THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Friday, November 8, 2019 |M1
My only recollection is chickens chasing
me around there. To this day, I have a
deep-seated fear of them. Soon, my parents
stopped getting along, and my mother and I
left my father. I was around 3.
My mother moved us into a commune in
upstate New York. All I remember is the
smell of soybeans. They made tofu there.
After my parents divorced in 1972, my
mother and I moved to New York’s East Vil-
lage. We also spent time at the apartment
of my maternal grandfather, Alex, who lived
nearby on Washington Place. He was a
meat distributor and drove a truck. From
time to time, he let me work on it with
him. He was like a father to me.
My mother was eccentric. She wore her
Please turn to page M10Liev Schreiber, 52, is a Tony-winning ac-
tor who has appeared in more than 50
films, including “Spotlight” and “Human
Capital.” He currently stars in Showtime’s
“Ray Donovan,” which begins season 7 on
Nov. 17. He spoke with Marc Myers.
Let’s just say I had an interesting child-
hood. A year after I was born in San Fran-
cisco, my parents moved us to Winlaw, Brit-
ish Columbia. They wanted to be off the
grid in a beautiful place. It was the late
1960s.
My father, Tell, was a Dartmouth-edu-
cated actor and a carpenter. In British Co-
lumbia, he built our house, and we had a
farm. My mother, Heather, was a painter
and a free spirit.
Midwest, says Aaron Renn, senior fellow at the
Manhattan Institute, who researches cities and
urban policy. It also has been expanding physi-
cally, adding annexed areas to the city proper
and to surrounding suburbs. Columbus proper
was 224.7 square miles in 2019, compared with
143.5 square miles in 1970, according to city
data on annexations.
“There’s a diversity in the types of places
within the city limits,” Mr. Renn says, with some
neighborhoods having a suburban feel.
Today, Columbus proper is ranked the 14th-
largest city in the U.S., according to census data.
Midcareer professionals relocating for jobs at
workplaces such as Nationwide, JPMorganHOUSE CALL|LIEV SCHREIBER
Born to Be Wild,
But With a Purpose
The ‘Ray Donovan’ actor grew up in a series of hippie
communities as the son of a free-spirited motherLiev Schreiber at his Nolita apartment in Manhattan in 2017.DOUGLAS FRIEDMAN/TRUNK ARCHIVEChase, Cardinal Health and Nation-
wide Children’s Hospital tend to be
looking for higher-end homes, says
Kelly Cantwell, a local real-estate
agent at Keller Williams Classic
Properties. She says luxury homes
in the city start at about $650,000.
Adding to the figures, more Ohio
State University graduates are
staying put in the city, relocating
to newly available amenity-filled
apartments, she adds.
In Franklin County, which in-
cludes Columbus, overall home
sales increased 6.4% in September
from a year earlier, while inventory
declined 4.9%, according to MLS
data from the Columbus Realtors. The average
sales price jumped 5.6% for the year through
September, compared with the January through
September period in 2018. Areas directly sur-
rounding downtown are seeing a steady flow of
new construction to meet the demand.
More buyers are choosing luxury properties.
In September 2019, 60 homes over $700,000
were sold, compared with 51 the same month in
2018, according to MLS data from Ms. Cantwell.
Areas with the fastest growth include down-
town, German Village and the Short North in the
city proper, she says, and the suburban areas of
Dublin, Upper Arlington and Grandview Heights.
Please turn to page M8S
usan McManus and Ashley
Lawson were confident
they would get a great
deal on a big home when
they decided to relocate back to
the Midwest after five years in
Southern California.
It didn’t quite happen that way.
After a year of searching in Co-
lumbus, Ohio, they upped their tar-
get price by $500,000. Still, it was
another 17 months before the cou-
ple closed on a four-bedroom, five-
bathroom home in the historical
German Village neighborhood—for
$1.5 million. To win their home, they had to put in
an offer the day the property went on the market.
“The million-dollar houses needed a bunch of
work,” says Ms. McManus, a 49-year-old market-
ing executive. “I was shocked by how much
prices had gone up.”
She and her partner, Ms. Lawson, 37, an attor-
ney, then spent an additional $100,000 to remodel
the nearly 5,000-square-foot American Foursquare
overlooking Schiller Park. They wanted to preserve
historic touches in the 1890s home, including wood
paneling and stained glass.
Ohio’s capital, with a population approaching
900,000—2.1 million in the wider metropolitan
area—is the fastest-growing urban area in theGood-Buy
COLUMBUS
The Ohio capital is the fastest-growing
Midwestern city, drawing eager home buyers
willing to spend on renovationsBYALINADIZIKMANSION
Shadyside
Historic
Millionaires’ Row
is in Pittsburgh’s
East End.M4$17.6 Million
A Rhode Island
home nearly sets
arecordinthe
state.M6HOMES|MARKETS|PEOPLE|REDOS|SALES
60
Number of
homes sold for
over $700,000
in September
2019, compared
with 51 sold in
September
2018
5.6%
year-over-year
increase in the
average sales
price of homes
purchased in
Jan.-Sept. 2019Former New Yorkers Catherine and Bryan Williamson bought a Victorian home in the Olde
Towne East area after being contacted by one of their Instagram followers.
Cost: $152,000Developer Brett Kaufman remodeled his family’s own 12,000-square-foot home situated on a 1-
acre lot in the suburb of Bexley. He added a gym and a recording studio over the garage.
Cost: $1.85 millionRYAN KURTZ FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL (2, EXTERIORS); AARON M. CONWAY FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL (2, INTERIORS)Brady Konya and Kyle Boettcher helped rezone a warehouse area in the Short North. They then
created a condo, rental unit and commercial space in the two-story building.Susan McManus and Ashley Lawson bought a home in the city’s German Village section after
they increased their purchasing budget by $500,000.Cost: $680,000Cost: $1.5 million