaller, but very similar in size to that of #C301 (without that mezzanine, obviously).

The Market much preferred the better shape, more windows, and more brag-worthy kitchen and bath to the one that has much more space on 2 levels:

The Market is not a fool (at least not about this pair).

© Sandy Mattingly 2013