This 9.5-foot-wide home for sale on Bedford Street in New York City's Greenwich Village could be a most appropriate buy for this era of downsizing.

The three-story, 42-foot-long town house was built in 1873 and counts actors Cary Grant and John Barrymore, anthropologist Margaret Mead, and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Edna St. Vincent Millay among its former owners. If not averse to the space, a buyer might pause at the asking price of $2.75 million. The home actually has 1,500 square feet of living space, in line with a trend toward "rightsizing" homes that saw average floor area of newly built home shrink from 2,629 to 2,438 square feet in the last quarter of 2008.

Inside the home, open floor plans and extended balconies give the illusion of roominess, reflecting a move toward better use of existing interior space, as described in our  10 Questions for interviews with The Not So Big House author Sarah Susanka and architect Marianne Cusato.—Gian Trotta | e-mail | Twitter | Forums | Facebook

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