A rare rooftop cottage perched atop an East Village apartment building is now for sale—here’s how much it’ll cost you

New York real estate has a talent for calling any apartment with a plant “a country retreat.” But this time, there’s an actual cedar-clad cottage on the roof. It’s perched above Third Avenue and East 13th Street and it can be yours for an asking price of $7.5 million.

The cottage is the upper level of a three-bedroom, three-bathroom duplex at 203 East 13th Street. The apartment has about 2,000 square feet indoors and nearly 1,000 square feet of private outdoor space. From the sidewalk, you see a pitched roof and greenery sitting atop an otherwise ordinary building. From upstairs, you get a primary suite surrounded by terraces—and a place to sit outside beside a wood-burning fireplace.

Downstairs is considerably more East Village than Cape Cod: exposed brick, an arched doorway, oak floors and windows overlooking Third Avenue. The living and dining areas each have a wood-burning fireplace; the third indoor fireplace is upstairs. There’s an elevator to the apartment’s lower level, though you’ll need to climb an internal staircase to reach the cottage. 

RECOMMENDED: When is the best time to rent an apartment in NYC? A new study has the surprising answer

The building itself has its own downtown pedigree, as home to the original Kiehl’s storefront, and Curbed reports that the complete structure dates to the 1870s. The cottage’s precise origin is harder to pin down, though; a 1998 New York Times item described plans for a cedar-clad rooftop structure with a bedroom, bathroom, patio, greenhouse, darkroom and hot tub. Whether all those features were built (or what became of them) is less clear. (Today’s listing promises a soaking tub and landscaped terraces, but makes no mention of a darkroom.)

There’s another little rooftop house in the East Village that longtime Time Out readers may remember: the Cape Cod-style cottage near First Avenue and East First Street that we covered when it went on the market in 2017. That property, listed then for $3.5 million, sold again in 2024 for a cool $9.75 million. Apparently, this neighborhood has more than one way to make passersby wonder if they’ve looked up at the wrong skyline.

Serhant agents Corrin Thomas and Violetta Weddepohl currently list the Third Avenue property. If $7.5 million is outside your budget, you can still admire the cottage from the street. The view upward is free.