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At Home Up Here: Rooftop Additions
If you happen to glance skyward and you suddenly see a rustic log cabin perched atop a tall tenement, you needn’t wonder what kind of mushrooms they’ve put on your pizza. Some city-dwellers have opted to construct their dream homes just up the stairs rather than brave the prairie or even the dusty trail of the Long Island Expressway.

You’d think you’ve lost your way in the woods when you spot this cedar-shingled home with its sturdy brick chimney. Except you’re not in the woods, you’re at Third Avenue at 13th Street, and this sprawling rooftop dream house is perched atop the quaintly-restored tenement building that houses upscale apothecary Kiehl’s. The lucky—or silly, depending on your aesthetic sense—owners of the house reportedly have an indoor greenhouse and outdoor gardens as well. At the northwest corner of 1st Avenue near 1st Street, another East Village tenement rooftop hosts an artfully-weathered, gabled house that would look just right on a narrow street in seaside New England. A bay window and a tiny porthole complete the picture. Seeing a multi-story red-roofed stucco home sitting just above the northeast corner of 75th Street and West End Avenue, with a juliet balcony and a row of planted trees and shrubs, you’d think all that’s missing is a driveway. One of the movie-making Coen brothers reportedly commissioned the tiny log cabin (also an extension of the top floor apartment, as most like it are) atop a building on East 32nd Street (on the North side) between 2nd and 3rd avenues. Miniature pine trees surround the cabin of wood-fronted “logs.”

In most cases the builders of these sky-homes hoped to carve out a few more square feet for themselves amid the byzantine co-op regulations and stringent building laws that govern the urban wilderness of Manhattan. For similar reasons, rooftop extensions are popping up on new luxury addresses as well; Better-than-a-penthouse aeries float above new buildings throughout the city. Rooftop cabanas boasting pools and other common spaces are becoming standard amenities in sleek new Manhattan and Brooklyn developments, with space at a premium as always, and in some cases putting long-ignored rooftop zoning regulations, well, up in the air.