Category Archives: New York Post

A 44-foot-wide townhouse is hitting the Manhattan market. That’s not supposed to happen.

At 345 W. 19th St., a six-story, 8,000-plus-square-foot mansion standing at 44 feet wide is about to list for $24.5 million, The Post has learned.

It is the product of two crumbling 22-foot-wide townhouses stitched together, gutted to bedrock and rebuilt from scratch over five painstaking years. The result is something so rare it barely has a category.

“There’s probably two dozen or under” townhouses wider than 40 feet south of 34th Street, Douglas Elliman broker Chris Riccio — who is co-listing the property alongside colleagues Joe Monteleone, Elana Zinoman and Terry Martinolle — told The Post. “In Chelsea, I’m hard-pressed to think of another actual 44-foot-wide mansion that is fully renovated.”

“I don’t think I’ve seen anything over 30 feet in Chelsea in terms of a house,” he said, “unless it’s some strange corner house that has a commercial element or garage piece to it,” Monteleone, who has worked in the townhouse market for decades, added. 

For context, the most celebrated comparables sit in the West Village. Properties like 105-107 Bank St. and 138-140 W. 11th St. are the gold standard of the double-wide genre — and they trade near $70 million. Chelsea has produced nothing at this scale. Until now.

The seller is an angel investor who bought the two adjacent wrecks in 2020 and 2021 for $7.5 million combined. But, according to Monteleonie, they were not an investment. They were a dream.

“The sole purpose was to stay there forever, to be honest,” Monteleone said. “I’ve worked with the owner for almost 25 years.” 

He envisioned a compound where his twins could sprawl, where visiting family from England and his wife’s relatives from out west would have real space. 

“They wanted to offer people who come to the place to stay something that’s comfortable as opposed to a guest room with no windows and a tiny closet kind of scenario,” Monteleone said. 

The houses he bought were barely standing. 

“The staircase was made of temporary plywood,” Monteleone said. “There were a few beams holding things up; seeing it required a hard hat and signing a waiver.”

The previous owner bought both homes and then abandoned the project during the pandemic after a breakup. The latest owner stepped in and commissioned architecture firm RAAD Studio to rebuild everything — facade preserved, interior entirely re-engineered, straight down to the Manhattan bedrock still visible in a corner of the basement.

The renovation cost close to $9 million. 

“Four-plus years of renovations, permit and DOB navigations, crane operations and custom installations,” Monteleone said. 

The family rented an apartment for years while the work dragged on, moving in only last year, finishing the final rooms in the back half of 2025.

Standard Manhattan townhouses run 19 to 22 feet wide. At 44 feet, the architecture becomes something else entirely.

“In most houses, you would never do a 20-foot high living room because you’d lose an entire floor of the house,” Monteleone said. “In this space, since they had that double width, they can afford to make those kinds of choices.”

The great room delivers exactly that — vaulted ceilings adorned by what Riccio described as “the largest fabricated doors,” a custom sliding-glass-wall system 20 feet high that opens the room entirely to the garden below. 

“The backyard is like a soccer haven for his son and his daughter’s a gymnast and has a balancing bar back there,” Monteleone said. “They wanted to create a kind of a world like that, but family isn’t visiting as much as they thought, so they’re considering moving across the pond to Europe or out west. The kids are at a good age where changing schools isn’t a problem for them. And so that’s kind of why they’re making this move.” 

Upstairs, the primary suite occupies nearly an entire floor — close to 1,000 square feet on its own. At its center sits a glass-enclosed atrium open to the sky, with an outdoor shower inside it.

“It’s got this 10-by-12 glass living atrium that’s sunlit, full of snow in the winter,” Monteleone said. “It kind of illuminates the entire room.”

The guest apartment is a full unit — nearly 1,000 square feet, one bedroom, its own entrance, its own outdoor space, entirely self-contained. The stuff of New York fantasy.

Six stories up, above Chelsea’s rooftops, the penthouse opens onto a heated endless pool with the Empire State Building and Hudson Yards skyline directly in frame. An outdoor fireplace, a kitchen, a custom bar and a dining terrace surround it.

“It’s a 3,000-gallon pool,” Monteleone said. “It’s a little bigger than a hot tub, a little smaller than a pool you’d see in a backyard.”

The front of the building faces the rear facade of a school. The back faces a 200-year-old stone church.

“Walking down the street, most people I brought through didn’t even know this thing exists,” Monteleone said. “You walk in and suddenly it’s just space and drama and incredible details everywhere.”The materials throughout carry the same intentionality. Reclaimed wood from the Coney Island boardwalk, which is refinished and artisanally installed, lines the primary bath. Custom millwork, artisanal plaster and a library with a retractable guillotine window fill out the rest. Radiant heat, a private elevator and 35 windows round out the home. 

“Many of these trade off market between friends and young tech billionaires,” Monteleone said. “Lots of people don’t even get a chance to step into these or even get an opportunity to purchase one.”

Discover more stories. Read the latest real estate news at New York Post.