Relationships are about compromise (so I hear). Sometimes that informs where you live, how you decorate your home, and whether you go ahead and build a rooftop garden with a hen house even though you’re deathly afraid of chickens, all to make your partner happy. Such is the case with Liev Schreiber. Liev famously bought his swanky bachelor pad 30 years ago in the NoHo area of NYC. When he and Naomi Watts got together and had their two kids, they bought another apartment in the building and made it into a triplex. Liev kept ownership of the place even when the Watts-Schreibers bought, renovated, and moved into a duplex in Tribeca. Which worked out, I guess, as Liev ended up returning to his old home after he and Naomi split in 2016. Liev has been with his now-wife, former Miss South Dakota Taylor Niesen, since 2017. When the pair had a baby three years ago, Liev once again bought an adjacent apartment to expand the space. Now they’re showing off the renovations to Architectural Digest, including the chickens who live on the roof per Taylor’s request.

Liev Schreiber doesn’t look like a man who is afraid of anything. But he has a confession to make. “I’ve always been terrified of chickens,” he says. “They look like dinosaurs.”

It’s not clear why someone who lives in a NoHo triplex would even mention his phobia of fowl—until Schreiber climbs the blackened-steel spiral staircase to the roof. There, wisteria blooms on trellises, raspberries ripen on bushes, a cold-plunge pool commands sweeping views of downtown Manhattan—and a chicken coop looms in the corner.

Liev hangs back as his wife, Taylor, tosses a handful of worms inside to Grandma, Sizzurp, Fern, Pico, and Miu Miu—a clucking brood whose eggs are packed into custom cartons stamped Hazel’s Hens, named for the couple’s toddler daughter, Hazel Bee. Visitors often leave with half a dozen.

Naturally, the chickens were Taylor’s idea. When she joined Liev in the apartment he has owned in one shape or form since 1998, she had two requests: soften its man-cave edge and create an outdoor refuge reminiscent of the corn and soy farm where she grew up in South Dakota. “We had sheep and pigs and chickens,” she recalls. “So making a green space on the roof was really important to me.”

…The Yale drama school graduate had purchased a one-bedroom apartment in the building in NoHo—in a 19th-century Neo-Grec former industrial space—after a role in Nora Ephron’s movie Mixed Nuts earned him enough money for a down payment. He appreciated its proximity to the Public Theater, where he was performing in Shakespeare plays. As his acting career flourished and he had children, Sasha and Kai, they annexed the two-floor apartment below and created the triplex.

…When Taylor came into the picture, she loved the apartment, even if it was a bit hard-edged for her taste. But once Hazel Bee arrived, it felt too small. The couple searched Manhattan and Brooklyn for a larger space, but nothing felt right, and Schreiber couldn’t imagine leaving the neighborhood he’d called home for decades. Once again, the solution was right at his doorstep: a neighbor sold them her two-bedroom apartment.

…Schreiber—whose fear of poultry started as a child, when his hippie parents moved the family to a commune in Canada—seems to be successfully conquering this particular anxiety. He does have one rule, though: “No chickens in the house.” With an occasional exception, of course, for photo shoots.

[From AD]

Anyone else rolling their eyes at the comment that “nothing felt right” in ALL of Manhattan and Brooklyn for a family shopping on a rich budget? (Also, those aren’t the only boroughs in NYC! She indignantly exclaims from her rented apartment in one of the other three…) And the bigger reason they stayed, anyway, is Liev’s attachment to the home he’s lived and invested in for three decades. Fun fact: I lived in dorms and off-campus apartments when he and Naomi were together and know exactly where this place is, I even lived down the street for one summer (again, just renting). In some ways it’s an unusual location for a family home; the neighborhood isn’t super residential, skews more business and small rentals for the youths. But the Public Theater is right there, and it makes sense that would matter to a theater guy like (Tony winner) Liev.

The rest of the article goes through the home floor-by-floor. Taylor said she wanted it less man-cavey, but it still reads pretty close to that if you ask me. Except, of course, for Hazel Bee’s nursery; she has a custom wooden crib with a canopy. Sadly, AD hasn’t posted a walk-through video yet, all we have is an eight-year-old one from the reno Liev did after his split from Naomi.

Lastly, some words of comfort to Liev on his poultry phobia: the reason chickens look like dinosaurs, is because they ARE dinosaurs!

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Photos credit: Avalon.red, Cover Images