Penthouse magazine was the best3/6/2024 ![]() Barboza says, “Go,” and she once more turns on the current, plugs in her face. ![]() He stops she withdraws, stands away, eyes shuttered again. The shutter is triggering each glimpse of passion. “Come on, Blondie!” The photographer leaps forward, flushed. But then, at the photographic instant, Debbie’s eyes flash alive. Various technical problems occur and reoccur, dealt with by a chorus of assistants and groupies. She reminds Barboza that Blondie is a group. “How do you feel?” “Like I always do,” Debbie says. He sits her on a stool, tries an encouraging smile. “Over here, Blondie,” calls the chic photographer, Anthony Barboza. Her face is heart-stopping her eyes, like her manner, are set on Repel. All in black, she glides in, pushing back gleaming, jaw-length hair with well-groomed hands. There is a tense hush as Deborah Harry – Blondie’s star vocalist – arrives at the photo session. To think that some 40 years ago, a “neighborhood improvement activist” could buy up an entire apartment building, claim the top two floors for himself, and build a cottage on the roof - and now, even buying that assemblage for a mere $3.5 million is, it seems, a dream of the not-so-distant past.Debbie Harry survived punk, junk, and funk to make Blondie the hottest rock-‘n’-roll band in the world. It’s an artifact of another era altogether. ![]() The listing mentions other things even a seasoned real-estate reporter doesn’t see every day: parquet salvaged from a London theater, walls with a specialty paint finish by Mark Chamberlain. The new listing mentions a gut renovation, and the photos show an apartment with more luxurious features than the original listing had: herringbone floors versus standard hardwood ones, full-on landscaping and brick pavers versus a terrace with potted plants, a kitchen with a Lacanche range and North Star fridge compared to the previous stainless-steel appliances and granite countertop. He wouldn’t say who bought it, but apparently they did some work. The current and former listing broker, Nick Gavin of Compass, said that there were multiple bids at the time and that it went for over ask. Back then it was asking $3.5 million - a third of its current listing price. Fixing up old things was something Shrady did often: “He never saw an old wreck of a house or boat or car that he didn’t love,” his wife wrote in his obituary. Besides being actually on top of the building, it’s rather grand in its own way - with a double-height living room in the duplex, the cottage, and a landscaped rooftop surrounding it that, at least from the listing photos, resembles something you might find in Martha’s Vineyard. While penthouse creep is a real phenomenon, with third- and fourth-floor walk-ups being marketed as such, this one lives up to the name. The last owner - Shrady’s widow - said her son lived in the cottage through college and it was rented out thereafter. The downstairs neighbor told the paper that Shrady bought the building in a decrepit and vacant state back in the 1980s, renovated it, and kept the top two floors for himself along with building the Cape Cod–style cottage on the top. It’s an unusual real-estate package dreamed up by the late Henry Merwin Shrady III, a sculptor, artist, and “neighborhood improvement activist,” according to the New York Post, which wrote about the place when Shrady’s widow first listed it back in 2017. ![]() Together the properties add up to some 3,000 square feet. ![]() The listing at 72 East 1st Street is really a two-for-one the cottage is a stand-alone studio with a kitchenette and full bathroom, but the sale also includes the top two floors of the building, a duplex with two wood-burning fireplaces (and a third gas fireplace). Except, that is, for a Cape Cod–style shingled cottage atop a red-brick building on the corner of 1st Street and First Avenue, which has just returned to the market for $9.75 million. The East Village’s gritty bohemian charm has little in common with coastal New England delights. The landscaped rooftop with the cottage, as shown in the listing photo, is part of an unusual property that also includes an apartment on the top two floors of the building. ![]()
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