This Airbnb experience was astounding. Danforth is an incredible host, and a great storyteller.
The two hosts Darwin and Danforth were formerly major writers for the historical Frommer's Travel Guides for decades, and I have never seen a house anywhere near New York populated by so many amazing items collected from around the world - furniture, statues, Berber rugs, archangelic tablets, Portuguese blessed oxen yokes, a hundred styles of Buddhas, French candleholders, Tibetan mandalas, Chinese chests, Haitian paintings.
Danforth has a green thumb and an enormous willow and many other plants and a multi-layer garden that has been growing for decades provide a beautiful view for the balcony. This side of the house is covered by grapevines. Many trees isolate the space. We drank coffee and listened to the birds and drank in the verdant surroundings for hours.
It is difficult to understate the fantastic history of this place. 1830s. Anais Nin hung out here. Tennessee Williams was interviewed for his biography here. They have a bed that belonged to Teddy Roosevelt. Mercedes de Acosta was interviewed here in 1968. The whole block I believe is a landmark district, and the house is close to both the water and the oldest (enormous) Catholic Church in Staten Island.
We loved falling asleep near a warm fireplace.
Danforth made many special arrangements to accommodate the Covid crisis and was unerringly clean. We had many needs catered to - more needs and wants than we expected to be catered and maybe some we did not even know could be. Normally the hosts serve breakfast directly, but due to the pandemic they made other arrangements to offer wonderful and borderline unreasonable amounts of food. We were also given liquor, a full refrigerator of other goodies, and some good stories.