Architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff has finally found a house he can live with.
The notoriously prickly former New York Times critic and his wife, British artist Cecily Brown, closed today on a townhouse at 125 East 10th Street in the East Village, sources said. The purchase price was $7.75 million, confirmed Warburg Realty’s Jason Haber, who represented the seller. Ouroussoff and Brown did not have a broker.
Located near the intersection of Stuyvesant and East 10th streets, the house was designed by James Renwick in the 1850s. It hit the market asking $8.3 million in February, according to a listing on StreetEasy that detailed original features of the home including fireplaces, mantels, moldings and skylights.
“Because of its position on 10th Street, the light the house gets makes it one of the brightest homes in the Village,” Haber said. “It’s rare to find a house with this much original detail.”
Ouroussoff was the New York Times’ architecture critic from 2004 to 2011, penning reviews comparing the Barclays Center to a “colossal, spiritless box.” In 2009, he wrote of the High Line: “I keep picturing Carrie Bradshaw on the High Line, and it terrifies me.” He concluded, however, that the project was developed with such care as to give New Yorkers “an invaluable and transformative gift.”
Records show the seller of 125 East 10th Street was Kathryn Cerick, who paid $4.25 million for the house in 2006. In 2007, she also bought 123 East 10th Street for $4.32 million, later selling it to Olivier Sarkozy — the banker and half-brother to France’s former president Nicolas Sarkozy who is married to Mary-Kate Olsen. (Sarkozy sold the house in 2014.)
According to the listing for 125 East 10th Street, the house could be purchased in combination with No. 123 for $15.995 million. The two houses were built around the same time and share a large private garden. But records show that house sold in July for $7.35 million.