Living with antiques: the rescue and restoration of a New York city landmark.

When most Manhattan collectors want to buy a town house, they typically seek out a "brownstone" on one of the tree-lined side streets of the Upper East Side or the Upper West Side, or on one of the better historic blocks in Greenwich village or around Gramercy Park. But lifelong New Yorker Raffaello Borello is hardly your typical collector or town house owner.

"In 1976, I was riding my bike down West Fourteenth Street," recalls Borello. (1) "I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw this vacant and forlorn-looking early Italianate style house with a For Sale sign on its painted and peeling red brick facade. I knew it was unique: thirty feet wide, five stories tall, ...