Robert Lerch is an ear, nose, and throat doctor, sure, but he's also an avid collector of... everything. And his townhouse on East 83rd Street is packed to the brim with "with early-20th-century Bakelite jewelry, Art Nouveau bronze frogs and dragons, vending machines and amusement park and circus artifacts and the occasional engraved metal hard hat worn by Indonesian oil rig workers." Lerch bought the five-story, red-brick property back in 1995 for $1.2 million, and has just put it back on the market for $12.95 million. Lerch maintains a website, Physician Collector, which he uses to buy and sell new trinkets. Ahead of an exhibition of 75 of his eclectic pieces in 2013, for which "the common theme [was] craziness, or eccentricity," he admitted, "I wake up and I think I'm out of my mind." Take a tour of 5,000-square-foot funhousewith a landscaped backyard and seven wood-burning fireplacesto see if you agree.
· Listing: 209 East 83rd Street [Elliman via StreetEasy]
· Physician Collector [official]
· From a Restless Pack Rat, a Carnival of Oddities [NYT]
· Tuesday Townhouse archive [Curbed]
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