Real Estate

Mann cave

MONASTERY AMOUR: The dining-room table is an old door from a Mexican monastery; the shoe ladder is off to the side.

MONASTERY AMOUR: The dining-room table is an old door from a Mexican monastery; the shoe ladder is off to the side.

Mann put up the girls’ bunk beds (above) in eight hours.

D’Amboise’s hat from when she played Cassie in “A Chorus Line” (above)

It took 15 years, but Broadway co-stars and real-life married couple Charlotte d’Amboise and Terrence Mann finally made it to Harlem.

“We’ve been together since 1989,” Mann says, “and she always said we have to live in Harlem one day. She just knew it was going to be the next neighborhood that was going to happen.”

D’Amboise and Mann — both in the hit revival of “Pippin” at the Music Box Theatre — remember very clearly how they found themselves buying a brownstone in 2004.

“We lived on West 96th Street in a railroad flat apartment that was 82 feet long and 11 feet wide,” Mann says. “It was like living in a doctor’s waiting room. And we had two little babies.” (Josephine was adopted from China when she was 11 months old, and d’Amboise had just given birth to Shelby.)

That was when they headed uptown to begin a concerted search for an apartment. They saw a 1903 building for sale. It had five rental units and four floors, plus an unfinished basement. The stairs, doors and window frames were all done in beautiful oak woodwork, and there were skylights and working fireplaces.

“I immediately fell in love,” d’Amboise says. “But it was more money than we wanted to spend. I figured out all the numbers in my head until it worked out. I said, ‘We’re going for it.’ ” They paid $1.3 million for the 4,000-square-foot building. Today it’s worth twice that.

The family lives on the top two floors (totaling about 1,800 square feet), and tenants occupy the garden and the parlor floors.

“I grew up in a brownstone; my parents owned on West 71st Street,” d’Amboise says. “And they had tenants. So that’s how I knew the benefits of having tenants and paying the mortgage.”

They then set about improving the brownstone. “The bathroom on this floor had a tub in it,” says Mann. “And the kitchen was much smaller. So we took out the bathtub, shoved everything back and redid the entire kitchen.

“There was still some of the original molding left, but it was like a piece here and a piece there,” Mann continues. “The rest had fallen down. So we had a guy come in, and he rematched it all and put it all back in.”

They discovered the original mantel for the living-room fireplace in the basement leaning against a wall. (The second fireplace is in the dining room.)

“This building has seen some hard living over the years,” Mann says. “At one point, it was a crack den. The living-room floors — which are original — are full of cigarette burns where people stomped out their butts. When we looked at it, we decided not to touch it.”

“They give the floor character,” d’Amboise says.

Adding to the home’s character are their own antiques. (“Charlotte calls them antiques,” Mann says. “I call them stuff that was in my grandfather’s barn in Kentucky.”) They added pieces from ABC Carpet & Home and sconces and a matching chandelier from Home Depot.

Mann especially prizes the kids’ bunk beds. “It took me eight hours to put them together,” he says. “They’re really cool with real stairs. After I finally got it all done, Charlotte walks in and says, ‘Oh no, the stairs go on the other side.’ ”

Another special bit of decoration is their shoe ladder. “We left the ladder up by the door,” Mann explains, “because we have high ceilings and I had to replace all the lights. I came home one day, and the cleaning lady had taken all our shoes that we leave by the door and put them on the ladder. It had a great kind of Christmas tree effect, so we left it.”

D’Amboise and Mann met when they were doing “Cats” in 1984. “We worked together in ‘Jerome Robbins’ Broadway’ ” d’Amboise says, “and also a couple of regional shows. But it’s very rare that you get a Broadway show that has parts for both of you.”

Now that rare thing has happened again. Not only are they working together on “Pippin” (which was nominated for 10 Tony awards and won both Drama Desk and Drama League awards), but they’re also working on the original cast album that will be released in July.

D’Amboise plays Fastrada; Mann plays Charles and gets to both juggle and do a knife-throwing act with his wife. For that and more, he was nominated for a Tony for the third time. (D’Amboise has already had two Tony nods to her credit.)

The couple is also working together on a summer project they call “Triple Arts.” They are co-founders of the intensive two-week musical-theater workshop for students (ages 14 to 24) to study the art of acting, singing and dancing.

Mann is also the endowed professor of musical theater at Western Carolina University. “I direct their spring show,” he says, “and I try to go down during the fall months to do some workshops and classes.”

But when all the shows and workshops and classes are done, they retreat to their Harlem hideaway.

“I love this house, love the neighborhood,” d’Amboise says. “There’s a family feeling and a mix of people. There’s no other place in the city I’d rather live than here in Harlem.”

Charlotte d’Amboise and TerrenceMann’s

FAVORITE THINGS

*The dining-room table made from a door from an old monastery in Mexico.

* Al Hirschfeld portraits: d’Amboise’s is for “Jerome Robbins’ Broadway,” Mann’s for “Les Misérables”

* The kids’ bunk beds

* Their piano, an old Baldwin

* D’Amboise’s hat from when she played Cassie in “A Chorus Line”

* D’Amboise’s bronzed baby shoes

* A chessboard made of ivory and onyx that d’Amboise got in Marrakesh