Maya Angelou’s Harlem Home Sells for Record $4 Million

Posted on August 01, 2016 | by Chhing Chhut in News | 1462 Views

Maya Angelou’s Harlem Home Sells for Record Million

Maya Angelou’s Harlem brownstone has sold for $4,075,000—or $1,138.58 per square foot. That’s a colossal price for a Harlem residential property, according to listing agent Valon Nikci of Link NY Realty. The property hit the market in January asking $5.1 million.

“The home is a record breaker, being the most expensive single-family home per square foot sold in Harlem,” Nikci says.

The 20-foot-wide house on West 120th Street was the poet and civil rights activist’s New York City home for almost a decade, although her principal residence was in Winston-Salem, NC. The New York Times recounted that her friends Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson, the Motown songwriting couple, told Angelou about the century-old brownstone, which reportedly was just a shell when Angelou snapped it up, sight unseen.

She eventually transformed the property into a five-bedroom, five-bathroom stunner with an 800-square-foot kitchen.

In the Harlem home, the Times reports, Angelou “entertained scores of friends like Oprah Winfrey and Cicely Tyson with dance parties and competitive Boggle games and whipped up her signature smothered chicken.”

Angelou, who wrote poems, plays, and screenplays and received more than 50 honorary degrees, is best known for her first of seven autobiographies, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” She died in May 2014 at age 86.

Brownstone exterior

Link NY Realty