After spending about 352 days on the market, the New York City townhouse at 20 West 12th St. opened its doors on Monday, completely reborn.
Influencers and design enthusiasts wandered through the property’s living spaces and eight bedrooms, holding up their phones to document the breadth of colors, textures, and interior styles around them. Just a few months ago, someone visiting the 1900-era home for a showing would’ve seen something much more pared back: grey walls, white trim, a blank canvas. But now, the home hosts the 50th Annual Kips Bay Decorator Show House.
The annual ticketed event, which raises money for the Kips Bay Boys and Girls Club, usually takes place in a for-sale property, but this was its first time in Greenwich Village, even its first occurrence downtown.
Brown Harris Stevens broker Mike Lubin, the home’s listing agent, pitched the Kips Bay organizers on the property when the organization began its search for this year’s location. First listed in 2024 for $20 million, the home was discounted to $18.5 million in February 2025 and then to $16.5 million in June.
“I think they wanted to think outside the box,” Lubin texted Homes.com. The organization “hosted recently on the [Upper West Side] — on Riverside Drive — and was open to a new idea.”
The person in charge of the search was excited about the property right away, he noted. The downtown location made a bit of a splash for the bicentennial show house, and the 9,300-square-foot home had plenty of space and an elevator. The residence also lacked its original detailing, also an asset, as there were no antique elements to preserve and work around.
Instead, this year’s 21-member pool of Kips Bay designers had free rein over the space, each firm or individual transforming a room of the house. Designer Corey Damen Jenkins, for instance, pulled inspiration from Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There” to reimagine the dining room as a floral wonderland that veers into the futuristic with a pixelated ceiling. Designer Tamara Feldman, on the other hand, turned one of the home’s nine bathrooms into a marble-drenched escape punctuated by a lime-green bathtub.
It's the ultimate showing, and it gives buyers a chance to experience the home’s high-design potential in person, Lubin said.
“It’s sensorial and engrossing and intoxicating,” he detailed. “Even if a room is not to their exact taste, seeing a vision well-executed helps them to see what can be achieved.”
There’s good news for an interested buyer who does like what they see: Many of the design elements added to the home — the wallpaper, the paint, the window treatments — all stay with the home once the showcase ends Oct. 19.
In the meantime, visitors continue to arrive.
Some of those visitors are previous interested buyers, coming back to see the house transformed, Lubin said. “That’s the power of a show house. New visitors experience it as a vision and return buyers see its new incarnation.”