True Gotham

I don't typically blog about restaurants but thanks to my wife's awesome job at Food and Wine Magazine I often get the chance to preview a place before the rest of the public.  It's not often that I feel compelled to share my experiences with my readers and it's not because the experience isn't wonderful but more because we eat at so many different places that i can't keep them all straight in my head.  And oh yeah...I write about real estate!

That said, last night my wife and I had the sincere privilege of dining at the "friends and family" opening of the newest Mermaid Inn located on Amsterdam between 87th and 88th Streets on the Upper West Side.  The first Mermaid Inn is located in the trendier East Village and has been a smashing success.  After last nights experience from the ambiance of the space to the deliciousness of the food, I suspect this location will also thrive. Those who live on the Upper West Side know how completely "starved" the area is for good food.  So welcome to the Upper West Side Mermaid and all of you Upper West Siders get out there and support her...she's a catch!

On a completely different note, our dining experience last night was a bit of a trip down memory lane in terms of the gentrification of this area of Manhattan.  You see, I used to live in a 600sf 2BR (yes 2BR's in 600sf) in the tenement walk-up building just adjacent to the Mermaid Inn.  I think my roommate and I paid $550/mth.   We often passed drug dealers and users in our vestibule going about their "transactions."  Once my girlfriend (now my wife) and I pulled up in a taxi to have an undercover cop point his gun through the rear windows of our cab in an effort to bust one of our neighborhood dealers.  That was nearly 20 years ago before the Upper West Side morphed into the trendy stroller-laden haven that it is today.  Some mourn the loss of character that existed back then, and others like myself see The Upper West Side as a safer, cleaner, and better place to raise our families.  It seems that now we can also FINALLY support good restaurants (and there are more to come!!!)  Thank goodness!

UPDATE: Since it appears that many are visiting my site after Googling "Mermaid Inn Upper West Side," here's the contact info:

Mermaid Inn is located at 568 Amsterdam Avenue (between 87th and 88th Streets)                        Give a call and check it out at 212-799-7400

Posted By Douglas Heddings | Permalink | 2 Comments

I'm off to the Dominican republic today for a much needed vacation with the family.  I'll be back blogging on Monday, April 2nd but today and all of next week, I will rerun some of True Gotham's most popular/controversial posts.  Enjoy.

Posted By Douglas Heddings | Permalink | 0 Comments

Check out this month's list of new residential construction (via the Real Deal).  if you follow the links at the bottom of their page, you can also see previous month's projects.  An excellent resource!

Posted By Douglas Heddings | Permalink | 0 Comments

In the early 1990s I was an NYU student living in the East Village. I went to see a friend's band play in a basement club. Before the show, the club held a poetry reading, which consisted almost entirely of anti-white male poetry. It was hard core. Like ten or twelve poems in a row at one point.

As it happened, my friend Jason and I were pretty much the only white males in the room, and sympathetic as we were to the overall cause of equal rights, it was just a little unnerving. We definitely got some "how dare you" stares.

At that point, Jason leaned over to me and said "All I got to say is, if I have it so great, how come I'm living on Attorney Street?"

It was a killer line. Because Attorney Street was miserable. The second you crossed Houston Street, heading south, it was all about heroin. "Body bags, body bags, body bags" the dealers hissed as you made your way through the sprawled junkies. No cars, no kids. I swear there weren't even pigeons. There was only one sign of life--or, indeed, source of street light, on Jason's block. That was a deli whose owner, at the time of Jason's comment, had recently been fatally shot on the job.

That was the Lower East Side then. But this is now.

Consider Ginia Bellafante's description of the Lower East Side's Essex Street Market (from The New York Times):

A few weeks ago Paradou, a restaurant in the meatpacking district, opened a takeout shop in the market. It joins Formaggio, an outpost of a specialty shop in Cambridge, Mass., and Saxelby Cheesemongers, which arrived earlier this year, started by a winsome 25-year-old former art student named Anne Saxelby. Ms. Saxelby apprenticed on a dairy farm in the Loire Valley after graduating from college. What sort of person might shop at an artisanal cheese counter, one whose name seems borrowed from ''The Chronicles of Barsetshire''? It is easy to envision the cliché and yet Ms. Saxelby's customers do not conform to it. Among the predictable lot of young downtown mothers who swaddle their infants in hemp are aging Hispanic women, one of whom, Ms. Saxelby explained, comes in a few times a week specifically to buy a cheese called Ascutney Mountain. Jehovah's Witnesses seem to find their way to her as well.

''There are people from the housing projects across Delancey who come in for milk religiously,'' she said. (Ms. Saxelby's comes from a small dairy in upstate New York and she sells it for $2.99 a quart.) ''This tosses out all your assumptions about who people are and what they are going to like,'' she added. ''You don't know who anyone is, really. Some people who you'd think are young hipsters, artist types, show up with E.B.T. cards,'' she said. Ms. Saxelby sells Trillium, a Vermont cheese made from hand-ladled goat curd for $24.99 a pound, and she advertises her acceptance of electronic benefits transfer cards, the replacement for food stamps.

The Essex Street Market exists as an urban planner's vision of commercial utopia -- the sort of retail space now all but non-existent in New York, where increasingly segregated social classes come together to share if not the actual experience of affluence, then the readily purchasable signifiers of it.

(The market, by the way, has a website.)

The Lower East Side has been the very portrait of Manhattan gentrification.

Consider the restaurants alone. Doug lives on the Upper West Side, about as far as you can get from the Lower East Side, and in recent memory has been to several dinners on the Lower East Side, at Inoteca, Pala, Katz’s Delicatessen, Pho Grand, Big Wong, and the Golden Unicorn (dim sum!). His wife and food editor Kate also recommends Falai, Schillers, Little Giant, and wd-50.

Sure, it's still one of the more affordable neigborhoods. Tenements (Wikipedia: "In the United States, tenement is a label usually applied to the less expensive, more basic rental apartment buildings in older sections of large cities. Many of these apartment buildings are 'walk-ups' without an elevator, and some have shared bathing facilities, though this is becoming less common.") are such a core part of Lower East Side real estate that the neighborhood has a tasteful museum to them.

The Lower East Side so happening these days, however, that some condominium developments that are technically in the (once much more popular) East Village are now touted as being on the Lower East Side. For instance in some listings the new development at 296 East 2nd Street is Lower East Side, even though anything north of Houston Street has long been considered East Village. (See map.)

If real estate projects, and how they are marketed, is any measure, the Lower East Side has thoroughly arrived. The website of 115 Allen Street, for instance, brags: "There’s no doubt about it, the Lower East Side has become one of the most sought after places to live and real estate has been revitalized in a way no one expected." And there are dozens of big dollar developments, including 188 Ludlow, 153 Bowery, 7 Essex Street, The Switch Building at 109 Norfolk Street, 62 Rivington Street, Blue at 105 Norfolk Street, and, yes, even little Attorney Street now has a new condo development with a website that crows about how great the neighborhood is. Now that's progress.

Posted By Henry Abbott | Permalink | 0 Comments

In New York City and elsewhere, at least over the last few decades, a certain pattern has emerged. GLBT men and women (often those who have fled other parts of the world where they have felt less welcome) arrive in New York City looking for decent jobs and inexpensive housing. Because Manhattan is so expensive, they end up moving into neighborhoods that had been thought of as dangerous, bad, or uncool. (As someone who was once a poor NYU student in Greenwich Village, I know about moving to those neighborhoods, although in my time--the early 1990s--the West Village was already pricey.)

But over time, thanks in no small part to those GLBT pioneers, those neighborhoods come to be seen as cool. Investment follows, as do visible improvements. Restaurants, condominiums, businessess... the whole thing changes. Real estate prices go way up. And boom, next thing you know those young people who are new to the city can't afford to live there anymore, so they settle in some other uncool neighborhood and make that tasteful, optimistic, and booming.

Guess what? There's hardly any of Manhattan left!

It's no secret that the epicenter of that GLBT culture (the gay rights movement is widely said to have been touched off by some police brutality that resulted in riots at the Stonewall Tavern) has long been the West Village, so it should be no surprise that the West Village is one of the most delightful areas of the city--even if it has become much less a center of gay culture and is now seen mainly as one of the most desirable neighborhoods in Manhattan.

Part of that comes from the reality that is a destination--not a place to pass through. Literally... thanks to the narrow streets (some cobbled), lots of pedestrians, and countless tiny back streets, this is not a place to drive through on your way somewhere else.

The streets of the West Village defy the grid system. The conventional logic of Manhattan navigation to not apply here. For instance, in most of Manhatthan, 4th street would be six blocks south of 10th street. In the West Village, it is too, at one point. But there is also part of the West Village where those two roads intersect. And another part of West Fourth street is eight blocks to the north of West Tenth.

Take away message: don't drive around the West Village without someone who knows what they're doing.

But on the other hand, if you have some time, why not? You'll see some amazing stuff. Cobbled streets, private, gated courtyards, and that rarest of Manhattan sites: well-tended window boxes, with flowers tumbling down towards the street.

The restaurants are amazing. Doug's wife Kate is an editor at Food & Wine magazine. She reports there are "LOTS of very good options in that area." Her recommendations include:

Some of the newish (2 years or less), really awesome places are: The Spotted Pig (I'm nuts about this place), Little Owl, and Fatty Crab. Other great places are: Mary's Fish Camp, Maremma, August, Wallse, and Crispo.

The Hudson River Park has given the West Village some wide open riverside greenspace to compliment various smaller parks like Washinton Square and James J. Walker Park. In addition, Mayor Bloomberg recently broke ground on the redevelopment of more than a mile of elevated railroad track, known as the Highline, which will become public space. The southern end of the Highline is in the West Village. (Learn more about the Highline here.)

Posted By Henry Abbott | Permalink | 0 Comments

Here's a funny thing about architecture: Tribeca is highly prized as a residential community, in large part because the buildings weren't designed to be residential. The appeal is in the industrial warehouse feel: those high ceilings, big open spaces, loading docks with enormous garage doors, and massive windows--people pay through the nose to live in buildings. Tribeca prices are about as high, per square foot, as anywhere in New York City.

Not that long ago, it really was industrial. In my lifetime even, the titans of the neighborhood were sponge wholesalers and the like. Now it's all Bobby DeNiro and his film festival and restaurant investments that started in the late 1980s. The place is flooded with celebrities like Mariah Carey, Scarlet Johannson, Gisele Bundchen, Harvey Keitel, Josh Hartnett, sometimes David Letterman... the list goes on and on.

And the flood of investment and downtown rebuilding post-9/11 has changed the feel of the place yet again. One of my favorite aspects is the nicely developed Hudson River esplanade--a massive swath of bike paths, trees, lawns, incredible playgrounds, and river views that extends more or less the entire length of Manhattan. Tribeca has especially benefited, with all kinds of activities in easy walking distance, especially in the warmer months.

In recent years there are more and more strollers all over Manhattan, but they stand out more in this neighborhood which had been all about hipsters and nightlife for more than a decade. Tribeca is also now home to the pride of Manhattan public schools--PS 234 and the gleaming Stuyvesant High School--are in Tribeca. (If you don't know about Stuyvesant, watch the video.) (Just for fun, you might also want to watch Conan O'Brien's two part graduation speech.)

This is another neighborhood with lots of big name restaurants, like Nobu, Bouley, and Chanterelle. But I'm a sucker for the comfortable, and can't argue with the breakfast at Bubby's Pie Company--another place where prices are reasonable, and a table can be hard to find.

By the way, in case you don't know: it's called Tribeca, because it's a TRIangle BElow CAnal street. Check out the map. Find Canal Street. See the triangle? That's Tribeca.

Posted By Douglas Heddings | Permalink | 0 Comments

This week on TrueGotham, we're going to be talking about some of my favorite New York City neighborhoods, starting with the one where I live: the Upper West Side.

To me, at this juncture of history, this is one of the most amazing places in the world for a family to live.

Certainly the Upper West Side has all the stuff anyone would expect from a family friendly Manhattan neighborhood: essentially limitless good food both prepared and not (Fairway, Zabar's and a thousand restaurants, unfortunately most are only mediocre--more on that later), culture (the American Museum of Natural History, the Children's Museum, the Beacon Theater, Symphony Space, Lincoln Center, and now Dizzy’s and the Rose Theatre at Time Warner), and dozens of great schools of every kind (with, depending on your definition of the Upper West Side, Columbia University as the headliner).

But to me, the thing that makes this the best place to live is how easy it is to feel like you're not in Manhattan at all. Almost the entire neighborhood is sandwiched between two of the biggest and best parks in New York City: Central Park to the East, and Riverside Park to the West. Living in New York is intense. It's not for everyone. But if, a few blocks from wherever you may be, you can go jogging, biking, roller-blading, sunbathing, playing softball, swinging, ice skating in either of two Central Park rinks, or reading the Times and sipping coffee on a bench under the trees--well, how hard can life be? For those of us with children, the carousel in Central Park and Victoria Gardens Amusement Park at Wolman Rink in the Summer provides plenty of stimulation for the whole family. Those parks are central fixtures of my life, and without them I imagine I'd be spending a lot more on psychotherapy.

And, when it comes to food: sure there are lots of big-name places, like Ouest, Jean-Goerges, and Per Se. But the one restaurant I couldn't live without? It's not expensive at all, and it doesn't take reservations. Celeste is always jam-packed, but the homemade pasta is more than worth the effort of getting a table.

There's a bunch more worth getting to know on the Upper West Side:

• Prudential Douglas Elliman has an online neighborhood guide (that I promise is not super salesy).
• Wikipedia has a great Upper West Side entry featuring an extensive listing of the TV shows and movies featuring the Upper West Side.
• The San Remo: they say no address in the world accounts for more contributions to democratic politics.
• 15 Central Park West was developed on the last vacant lot on Central Park West, and despite prices of $5-6,000 per square foot sales have been brisk and last I heard the building was 85% sold.
• Another big name Central Park West building: the Beresford.
• This is a fun history of the Upper West Side, which reports that the first fatal car accident in American history was at the corner of 72nd and Central Park West, where taxi driver Arthur Smith mowed down Henry Bliss. That corner has been home to any number of atrocities. Peter Salwen writes:

Bruno Richard Hauptmann, the convicted kidnapper-killer of the Lindberg baby, worked as a carpenter in the Majestic Apartments on that corner at the time of the crime. Later, mob bosses Meyer Lansky, Lucky Luciano and Frank Costello all lived in the Majestic. Costello was shot (not fatally) in the lobby in 1957. And across the street, John Lennon was murdered in front of his home in the Dakota Apartments in 1980. This also happens to be the corner where poor Mr. Bliss met his fate (see previous item).

Posted By Douglas Heddings | Permalink | 0 Comments

In an incredible attempt to thwart the upcoming closing of the largest sale in history, Stuy Town/Peter Cooper Village for $5.5 billion, the law firm of Trautman Saunders—no surprise that they represent the tenants who attempted to buy the complex to "save" it from developers—found a provision in a 1942 document (what, no statute of limitations?) indicating that MetLife agreed to accept no more than 6% profit annually from any future sale of the complex.

Okay, let's do a little calculation. At an original price of $50 million with 6% interest compounded annually they couldn't sell for more than $617,540,051.41. So, the city would reap an "extra" profit of $4,882,459, 948.59. Now, if the numbers make your head hurt, they could sell for roughly $618 million and would have to fork over about $4.9 billion to the city. My bet, that's not happening, but you can't fault Trautman Saunders for trying!

Head over to Curbed for more on the Stuy Town/Cooper Village Sale Surprise Snag.

Posted By Douglas Heddings | Permalink | 0 Comments

Curbed has an incredible collection of news about the big sale.

What you learn from all that is that no one knows all that much about what's going to happen. Here are some basics about the private new owner, Jerry Speyer:

• He's developing Yankee Stadium.
• He put together the deals to buy lots of prominent properties around the world. In New York the list includes Rockefeller Center, the Chrysler Building the former Pan Am building.
• He's vice chairman of the Museum of Modern Art.

His company, Tishman Speyer Properties, was the developer for the eye-catching addition to the Hearst Building on Eighth Avenue and 57th Street, which was designed by the architect Norman Foster. The company is also serving as the developer on the Yankee Stadium project, which is due to be completed in time for the 2009 baseball season. (Mr. Speyer has what he describes as a small ownership interest in the team.)

Tishman Speyer has also joined with Steve Swindal, a partner in the Yankees and the son-in-law of the team’s principal owner, George Steinbrenner, in making a bid to run the state’s thoroughbred racing franchise.

Mr. Speyer is also known as a prominent philanthropist with an interest in the arts. He helped spur the recent expansion of the Museum of Modern Art and he displays his own collection of artwork by such artists as Jeff Koons and Frank Stella at a large town house he built for himself in the East 70’s.

But, before yesterday, when he emerged at the head of the investment team in a $5.4 billion deal to buy Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, Mr. Speyer’s residential portfolio in New York was empty.

The sale of the 110-building complex has brought criticism from tenant groups and been a source of anxiety for many residents. Mr. Speyer tried to allay tenant fears yesterday, saying he plans to run Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village with the same professionalism with which he has managed his commercial properties.

“Were going to take the tension out of this,” Mr. Speyer said. “Because we’re going to be great landlords for the families that live in this place.”

In another Times article, this one by Charles V. Bagli, it's clear no one really knows what will come next:

An elated Mr. Speyer appeared well aware of the complexes’ place in the city’s culture and the political sensitivity of the sale.

“As a business with deep roots in New York City, we have a sincere appreciation for these cherished neighborhoods, and we are honored to become stewards of the property,” Mr. Speyer said. “We are committed to working closely with residents, elected officials and community leaders to ensure a dynamic and vibrant future for this New York community.”

His son, Rob Speyer, a senior managing director at Tishman Speyer, also tried to reassure tenants, emphasizing, “There will be no sudden or dramatic shifts in the community’s makeup, character or charm.” But he would not commit to preserving a large block of apartments as affordable housing, which the tenant group had sought.

The truth is no one knows all that much about what will happen. The only thing that I would add would be my expectation that Mr. Speyer will do the right thing with this massive parcel. I am heartened that a New York developer won the bidding, and I'm convinced that minimizes the chances of anything insane happening there.

Which makes me think…assuming there were no zoning laws at all, what type of property or what would you like to see on the site? Condos? Hotels? Perhaps a simple facelift only? Maybe Disney NYC?

Seriously though… I would love to know what people think should happen or not happen to this incredible urban parcel.

Posted By Douglas Heddings | Permalink | 2 Comments

Toni Schlesinger's book Five Flights Up has a lot of good Manhattan real estate stories. Freelance photographer Keith Rizza talks about Hell's Kitchen in a 1999 interview:

Actually, five years ago I saw an apartment in this same building through my friend's sister. At the time I said, "No way on God's green earth am I going to live in Hell's Kitchen." The neighborhood was boring and depressing and had no character. When I first came to New York I thought it would be really nice to live in the West Village, SoHo. They were all out of my price range. I'd come to go to school at Pratt. Then I moved in with my first boyfriend, who had a beautiful apartment in Chelsea. But then I broke up with him. I had to start doing roommate situations. I lived with insane people constantly. At one point I was sleeping where the front door was literally two feet from my bed. My roommates would come home at three in the morning with friends. Years passed. I heard about another apartment in this building and I didn't have to think twice. I'd learned that living in New York is about getting a good space at a good price. Meanwhile, the neigborhood has been changing. A lot more people my age and with the same taste as me art starting to move in. It looks like more tax dollars are going to fix the sidewalks and streets. Nicer stores are opening up. Of course, when I moved into this apartment, it was not a pretty sight. It was really dirty and infested with bugs. I talked to different people about what to do. I had a lot of success with Combat roach bait...

Posted By Henry Abbott | Permalink | 0 Comments

Rumors are swirling that the days are numbered for West Park Presbyterian Church at 86th Street and Amsterdam Avenue.

The story that I have heard, from a reliable source, is that the church is having financial troubles and is in need of extensive maintenance. My source says the church may close, and sell to a developer. The developer, in turn, will reportedly propose a 32-story condo, and may or may not incorporate the existing church into structure.

The developer would also have to buy air rights from the co-op directly north on West 87th Street. 176 W 87th recently purchased those air rights, in large part to help sustain the church and keep it from selling.

Some early ideas of what might replace the church.

Posted By Douglas Heddings | Permalink | 3 Comments

I LOVE Manhattan.

Oh my. I can't believe I said that!

Let me explain. The cooler than usual real estate market this summer has afforded me the luxury of spending some time outside of Manhattan and for the first time in my life I think I'm actually becoming one of those "city" snobs.

I grew up much the opposite, in a working class neighborhood outside Baltimore city (half suburban/half urban). People in that neighborhood were not snobs at all. I moved to New York City in the summer of 1989 having never even visited before.

I'm not ashamed to admit that "the city" petrified and intimidated me at first. I lived in a sublet in Hell's Kitchen where people were shooting heroin and prostitutes were on the street in broad daylight.

Boy has the city and my feelings for it come a very long way. Today I was driving back from a business meeting in central New Jersey. The setting was aesthetically similar and equally void of culture as the place where I grew up. Did it make me long for home? Why yes it did. But not the home of my childhood.

Manhattan has been my home for the past 17+ years and will likely be my home until the day I die. You can have the suburban lifestyle and I will visit the beach or rural areas when I hunger for that, but there is no better place in the world to call home than New York City. The energy, the creativity, the sophistication, the people (who definitely get a bum rap outside of "the city"), and the everyday conveniences it provides me and my family are most appreciated when I am without them. For this and a plethora of other reasons, I can't see why anyone would want to live anywhere else.

Posted By Douglas Heddings | Permalink | 2 Comments

A TrueGotham reader e-mails about a Midtown encounter:

"I saw some guy handing out flyers in front of the Time Life buliding today. The flyers said that there were plans to develop and change the name of 50th street between 2nd and 3rd. The developer's name is Richard Nouveau."

Gawker is asking the same question, and introduces the notion that Richard Nouveau might not even exist. His name was involved in a lame prank.

Upon further review, if you read the bio of him here, it seems like the man is clearly the product of an angry person's imagination, and I suspect any and all hijinks involving his name are, in fact, efforts to drive buzz and traffic to this site.

Posted By Henry Abbott | Permalink | 0 Comments

The heavy work of redesigning Lincoln Center is under way, and Robin Pogrebin of The New York Times has fantastic detail, including a handly little map of what's going to happen. One important detail: the bridge over 65th street is coming down, to be replaced by a slender model that will let more light through to street level.

I, for one, am not weeping at the changes. The design of Lincoln Center has never done it for me. Think of the world's great performance spaces--from La Scala in Milan to the Opera House in Sydney--they have a certain breathless majesty. Lincoln Center, on the other hand, has always looked to me like a really big budget elementary school. Architecturally, it has never seemed deserving of its place as an epicenter of New York City culture.

Pogrebin has an interesting quote from Gale Brewer, putting this project in a bigger context:

City Councilwoman Gale A. Brewer, who represents the West Side of Manhattan, said the construction had so far not been unduly disruptive. “With cranes and construction everywhere in our community, and change that threatens the middle-class fabric of our neighborhood, the Lincoln Center project is the most positive construction site,” she said.

Posted By Henry Abbott | Permalink | 0 Comments

Lauren Bacall, Leonard Bernstein, Connie Chung, Judy Garland, Boris Karloff, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, John Madden, Paul Simon, Sting... a ridiculous number of celebrities and artists have lived in the famous Dakota at 72nd and Central Park West. It has long been more or less the epicenter of much of what makes New York so famous.

There are a million stories about that building, none more famous or tragic than the murder of John Lennon there.

In 1979 Stephen Birmingham wrote an incredibly detailed book about the building, called Life at the Dakota, which tells of everything from ghosts, and squabbles over unsightly air-conditioning, to the influx of scary developers who wanted to tear the whole building down. These are the kinds of fights that are going on in places around New York as we speak. It's amazing to think the mighty Dakota faced the same thing decades ago. Birmingham writes:

Therefore, considering the amound of hubris the building had generated among its tenants over the years, it was with considerable shock that on the afternoon of Friday, December 17, 1960--whild the rest of New York was going about its business of pre-Christmas shopping--the residents of the Dakota learned that their special status was about to come to an abrupt end and they might have to face life as ordinary mortals. That was when Mr. Ernest A. Gross, the one of the building's most distinguished residents, an international lawyer and three-time delegate to the United Nations General Assembly, was sitting in his Wall Street office and a call came through from William J. Zeckendorf who, though he later fell from grace, was then the unquestioned czar of New York real estate and who, in the years since World Was II, has been busily reshaping the Manhattan skyline. "I want to introduce myself," said Zeckendorf to Gross. "I'm your new landlord." Ernest Gross froze. Though Mr. Zeckendorf's phone call was by way of a greeting, it also conveyed in no uncertain terms a warning to Gross and his fellow Dakotans. Whenever William Zeckendorf acquired an old, unprofitable building like the Dakota on a choice piece of land, he razed it and erected in its place a shiny tower of steel and glass which was a modern model of efficiency and economy. "Building like the Dakota don't make sense in New York anymore," said Mr. Zeckendorf.

The Dakota was eventually spared--the building's powerful friends brokered a deal whereby it became a co-op.

Posted By Henry Abbott | Permalink | 1 Comments

Have you ever read Pate Hamill's book Downtown?

It has a lot of great stuff about life in New York City. "New York," he writes on the first page, "is a city of daily irritations, occasional horrors, hourly tests of will and even courage, and huge dollops of pure beauty." Anyone care to argue with that?

The whole book is rich in historical perspective from all angles. And when you talk about how New York used to be, inevitably someone starts talking about how much cheaper New York used to be. For instance, Hamill writes of Little Italy:

Some families stated in the same tenements for decades. Others could not bear the thought of leaving behind the coffee and pastry at Ferraro's or the Café Roma, the cheese, bread, and pastries in a dozen beloved groceries.

And that that too all changed. In the 1980s, the third generation of Italian Americans began to leave. They were Americans, after all, and many had now gone through high school to the City University, and then on to medical school or law school. They moved to Staten Island or New Jersey or Long Island, where they could own homes, have American driveways where they could park American automobiles, and have American barbecues on Sunday afternoons in summer. They found no raffish charm in the myths of the Mafia and the dumb stereotypes that came with those myths. Some of the old tenements were sold. Most were rehabbed and rented for sums beyond the imagination of the older residents. As in other parts of New York, some people fell into a new longing for the past: rent nostalgia. "See that place? My aunt used to pay sixty-two dollars a month there; now it's eighteen hundred!"

Posted By Henry Abbott | Permalink | 0 Comments

All over New York, there are people who are upset about this or that building coming or going. I totally understand that urge. But one thing always strikes me: it's hard to make the case that anything in New York is precious.

Pate Hamill's book Downtown addresses this:

This book is littered with casualties of time and greed and that vague reality called progress. Just one example here: I was in high school in Manhattan when I came to know the Third Avenue El. Sometimes I took it as a ride, not just as a means of getting from one place to another. I loves its rattling noise, the imagery associated with the 1933 movie King Kong, the stark shadows cast by its beams and girders, and the rows of tenements and Irish saloons that I could see swishing by from its windows. I had no memory of the Second Avenue El, or the Sixth Avenue El, or the Ninth Avenue El. They were all gone. But in some ways, the Third Avenue El seemed as permanent as the Statue of Liberty, and for me it provided a ride through more than a simple space. It hurtled me through time as well. They started tearing it down in 1955. By the time I returned from Mexico in 1957, the Third Avenue El was gone too.

There would be many other disappearances, including too many newspapers. Buildings went up, and if you lived long enough, you might see them come down, to be replaced by newer, more audacious, more arrogant structures. I came to accept this after the el had vanished and some of the worst office buildings in the city's history began rising on Third Avenue. There was no point, I thought, in permanently bemoaning change. This was New York. Loss was part of the deal. In that same year that the Third Avenue El disappeared, so did the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants. The demise of the Third Avenue El was a kind of marker, the end of something that had outlived its time.

Posted By Henry Abbott | Permalink | 1 Comments

Have you ever wondered who or what streets are named after? If someone tells you to hang a right on Ludlow Street, don’t you, at least for a second, think "what's a Ludlow?"

The truth is there are tons interesting stories behind NYC street names. The Street Book by Henry Moscow takes a historical look at many of the Big Apple’s thoroughfares. Here's a little sampling:

Ludlow Street
The Namesake: Lieutenant Augustus C. Ludlow, a naval hero of the War of 1812 to whom Captain James Lawrence said: "Don't give up the ship."

Ludlow, 21, took command of the frigate Chesapeake when Lawrence was mortally wounded in battle with the British ship Shannon off Boston Harbor. His actual orders from Lawrence were: "Tell the men to fire faster and not give up the ship. Fight her till she sinks." But Ludlow himself was hit fatally and the two men are buried in one grave at Trinity Church.

Pearl Street
The Namesake: mother-of-pearl, the oyster shells that virtually paved the street when it was the East River shore.

Before landfill left Pearl Street high and dry several blocks from the river, it was often called simply The Strand. The frist city hall stood at 71-73 Pearl Street, a parking lot when this book went to press. The City Hall had begun life in 1641 as the Stadt-Herberg, or City Tavern: a five-story stone structure, it was built by Governo William Kieft, who had tired of entertaining visitors to New Amsterdam at home and needed an inn to which to send them. Twelve years later, the tavern became City Hall.

Harry Howard Square
The Namesake: Harry Howard, a foundling born in 1822, who became head of the city's fire department in 1857.

A fireman before he was appointed chieft, Howard personally saved 100 lives. He introduced the system of permanent alert in the department; as a result, fire insurance companies had to cut their rates. Howard never married because his sweetheart's parents refused to accept a foundling as a son-in-law. So Howard and his beloved lived out their lives as an engaged couple.

Posted By Gerald Pugliese | Permalink | 0 Comments

Have you ever wondered who or what streets are named after? If someone tells you to hang a left on Gansevoort Street, don’t you, at least for a second, think "where in the hell did that name come from?"

The truth is there are tons interesting stories behind NYC street names. The Street Book by Henry Moscow takes a historical look at many of the Big Apple’s thoroughfares. Here's a little sampling:

Battery Place
The Namesake: a battery of artillery installed on a platform there in 1693 to protect the city against a French attack that never came.

The site remained a supposed military strongpoint during the War of 1812, having been reinforced by construction in 1807 of the West Battery, which was renamed Castle Clinton in 1815 in honor of Mayor DeWitt Clinton. Battery Park, which Battery Place borders, served as a prison camp for captured Confederates in the Civil War.

Gansevoort Street
The Namesake: Peter Gansevoort, colonel of the 3rd New York Regiment of militia in the Revolutionary War, and later a brigadier general in the U.S. Army.

Gansevoort held off a British siege of Fort Schuyler at what is now Rome, New York and, though short of food and ammunition, spurned generous terms for surrender. His fort flew the first Stars and Stripes to see battle: the flag was contrived of ammunition bags, which were white; a captured British cloak of blue, and bits and pieces of red cloth. Before the street was named for Gansevoort, it was called Great Kiln Street, for a lime kiln sited there.

Gay Street
The Namesake: unknown, but probably for a family named Gay. An R. Gay, who lived in the Bowery, advertised a gelding for sale in a newspaper dated May 11, 1775.

The street runs through the site of a brewery owned by Wouter Van Twiller, the grasping no-goodnick who succeeded Peter Minuit as Governor of New Netherland in 1633. But the name Gay Street first appears officially in the Common Council minutes for April 23, 1827, which record a health inspector’s complaint against a privy belonging to one A.S. Pell, of Gay Street.

Posted By Gerald Pugliese | Permalink | 0 Comments

Enjoy this July 4th weekend with some shots of the city by Heddings Property Group team member Jennifer Breu:

Posted By Gerald Pugliese | Permalink | 0 Comments

According to Ryan Chittum of The Real Estate Journal Wall Street is starting to feel more like home:

The south side of Wall Street from the exchange to the East River is almost all residential now or being converted to it. The fusty former headquarters of J.P. Morgan is being converted into Downtown by Philippe Starck, where condo units go for a minimum of $1.2 million. The new Hermès is moving into the first floor. Tiffany will set up shop next door at 37 Wall Street at the base of the former Trust Co. of America building, now being turned into luxury apartments.

Down the street model Naomi Campbell, actor Bruce Willis and movie producer Harvey Weinstein are moving into the former 55 Wall Street, which once housed the stock exchange, last was a luxury hotel and now is being souped up as the pricey Cipriani Club Residences. Last week real-estate broker Dolly Lenz flew to London to host a lunch for the Duchess of York and 80 of her closest friends -- to promote the Duchess's coming book and to help sell luxury condos at 55 Wall Street. By the end of a seven-hour event that also included breakfast, tea and cocktails, Ms. Lenz sold two luxury apartments at the building to friends of the Duchess.

This is an excellent article! In my 15 years in the business, I have never heard more promises about "the next frontier" than I have about Wall Street and its surrounding areas. My skepticism, fueled by the lack of retailers in the area, appears to be unfounded.

According to Chittum's report, since 9/11 the residential population of the area is up 61%. Retailers are paying attention to these numbers as well as the current luxury condo projects hitting the market. It appears that a Financial District renaissance is finally well underway.

That said, it is going to take much more than a BMW dealer, a Tiffany and Co., and a Bobby Van's Steakhouse to create of full fledged "neighborhood" surrounding Wall Street. I have sold in that area and my friends and colleagues who live in the area maintain that it still feels like a ghost town at night. Many who live there claim to like it, while others are looking for more services to stay open past the early evening hours.

Perhaps the time has come with such residential growth that area merchants and retailers will seize the opportunity to capture the "evening" marketplace? That will likely spur more growth and a true "neighborhood" feeling around the stock exchange. Who'd-a thunk it?

Posted By Douglas Heddings | Permalink | 0 Comments

As you know Toni Schlesinger's book Five Flights Up is a collection of conversations with real New Yorkers about where they live, and why they live there. An interesting topic that comes up a often in the dialogues is why New Yorkers relocate throughout the city. It seems to also be a question of neighbor, and not just a property issue.

In this section of the book Schlesingner talks with a couple guys that traded in their Chelsea digs for an old beaten up brownstone in Harlem:

The first time I was here I though you lived in an embassy. There was this grand party which hundreds of people royalty, an Auchincloss, and all the big names in the landmark world. People drifted through rooms with fifteen-foot ceilings lit by hundreds of candles. Some guests perched on the persimmon velvet side chairs near the andirons. Others threw back their heads and laughed near the pink-and-white-striped satin chaise. Then of course there were those who stood under the oak-coffered ceiling in the dining room nibbling almond paste cookies among the autumn arrangements of hydrangeas and the gold silk drapes that spilled onto Oriental rug. You said you have one cleaning lady once a week to care for sixteen rooms, two kitchens, and five bathrooms. She must go into collapse. [Dimitri] She just comes to dust. We do the rest. The house is 1888. We found a brochure about it in the museum of the City of New York. It was built for upper-middle-class New Yorkers who did not like immigrants moving into Midtown. I'm quoting from a history book of Harlem. The area didn't stay wealthy for very long. I don't think those houses could sustain themselves. It was too expensive to keep a place like this in top shape. Families moved out really fast. Later, with poverty and depression, the whole thing went down the drain. All this gracious living only lasted a very few decades. These places were rented out as rooming houses.

You moved to Harlem over one and a half years ago.
I came by accident one day. My foundation had some work here with the Children's Storefront—we were giving them money to teach the kids ancient Greek. I passed Mount Morris Park and that was it. It sounds like a fairy tale, but when I see what I want, I go after it. So we started looking. We didn't want anything this big, but we came in just before the market got really crazy. Now there are not many buildings left to buy and prices have gone up a lot. The guy around the corner bought his about the same time we did. He works for an investment company. A lot of friends think we're completely crazy to move up here. I think what people say about Harlem is highly exaggerated. I lived on the Bowery, in Chelsea, East 13th Street. That neighborhood has lost its edge. We've only done basic renovation on the house so far. The lawyer who lived here before did most of the dirty work, tearing down walls. As a historian, I want to make it livable without interfering with the fabric of the house. We don't need air-conditioning because the skylights always create a draft. Also, I don't want its years as SRO to be lost, the imperfections in the doors because of fights.

By the way, they were making a movie in front of your house when I came in—50 Violins with Meryl Streep.
They make movies around here all the time. A guy was trying to convince me to use our house for a minimal fee. He said"So-and-so, the actor, will be here. We'll make you famous." I said, "Look, I don't care if it's the Queen of England."

Posted By Henry Abbott | Permalink | 0 Comments

Josh Barbanel of The New York Times catches up with the rising tide of condominium conversions in Manhattan.

It is one of more than 60 pending condominium conversion projects in Manhattan listed by the New York State attorney general's office, involving more than 7,000 condominium units.

These projects, the first large wave of condominium conversions in New York in 20 years, are cutting into the supply of rental apartments, driving rents higher, and ushering in a wrenching period of uncertainty for many existing tenants.

In the 1980's, tenants facing condo conversion banded together and negotiated large discounts from developers on the sale prices of their individual apartments, and became condo owners.

But now, with rent stabilization laws weakened, landlords are taking a tougher stand, evicting market-rate tenants and offering only tiny discounts on the sale prices to rent-stabilized tenants, who are allowed to continue renting after a conversion.

The buildings described in the article have fairly high rents. Someone who is already paying $4,000 or more per month will likely be able to find somewhere in Manhattan to live. But I worry about all those people whe are paying $650 a month right now.

Sometimes it seems like Manhattan is on its way to becoming an island for the super wealthy, which has ramifications far beyond just the real estate market.

For instance, where are the civil servants going to live? And where are the teachers going to live? And where are police and firefighters going to live? I have no idea. I think they almost all live in the outer boroughs already.

But, as someone who once planned to be an elementary school principal, and has a degree in education, I can't help but think of things from a teacher's point of view. And it's kind of sad.

It's certainly good for neighborhoods like Harlem and the financial district that all this money is flowing there, but it's unfortunate that they can't find a way to strike a balance, and they can't kind find a way for the teachers--who are busting their humps teaching our kids--to live in the same communities with our kids, and not have to commute an hour and a half from Sheepshead Bay or something.

Posted By Douglas Heddings | Permalink | 0 Comments

The Walk-Through has word of families with children fleeing cities.

Anecdotally, I have been noticing the opposite. In many New York neighborhoods, you can't walk a block without seeing a stroller. That just wasn't true 15 years ago.

Contrary to census numbers, my colleagues and I are seeing a mass return to Manhattan by families who "thought" they wanted to live in the 'burbs. Many of the families (and many with three and four children) are selling their suburban homes and returning to Manhattan for a variety of reasons.

The reasons I hear most often are they miss the conveniences of the city, they want to reduce their commute, and most frequently... they are "bored."

With many of the suburban areas surrounding Manhattan experiencing the same phenomenal appreciation in prices, many of my clients have also found that the 'burbs are not as much of a bargain as they thought.

Of course, many families are making the exodus but there seems to be a trend toward larger families staying in the city. Some are even deciding to sell vacation homes so that they can afford larger homes in the city and the cost of private schools for their children. Once again, Manhattan seems to be a statistical anomaly.

Posted By Douglas Heddings | Permalink | 0 Comments

The Real Deal has word that prices jumped in the outer boroughs in 2005.

I can't say I'm surprised. More and more of my clients have been priced out of the Manhattan market and have explored options in the boroughs. There's no ignoring how much further their money goes and what it buys them in Brooklyn or Queens.

That said, certain areas in the boroughs, like Park Slope, are almost on par with Manhattan prices.

People are always asking me what the "next" neighborhood will be. It's something we'll be talking at more length in the future on TrueGotham. But the quick answer is: Long Island City is in the midst of a renaissance with a very strong Business Improvement District, the Bronx is on the radar, and the still untapped area in the West 30's of Manhattan has incredible room for development and growth.

Posted By Douglas Heddings | Permalink | 2 Comments

Dan Shaw reports in The New York Times about single mom Denise Spatafora, who wanted to live in the big apple but doesn't really like... concrete.

Welcome, friends, to outdoorsy Battery Park City.

With its 32 acres of parks and gardens, Battery Park City has turned out to be a very child-friendly place. The Battery Park City Parks Conservancy, a private, nonprofit group that offers a variety of programs for children, made the transition to city life easy. "The people who run the parks are amazing," she said. "My kids played soccer and did art projects last summer. I think they have more access to nature here than they had on our land in Vermont, which was mostly woods and you had to worry about deer ticks. Here they can walk out the door and roll around on the grass or go to one of the playgrounds."

Spatafora, who lived in TriBeCa until she moved to Vermont in August 2001, says that the revitalized neighborhood has changed in other ways too.

"It's much more vibrant and lively than it was before 9/11," she said. "People used to rush more. It feels easier and slower now. You go to Bouley Bakery, and strangers say hello. It feels like a European community."

Posted By Jessica Abbott | Permalink | 0 Comments

Roosevelt Island is also an island.

Can one island be part of another island? Advertising for a new Roosevelt Island building called The Octagon harps again and again on the fact that it is in Manhattan.

Joyce Cohen of The New York Times real estate blog The Walk-Through:

Sure, Roosevelt Island is politically part of Manhattan, but it has serious geographical issues. It lies in the middle of the East River. So don't plan on walking to work.

Roosevelt Island could be really, really cool, lifestyle-wise, but it's not for the most part. It's like living in North Korea - no commercial activity. One bad Gristedes, a grimy Chinese restaurant, a grimy pizza place, a grimy video-rental place, a grimy liquor store and one cafe/bar, Trellis, which actually should be given a chance. They're pretty good and have a huge menu.

The PROS of Roosevelt Island are tennis and bike riding / walking / rollerblading and the views, which are amazing.

The CONS are those listed above and also that you would think that with a drawbridge to Queens, a subway line AND a tram, transportation would be pretty easy. Sometimes it's not. During the Republican Convention they re-routed sea traffic under the drawbridge, and there was a thunderstorm that flooded the F tunnel under the East River and stopped the tram (fear of lightning strike). So for a few hours Roosevelt Island was REALLY an island - couldn't get there except swimming or by boat.

The Octagon is at the far north of the island and it's a good mile down to the subway station and farther to the tram. You have to depend on the Roosevelt Island bus system, which isn't that reliable for a commute. Roosevelt Island isn't exactly a "rush hour" mentality kind of place. You might think "I'll walk, it'll be good for me," but wait until the winter.

Posted By Henry Abbott | Permalink | 1 Comments