Mark Rothko’s former apartment and studio in Manhattan’s Lenox Hill, where he created the paintings for his renowned Rothko Chapel in Texas, is back on the market.
Sotheby’s Realty is asking $9.5 million for the red-brick converted carriage house at 157 East 69th Street, according to a listing. Built in 1884 by German-American architect William Schickel, the three-story landmarked Romanesque Revival building originally served as a private equestrian training space before it became Rothko’s home studio during the peak of his creative output in the 1960s.
The artist created numerous works in the space, marked by its natural light and dramatic atrium, including the series of dark, meditative canvases that currently reside in the non-denominational Rothko Chapel founded in Houston by John and Dominique de Menil. Last year, three of the paintings in the chapel were damaged by roof leaks that occurred during Hurricane Beryl.
“The [Lenox Hill] studio had a skylight, and Rothko used a pulley system to work on the large-scale canvases in that space,” Will Davison, a spokesperson for the Rothko Chapel, told Hyperallergic. The building’s atrium elements would later inspire the artist to incorporate a skylight into the structure.
“The studio was chosen to model the chapel, which in turn was modeled on the studio,” the artist’s son Christopher Rothko told PaperCity Magazine in 2015.
Rothko also created his Untitled (Black on Grey) (1969–70) series in the space, his last body of work before his death by suicide in 1970 at the age of 66. Visual expressions of the artist’s mental and physical state at the time, the paintings are distinguished by their desolate composition and somber palettes.
The 69th Street property, which has been on the market twice since 2023, is currently divided into two units, one of which is occupied by the Urasenke Chanoyu Center, a traditional Japanese tea nonprofit that operates on the ground floor. The Sotheby’s listing only applies to the private residence, but a buyout clause that is due in 12 years per a common tenant agreement could allow a buyer to gain full ownership, Elle Decor reported.
