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This time last year, Adam was living in Upstate New York’s Catskills region, five miles from any major road and more than ten miles from the closest town of Bethel. In the morning he’d open up the back doors of his lakehouse and let his two dogs out. Diego, a German collie, and Kaylee, a golden retriever, would run and play throughout the day, and Adam sometimes didn’t see the energetic duo again until it was nearly dark. His artist girlfriend Sarah had plenty of room to work, and Adam, a trained chef, enjoyed cooking in his vast, custom kitchen.
But then his college-bound daughter fell in love with New York City and declared she was most certainly going to live and attend school there. Adam was faced with a fatherly challenge of either finding someplace to live in the metropolitan area that could accommodate his distinct needs, or simply not seeing his daughter nearly as much as he wanted. So there really wasn’t a choice at all. He and Sarah began their search for a new home.
“We knew with two dogs, Manhattan was pretty much out of the question,” Adam says, recognizing his favorite canines’ obvious appreciation for outdoor space. “We looked in Brooklyn, but the rents and broker fees were insane.”
A New Jerseynative who enjoyed great success in the pharmaceutical industry, Adam is now fully focused on a business initiative, developing his own alteration to the traditional kiteboard, which is essentially a surfboard with a kite attached to it that uses wind power to help propel it. He knew access to Manhattan would not be a problem from Downtown Jersey City, a burgeoning neighborhood just across the Hudson River from the World Trade Center.
So, when he saw a newly renovated, four-floor single-family home with a spacious backyard, island kitchen, six bedrooms, and five bathrooms, he took advantage of the opportunity. There was more than enough room for himself, Sarah, and the dogs, not to mention their two cats and, eventually, Adam’s son Zach—a recent college graduate who works at a Manhattan-based record company.
“We’re very happy here,” Adam says of their time in the home thus far, noting that his trips to New York via the PATH train are extraordinarily quick and easy. “The Grove Street stop is two blocks away, so I can do my food shopping at the TriBeCa Whole Foods store with no problem.” Adam adds that the local government has “done a really nice job between this house and the river” in developing the area now flush with restaurants, cafes, shopping locales, and tall glassy office buildings.
Standing between his kitchen’s island and Aga Legacy stove—a real selling point for this chef—and underneath rows of white custom cabinetry, he looks around the space. He sips a fresh cappuccino and pleasantly says, “This kitchen works,” which is high praise coming from someone who also spent time as a professional chef and was once hired by Thomas Keller, famous for Per Se in the Time Warner Center and other high-profile establishments.
Before touring the other rooms, he walks over to the back door, and, just like he did upstate, opens it up to let the dogs out into the private, spacious, and leafy backyard. It contains a garden, pinewood fence, and a bluestone-puzzle-piece-like paved area that might have patio dining tables and chairs stationed on it if Diego and Kaylee didn’t need so much room to wrestle around—which they do, vigorously.
Decorated with works from both his girlfriend and other artists whose work appeals to two self-described “art snobs,” the living room has beautiful, seven-inch white oak floors with a bona rich tone stain, a granite-framed decorative fireplace, high ceilings, crown molding, and, like most of the rooms in the home, oversized windows that go a long way in brightening the space.
Downstairs on the garden level there’s a recently converted bedroom that, for six months, served as his girlfriend’s studio—she’s now doing most of her work at a new space in Brooklyn—and another bedroom and storage space. A flight up from the parlor level, the second floor houses a perfectly proportioned office, a bedroom with one of the two laundry closets in the home, and, down the hall, his son’s lengthy bedroom with a walk-in closet, en-suite bathroom, and enough space for several pieces of music equipment.
The master bedroom suite encompasses the entire third floor and features two full-sized walk-in closets along with an en-suite bathroom of its own. More high ceilings with tasteful molding and sizable windows complement the grand space.
But the place where Adam and Sarah relax the most is in the front yard, on the stoop. “Three or four nights a week we’ll sit out here and have a glass of wine,” Adam says, standing among their many herbs, spices, veggies, and other plantings—including a small fig tree—and Adam’s motorcycle.
When Adam doesn’t cook, he and Sarah will dine at local spots like Thirty Acres new American restaurant, Satis Bistro for Mediterranean cuisine, Razza pizzeria, the Hamilton Inn for brunch, and Prato Bakery, which Adam emphatically says, “rocks.” Sarah particularly enjoys shopping the nearby Grove Street Farmers Market and says The Sports Barre offers an elegant, welcoming environment for a good workout just three blocks from the house. “The best thing about this area is you can walk everywhere,” Adam points out.
His daughter is just a few minutes away, too. She lives in a TriBeCa apartment, very close to that Whole Foods store where Adam shops a few times a week, and just a 10-minute train ride away. A year ago, it seemed like Adam had to make a choice between the city and the country, but today he’s found a home that has it all.
View the floor plans for 2nd Street
