Ever dreamed of living on the most amazing island in the world? That’s right, we’ve been opening a few Cohabs houses in New York these past few months! Our latest gem: Malcolm X 34, in the heart of Harlem, Manhattan.
A buzzing and diverse neighborhood
This beautiful building is nestled in central Harlem, a place known for its cultural diversity and buzzing art scene, as well as its great food and famous bars and restaurants. Ever heard of Sylvia’s, Babbalucci, Red Rooster, or The Apollo Theater, to name a few?
It’s also conveniently located close to public transportation and the iconic Central Park, the green lung of Manhattan.
Malcolm X 34, your future home
The house counts 16 bedrooms divided into 3 units, each one with their own living room, kitchen and dining room.
These 3 units are harmoniously laid out around amazing common areas: a huge backyard that was made for barbecues, a rooftop for happy hours, a cinema room with a big screen and even a gym! Because at the end of the day, what matters most is our community and the ability for our members to meet and spend time together.
The Harlem flair everywhere
All the rooms are decorated with the Cohabs magic touch, upgraded with beautiful murals from the local artist Lesny JN Felix.
Dan Clark, our Managing Director for the US, explains: “We used Google searching for local Harlem muralists and I found a bunch of articles on Lesny and then discovered his Instagram. Lionel (Jadot, our Head of Design, NDLR) and I both really liked his stuff“
Lesny JN Felix was born in Haiti but has been living in Harlem for 10 years!
We immediately noticed his love for the neighborhood, but also the fact that we share the same vision of art. In his words: “My work is about how it makes you feel, how you interact with it. That’s what it’s all about.” So we asked him to paint throughout the house with basically no other briefing than “do your thing”. And the result is colorfully mindblowing!
When renovating and decorating Malcolm X 34, the US team also had to deal with a huge difference compared to Cohabs Europe, as explained by Dan: “In Europe, what we do is we take buildings that were built in the seventeen hundreds or eighteen hundreds or nineteen hundreds. And we bring a lot of the original details out and we leave a lot of the things rough. So you can just literally scratch on the wall and find something really beautiful and unique. Here in Harlem, we didn’t really have that option. The building’s only from nineteen ninety-nine. It was really kind of a white box where we could use all of our creative imagination and really make it our own…” And that’s exactly what we did.
