Inside the East Village's Most Controversial Mansion

The Economakis family moved in to its controversial mansion at 47 East 3rd Street last month, and the Economakis clan was finally able to make good on a long-ago promise to the Villager to let the paper inside. There are no photos, so we only have Villager reporter Lincoln Anderson's word on all this, but here's what the interior of the mansion looks like, eight unhappy rent-stabilized tenants later:

The kitchen overlooks an airy living room that’s two stories high: Obviously, a whole section of the second floor was removed to create this space?.The living room’s southern wall sports two rows of nine windows, one above the other, each covered with a plain, white blind. With the flick of an electric switch, the blinds slowly, silently rise in unison in the morning, then lower again at night for privacy.

The strangest feature might be the fifth-floor wrestling room, "with a red-and-black, padded mat and mirrors on one wall." There are also a few features that reuse materials from the old building:

There is one very conspicuous remnant — an upside-down “river” of wooden beams that bisects the room, flowing from the top of a new gas-powered fireplace on the living room’s western wall and up across the ceiling to its eastern edge. As Alistair explained it, after they ripped out the walls, they had a pile of old wooden beams. Using them for this wooden ceiling sculpture was their carpenter’s idea.

And on the exterior, East Village "Mosaic Man" Jim Power created a border above the basement-level storefront, made out of the building's old bathroom floor tiles. For neighbors with lingering resentment, that might be the deepest cut of all.
?Photo by Will Femia.
· Mansion features elevator, wrestling and actual family [The Villager]
· Economakis coverage [Curbed]