The New School Lists Its Greenwich Village Townhouse for $20 Million

The New School’s Greenwich Village townhouse, an elegant 19th-century brick building that has served as a residence for university presidents and a venue for school functions for the last four decades, is now on the market.

The asking price is $20 million, according to the listing brokers, Nikki Field and Mara Flash Blum of Sotheby’s International Realty. Annual property taxes will be determined at the closing, they said.

The school recently decided to sell the property, known as the Scatturo House, located just around the corner from the campus at 21 West 11th Street, amid growing pressure from faculty and students to find ways to offset a looming budget deficit. The townhouse is currently occupied by the interim president, Donna Shalala, a former member of Congress and secretary of health and human services under President Bill Clinton.

Four other university presidents have lived at the townhouse since the New School purchased it for $990,000 in 1984 from the children’s science book authors Herman and Nina Schneider. (Public records show a $740,000 mortgage was taken out and repaid in 1995.)

The five-story structure — 20 feet wide with a classic front stoop and window boxes for flowers — encompasses 4,038 square feet, with four bedrooms, five and a half bathrooms and a library/media room that could be converted into an additional bedroom. There is a total of 900 square feet of outdoor space, including a roomy terrace off the primary bedroom and a landscaped and irrigated rear garden with trees, assorted plants and perennial flowers — a popular backdrop for school events.