The “Pumpkin House,” so named by their children for its exterior stucco color, has been published frequently and received an award for Distinguished Adaptive Reuse of an Historic Building in 2005 from the Oakland Heritage Alliance. A vegetable garden as well as a circle of grass surrounded by fruit trees planted in honor of the couple’s marriage and one for each of their two children round out the first joint project completed by Jennifer Cooper Designer and Thomas Dolan Architecture. The live/work concept was based not on England’s cottage industry heritage, but on the trendy artists’ studios of New York’s SoHo. Two accessory buildings have been constructed, the first being a live-nearby “shedworking” garden house and - terminating the main axis of the garden-a roofed play structure with slide flanked by swings hung from a main beam. Over time their uses no doubt will adapt as the building “learns.” Upstairs, the two apartments accommodate a tenant,an au-pair and Jennifer’s office. A master suite addition with porch fills out the remainder of the 2,200 square foot downstairsunit. What began as the apartment behind the store became laundry, kid’s bedroom and studio/playroom. The storefront was converted to a great room, encompassing kitchen and living areas it actually stands alone as a live-work unit. The result is a place that feelsfar larger than its 57 x 100 foot lot, uses every possible portion of the lot, and packs in a tremendous variety of experiences, vistas and surprises. Drawing on Tom’s long experience with courtyards and the couple’s travels to Oaxaca, Islamic gardens and the Mediterranean, they designed the entire ground level as a series of large rooms, connected by hallways and passages inside the house and linked by trellises, pergolasand paths in the garden. Fawn Creek Township is in Montgomery County. They found it in a neglected 1930’s era corner storefront with a triple south-facing lot and two apartments upstairs. Fawn Creek Township is located in Kansas with a population of 1,618. In 1999, Thomas Dolan and Jennifer Cooper were living in the Rockridge neighborhood of Oakland, recently married and in search of a project and a new home. The housing stock was more suitable below 60th Street, so they decided that avoiding congestion pricing wasn’t that important after all.Live-work in a Former Neighborhood Corner Store They also preferred the flexibility to renovate and sublet a condo, and they bumped up their price. So they focused on condominiums with some common spaces and amenities. Baker said.Īn early visit to a high-floor co-op apartment in a charming prewar walk-up reminded them that “going up and down was asking a lot of our bodies, even without carrying groceries, cats, bags, whatever,” Mr. “Their desks had to be a good enough distance from each other so they could be on the phone,” Mr. They also hoped to find a suitable work-from-home configuration. “We didn’t want to pay a toll to get to our home.” “Our future selves wanted to plan for this possibility,” Ms. They wanted to remain above West 60th Street, concerned about the city’s proposals for congestion pricing. “When we look to buy something, whether it’s an apartment or a car or an appliance, we tend to set a budget and go right over it.”įrom the West Side, it was easy to get out of the city and head upstate. Their budget hovered around $800,000, but “we know ourselves,” Ms. Pfeiffer’s, and told him they were in the market for a bright one-bedroom on the West Side. So they contacted Christopher Baker, an agent at Keller Williams NYC and an old running-group friend of Ms. Email: was tired of paying rent, and we had funds to make a down payment, which had been the big barrier,” he said. [Did you recently buy a home? We want to hear from you. Vogel, 49, had the opportunity to cash out stock options from a former employer. The experience made them think again about buying an anchor in the city, just as Mr. The couple, who work in financial-services software and met through colleagues, spent much of the pandemic working remotely from the lake house. “I really enjoy the vast contrast between the city and that rural part of the Hudson Valley,” she said. In 2017, they bought a lakeside cabin in Columbia County, just south of Albany, for around $222,000. But “we always got super discouraged at how expensive everything was and how little you get for your money,” Ms. Maria Pfeiffer and Jason Vogel moved into a brand-new Hell’s Kitchen building nearly 20 years ago, becoming the first residents of their sunny one-bedroom rental.Įvery few years, they would make a halfhearted attempt to buy a place.
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