Exclusive | This Charming Exclusive NYC ‘Secret Street’ Hardly Sees Its Homes List – Now 3 Seeking New Residents

Imagine a row of 20 yellow-painted wooden houses—each clad in pine green shutters, gated entrances, and ornate brown corners—lining a cobblestone path toward a grand mansion built in 1765.

This scene may have seemed more appropriate in colonial America, but today it remains far from the city in Washington Heights. Sylvan Terrace, long considered one of the city’s coveted “back streets” – otherwise known as one of the secluded streets and alleys away from the residential street grid, where carriage houses and horse stables later became at home – is a world apart from the surrounding area.

There, those 20 three-story houses — developed in 1882 for working-class residents — overlook a carriage lane in the Morris-Jumel Mansion, Manhattan’s oldest surviving residence. It may also appear that those townhouses rarely become available for sale or rent, which is mostly true. But now, three of them are looking for new residents — marking a prime chance for house-hunting New Yorkers to move into one of the city’s most charming enclaves.

“It’s really close-knit, everyone looks out for each other — and you don’t usually find that in New York,” Alexander Scheirle, 56, executive director of the Grammy-winning Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, told The Post. of the Sylvan Terrace community. Scheirle has owned No. 7 since 2012, when he bought it for $913,000, and now has the two-bedroom spread on the rental market with Lori Huler Glick and Lisa Marie Abrahamson of Brown Harris Stevens for $6,800 a month. “People are constantly on the move – you have one-year, two-year contracts – and you don’t make the effort to get to know your neighbours. This is very different at Sylvan Terrace, and I was surprised when I moved there.”

It’s different in Sylvan Terrace because residents tend to stay there.

Since 2018, according to sales data reviewed by The Post, only seven homes there have changed hands. What’s more, only four of them have been sold since 2021 – the last time the street saw a mini-boom in availability. The $1.58 million deal for No. 16 marks the only sale this year. The rest of the town’s homes, sales records show, have remained in the same hands for decades.

For his part, Scheirle plans to keep his home there. He began renting out the light-filled apartment — with 11-foot parlor-level ceilings, a mahogany staircase, exposed brick and fireplaces — in 2021 after a family move to Connecticut because his two children, now both teenagers , needed more space to grow.

“It’s very beautiful and very special, and so many great memories,” he said of the property. “I don’t think anyone should sell when you have a house like this.”

However, one of his neighbors is.

The town house at No. 8 is Sylvan Terrace’s most recent listing. Last week, that three-bedroom spread was listed for sale with Grace Steel of Compass, asking $1.82 million. Its marketing images show wide-plank hardwood floors, wood-beamed ceilings, exposed brick and several fireplaces. Steel’s listing description adds that the parlor-level ceilings have reclaimed decorative medallions, a master suite with 15-foot-high ceilings — and the potential to create a two-family building by renting out the garden level for additional income.

This exact potential is one that is also up for grabs on the block.

In no. 18, an 850-square-foot one-bedroom apartment listed in early August for $2,750 a month with Michel Madie and Richard Lehman of Michel Madie Real Estate Services. Not a full town house, this residence has an open plan living/dining space, an original brick fireplace, a spacious kitchen and double glazed windows.

Whether one owns or rents, everyone benefits from the block’s community embrace.

Scheirle remembers holiday parties, summer parties — even the emails that go out when packages are left on the beds of homes asking for a neighbor to pick them up. As of 2021, he has had two tenants living in his home. They left for personal reasons, but “Everyone said ‘oh, it’s so bittersweet’ because they really wanted to stay but couldn’t and had the same experience, connecting with neighbors. I don’t think you find that especially in the city, and I think that’s what makes it so beautiful.”