New York's narrowest house sells for $2.1m

Evidently neither the poet Edna St Vincent Millay, the actor Cary Grant nor the author and anthropologist Margaret Mead ever needed to swing a cat. All were former residents of reputedly the narrowest house in New York, which has just sold for $2.1m (£1.3m). The price of the house in Greenwich village , just 2.9m (9.5ft) wide and 9.1m (30ft) deep, was slashed by $600,000 since it first went on the market in August, but nevertheless represents a big markup on its last sale in 2000 for a mere $1.6m. According to the archives of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation , the house was built in 1873 during a smallpox epidemic, filling in what had been a carriage entrance way to the stables behind its neighbours. It served as a shoemaker's shop and a sweet factory until the 1920s when the area became a centre for Bohemian life, and an attic studio and the stepped Dutch gable were added for Millay. It later became home to Mead, her sister and brother-in-law, the cartoonist William Steig, and then of the actors John Barrymore and Cary Grant. It was bought by a lawyer as a family home in the 1950s to save it from demolition, when the entire block was threatened with clearance for redevelopment. An even more bijou residence is currently on the market in London for a whisker under £550,000. The basement and three floors over what was once a shop too small for more than one customer at a time, in Shepherd's Bush, west London, is a mere 1.8m (6ft) wide, but packs in two reception rooms, a dining room, a surreally narrow subterranean kitchen, bathroom, shower room, two bedrooms and a study, garden and terrace. It is described by estate agents Faron Sutaria as "pounds per square foot ... incredibly good value for money".