Manhattan Neighborhoods

[krulltime]

Sugar Hill, Manhattan:


Sugar Hill: Reclaiming a Place Where the Music Once Played

By NANCY BETH JACKSON
Published: June 6, 2004

WHEN Duke Ellington made "Take the `A' Train" his theme song in 1942, he established forever in music what everyone already knew. Sugar Hill was the place to go, the place to be, in Harlem. He lived on Sugar Hill and so did his collaborator Billy Strayhorn, who scribbled down the tune when the homesick band was playing in Chicago.

Sugar Hill, a ritzy neighborhood for the black bourgeoisie. Sugar Hill, the mythic center of the Harlem Renaissance between the World Wars. Sugar Hill, the good life.

For decades, African-Americans all over the country dreamed of living on Sugar Hill, but throughout its history, it has drawn people of all hues and nationalities.

"The biggest misconception about Sugar Hill is that at any time it was all black," said Willie Kathryn Suggs, a former ABC television producer who became a realtor after buying a Sugar Hill town house two decades ago. "Of all the Harlem neighborhoods, it has always been the most diverse."

The word "hill," too, is misleading, because the neighborhood, part of Hamilton Heights, perches on a bluff high above the Harlem Plain. When affluent and influential African-Americans began moving in after World War I, the name "Sugar Hill" came into use, probably because "sugar" was said to signify money and the sweet life. David Levering Lewis, describing it in "When Harlem Was in Vogue," wrote that in 1929 "Sugar Hill, a citadel of stately apartment buildings and liveried doormen on a rock, soared above the Polo Grounds and the rest of Harlem like a city of the Incas."

In its broadest geographic definition, Sugar Hill extends westward from Edgecombe Avenue to Amsterdam Avenue. The southern boundary sometimes is placed at 145th Street, or into the West 130's where the topography starts climbing toward Coogan's Bluff. But the heart of Sugar Hill is in the Hamilton Heights-Sugar Hill Historic District between 145th and 155th Streets, from Edgecombe Avenue to a border approaching Amsterdam and squiggling down to Convent Avenue.

In those few blocks lived pioneering civil rights activists like W. E. B. Du Bois, Walter White, Roy Wilkins and the Rev. Adam Clayton Powell Sr.; writers like Langston Hughes, Ralph Ellison and Zora Neale Hurston; musicians like Paul Robeson and Cab Calloway; and professionals like Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American to become a United States Supreme Court justice. Even into the late 1950's, Sugar Hill still delivered the good life, older residents recall, but by the 1970's, many of the row houses had been divided into rooming houses and heroin was sold on the streets.

Another renaissance is under way as Sugar Hill addresses regain some of their old cachet, pumped up by the hot real estate market and by the neighborhood's activist tradition. Prospective buyers come from downtown, Europe and Asia to bid on 19th-century town houses, some priced at considerably more than $2 million. African-American professionals have rediscovered the neighborhood. Actors by the dozens rent in historic apartment buildings.

The Hamilton Grange Public Library, which closed all but the first floor in the 1970's, recently completed a $1.2 million renovation. Jazz headliners downtown head uptown to jam at St. Nick's Pub. The Dance Theater of Harlem has its headquarters on West 152nd Street. When the 16th annual Hamilton Heights House and Garden Tour takes place today, half of the properties being shown will be in the heart of Sugar Hill.

The neighborhood has not fully returned to its old glory, however. The stately apartment buildings do not have the liveried doormen of days past, for instance. "It is the extremes right now," said Nora Cole, an actor, who on a Saturday morning was weeding one of two pocket parks maintained by volunteers on Edgecombe Avenue above Jackie Robinson Park, the old Colonial Park.

A SOLID core of well-to-do African-American families passes properties from generation to generation, yet other residents still toss disposable diapers into the Edgecombe pocket park, Ms. Cole said. Overall crime rates have dropped more than 60 percent in the last decade, according to statistics from the 30th Precinct, but drugs are still sold on some street corners.

Paula Hill, with three children under 8, says the attraction is space, which sometimes includes a backyard, and the parks in every direction. But most of all, it's the sense of community, she said. "In seven years in Greenwich Village nobody knew us, but here we have a parents' network to help each other out and address issues like schools," she said. Through it, more than 90 families keep in touch online.

While many children attend private schools in the city, a group of parents has established the Hamilton Heights Academy, an alternative school with a diverse socioeconomic mix and a progressive curriculum, within Public School 125. Ultimately to have kindergarten through eighth grade, the academy will enroll about 100 students next fall in kindergarten through second grade. Also in the neighborhood is Mott Hall (Intermediate School 223), with an academically rigorous program in math, science and technology for the fourth through eighth grades.

Until the Eighth Avenue elevated railroad reached 145th Street in 1879, the area was mostly rural, a country-home favorite because of its cool breezes. Alexander Hamilton's last home, the Grange, originally stood at what is now 143rd Street and Convent Avenue. The national memorial was moved to 287 Convent Avenue in Hamilton Heights in 1889.

Residential development took off between the 1880's and World War I, spurred by subway construction in 1904. Many lots are only 16 feet wide, but architects like Henri Fouchaux and Frederick P. Dinkelberg designed block-long compositions for white upper-class clients.

Luxury apartment houses followed in the early 1900's. The Colonial Parkway Apartments at 409 Edgecombe became Sugar Hill's most desirable address with tenants like Jules Bledsoe, who sang "Ol' Man River" in "Show Boat." The six-story Garrison Apartments, originally named Emsworth Hall, built on Convent Avenue in 1910, opened as an African-American co-op in 1929. When an apartment becomes available, it is quickly snatched up, says Nancy Love, an agent with the Corcoran Group. A two-bedroom apartment listed at $300,000 was on the market less than a week this spring.

More recent construction includes the 1956 Hillview Apartments, which since 1999 has been popular among foreigners seeking pieds-à-terre in Harlem. A prewar building on Convent has just been converted into the 10-unit Sugar Hill Condominiums, which quickly sold out with prices ranging from $339,000 to $449,000. The Bradhurst Urban Renewal Area south of 143rd and east of Edgecombe is being developed for middle-income families, adding a chain supermarket and pharmacy within walking distance of Sugar Hill.

The biggest real estate activity is in row houses, many of which haven't been on the market in decades, if ever. More are on the market now because the owners are dying or becoming too infirm to climb the stairs.

Some properties are little more than shells. Lawrence Comroe, a vice president at Corcoran, said that a facade without a roof runs around $575,000 and up.

At the other end of the spectrum is a 114-year-old town house with well-maintained original details like basket-weave lattice, offered for $2.3 million.

In between are town houses in need of considerable renovation. Lorraine D. Gilbert of ReMax Upscale Properties sees more buyers restoring rooming houses to their original single-family status, but buildings "without issues" — claims from tenants — command higher prices.

But anyone planning to rent or buy in the neighborhood should consider more than real estate values, the people who live on Sugar Hill say. It's not just high ceilings, parquet floors and gracious space. It's involvement, beginning with the early N.A.A.C.P. leaders and continuing today among parents working for better neighborhood schools.

Even in the worst of times, Sugar Hill residents speak up. A small group of female volunteers in 1985 reclaimed an eyesore triangle plot at St. Nicholas and Convent Avenues. Led by Luana Robinson, the women created a Convent Garden, today a jewel of green space with lush grass, flower beds and a gazebo.


Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[krulltime]

Yorkville, Manhattan:


Despite Upper East Side pedigree, Yorkville still affordable


By Eric Marx
July 2004

Viewed by some as one of the most affordable areas in Manhattan despite its Upper East Side pedigree, Yorkville has seen a continuous 10-year building boom that has kept inventory plentiful, although prices have begun to rise, as they have throughout the rest of the city.

A 65-block area running from 79th to 96th Street and Third to East End Avenue, Yorkville is still very much a neighborhood of contrasts - somewhat undervalued but affluent. The area attracts fresh-out-of-school graduates looking for affordable studios and one-bedrooms in the side street walkups or high-rise apartments west of Second Avenue on 79th, 86th or 96th Streets, as well as families with young children who want to be near East End's Carl Schulz Park.

A neighborhood bursting at the seams with residential high-rise development, Yorkville is often associated with the towering edifices that, according to old-time residents, make the area around First, Second and Third Avenues somewhat cold and forbidding.

A serene, small-town residential feel still dominates the low-lying townhouses and prewar tenement buildings that dot the side streets. Further east along York and East End Avenues' rolling promenades, open green spaces and discreet restaurants and shops lend the neighborhood a parochial, even folksy air.

"It used to be much more of a bargain than it is now," said Seiglinda O'Donnell, a 30-plus-year East End resident and vice president with William B. May. She offered as an example a three-bedroom post-war apartment on 86th Street between First and York Avenues, which she sold for $452,000 four years ago and which has since doubled to $925,000.

Recently built high-end buildings such as the Chartwell House (finished in 2001) on Second Avenue between 91st and 92nd Streets and the Philip Johnson-designed Metropolitan at 90th and Third Avenue (nearing completion) filled up quickly and are near 100 percent occupancy, noted Gordon Golub, manager of Citi-Habitats' East 84th Street office.

With interest rates rising, many buyers are turning to the rental market instead, and rental prices for high-end apartments in the area have increased more than 10 percent in the past six months, according to Golub.

Overall, in the past four years, about 1,000 rental units have been developed along First Avenue in the high 80s and low 90s, most of them in the $2,400 to $5,000 a month range, Golub said.

Older luxury high-rise buildings such as the Normandie Court at Third Avenue and 95th Street are also seeking to draw more high-end renters by combining units to draw families to the building.

"We've already noticed a change in more married couple types and families," said John Sutherland, director of leasing for Ogden Cap Properties, which manages the Normandie Court, a 20-year-old 1,477-unit complex that has a reputation as one of the most affordable high-rise buildings in Manhattan.

In recent months, the Normandie added a children's playroom and renovated its apartments, with particular attention focused on combining units to form larger two and three-bedroom apartments.

"We still have a number of people fresh out of college and sharing units, but the big difference is they're paying more money," Sutherland said of the building, which has earned the nickname "Dormandy Court" because of its young population.

Sutherland said rents have increased roughly 10 percent at the Normandie in the past six months, part of the first sustained resurgence for rentals in the city since Sept. 11.

Going forward, in addition to expansion northward, the neighborhood could soon see new residential development at the site formerly known as Doctor's Hospital on East End Avenue, opposite Gracie Mansion. The trustees of Beth Israel Hospital voted in May to sell the site, and have reportedly attracted over 40 bids, most of which have plans for residential development. The site could be one of the most valuable sold for development in years.

With the new and existing development, Yorkville's density is a concern to
some residents and community activists like Gorman Reilly, president of CIVITAS, a zoning land use and neighborhood advocacy group. Reilly said the population is taking a toll on the transportation infrastructure in the area. "The M15 is the most heavily used bus route in the city, if not the nation, and it's difficult to make any time [getting downtown]," Reilly said. He is lobbying the MTA for a rapid transit bus service for the area.

While the planned Second Avenue subway line - if it's ever completed- could ease transportation woes, it would also spur on more condo and retail development as the area continues to evolve, said O'Donnell - something that she and other residents in the area said they welcomed.

"Up until six months ago Fresh Direct refused to deliver to the neighborhood," said O'Donnell. "And now we have a health spa. We're thrilled to pieces. The only thing we don't have is a museum and a department store."


Copyright 2003-2004 The Real Deal.

[krulltime]

Washington Heights, Manhattan:


REACHING NEW HEIGHTS


By PATRICK GALLAHUE
July 28, 2004

Just about everything is rising in Washington Heights these days.

Rents, businesses, foot traffic — everything is on the rise, except the crime rate.

"I call it the wow factor," said NYPD Deputy Inspector Jason Wilcox, 39, the 33rd Precinct's Commanding Officer.

"The police say, 'Wow, look at that. BBQ's is here and steakhouses are opening up' . . . You can't help it."

The same street corners that once served as open-air markets for drug dealers are now home to chi-chi restaurants. And street life above 155th Street in Manhattan now means shoppers, and even bar-hoppers, after dark.

"It's an entirely different ballgame here in Washington Heights," said David Hunt, a native of neighboring Inwood and co-owner of Coogan's Bar. "Sure, the crime stats are way down, but the whole tenor of the neighborhood has changed."

Hunt said 10 years ago, one of Coogan's main selling points was the feeling of security "to be in off the streets." Now, he is considering opening a sidewalk cafe.

"It seems now the street crime is nonexistent," he said.

Not quite, but things are moving that way.

In the 33rd and 34th precincts covering Inwood and Washington Heights, murder has decreased more than 80 percent in the past 10 years. Rape is down more than 50 percent, and crime overall has plummeted almost 70 percent since 1994.

Veteran cops say the decline is the result of a multilayered approach. The most important, they say, was the 1994 creation of the 33rd Precinct, which greatly alleviated the stress on one of New York City's most thinly spread police stations.

"It was really big," said Wilcox, who was a sergeant in the 34th Precinct in the early 1990s. "The 34th Precinct was just tremendous in size and it was almost overwhelming because you had a lot of crime and a lot of area to cover. It was just too much."

Anti-narcotics programs in the area — such as the Northern Manhattan Initiative and model-block program — also took a hefty bite out of crime.

"In 1996 or so, we began to see a turnaround in the level of crime and the overall quality of life," said Walther Delgado, president of the Audubon Partnership for Economic Development.

Banks stopped abandoning the area, chain stores started to show an interest in the neighborhood, and longtime residents began to feel comfortable investing their money in the area, Delgado said.

In addition to crime reduction, Delgado credits a large part of the resurgence of Washington Heights and Inwood to the increasing business savvy of first-generation Dominican-Americans and those who grew up in the neighborhood and went on to college.

But not all of the area's changes are homegrown. Wealthy New Yorkers also have sought residences in Washington Heights and Inwood.

As a result, income and rent averages in the area are swiftly soaring.

"People are getting priced out," said Delgado.

Old-timers like Hunt say they hope rents and real-estate prices start to stabilize. But in the meantime, the old and new elements still sit comfortably side by side at Coogan's.

"They all get along," Hunt said. "I haven't sensed any anti-gentrification among the older crowd."


Copyright 2004 NYP Holdings, Inc.

[Pottebaum]

"Up until six months ago Fresh Direct refused to deliver to the neighborhood," said O'Donnell. "And now we have a health spa. We're thrilled to pieces. The only thing we don't have is a museum and a department store."



Why would have Fresh Direct refused to deliver to the neighborhood?

[Schadenfrau]

I'm absolutely certain that the Fresh Direct truck drivers weren't too frightened to deliver groceries to Yorkville. They probably just hadn't expanded the delivery area to include it.

The fact that Ms. O'Donnell thinks Museum Mile is just too darn far away is pretty funny.

[TonyO]

Fresh Direct has been expanding its service in Manhattan for a while.

This is from their website: "We deliver to certain neighborhoods in New York. Very soon, we'll be delivering to every address in Manhattan as well as parts of Brooklyn and Queens."

[Pottebaum]

Does Yorkville have a history of high crime?

[Schadenfrau]

Not in the least. I think the only way it could be considered a rough area is if your standard is based upon the Gold Coast.

[krulltime]

Upper West Side, Manhattan:

April 2005

Looking Back: On UWS, from sleazy to staid

By Philana Patterson

Tourists and newcomers to New York might find it hard to believe that the word "sleazy" could be used to characterize the Upper West Side, but that's just how the New York Times described Broadway between 59th and 96th streets in a 1982 article, which credited the area with a "sleazy vitality" that improved on its condition in the previous decade. At the time, in the midst of its early- 80's redevelopment, the ambiance was becoming "genteel, even prissy" and "increasingly successful at attracting the class of young affluent professionals who have for so long felt at home on the Upper East Side," the Times reported.

Today, Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue are lined with restaurants--some with white tablecloths and candles, some less classy--as well as boutiques and national chain stores such as Victoria's Secret and Pottery Barn. Housing prices have increased by extraordinary lengths since the Gray Lady weighed in back then, and now the Upper West Side has relative pricing uniformity up as far as 110th Street.

For decades, property values on the West Side trailed far behind those of the East Side, but in 1979, the margin narrowed dramatically, almost overnight, wrote Barbara Corcoran, founder of The Corcoran Group, in her book "Use What You've Got, and Other Business Lessons I Learned from My Mom."

The reason for the speedy gentrification, according to Corcoran: the "thirty-something" children of affluent parents on the East Side were moving in. She ignored naysayers who she said called her "crazy" and opened a huge West Side office to capitalize on the influx.

The Upper West Side's rejuvenation happened despite abundant graffiti, abandoned buildings and the city's fiscal crisis. At the same time neighborhoods such as the East Side, Greenwich Village, Chelsea, Yorkville and Park Slope were transformed by an urban-style social revolt.

Baby boomers rejected the lifestyles and values of their parents and "moved to rural Vermont or back to the city that Mom and Dad fled," according to the Times. On the Upper West Side that often meant moving in to new construction or renovating old brownstones and hotels. At the time, the changes were expected to push poor residents from the neighborhood, and as observers correctly predicted put the squeeze to many middle-class residents as well.

Today, the Upper West Side is synonymous with a sort of settled, familial affluence. The asking price of a five-story townhouse recently listed by Corcoran is $8.25 million, an unimaginable price 20 years ago. Two-bedroom co-op apartments averaged more than $1 million last year, and two-bedroom condos around $1.7 million. Prices reach up to $23.5 million, the asking price for three adjoining apartments being sold in the legendary San Remo that could set a record for the most expensive apartment on Central Park West.


Copyright © 2003-2005 The Real Deal.

[billyblancoNYC]

Port Morris has less crime than Williamsburg and is located in what's famously the poorest congressional district in the United States.

I think you're confusing the outward trappings of prosperity with actual progress.

If that's true, great. I'd love to see the latest numbers.

I have a question, is Port Morris mostly industrial? Does this include South and North Williamsburg, because South Williamsburg, I think, has a lot more crime than the much more gentrified Northern section?

Even if this is true, this is surely the exception and not the rule. It's pretty basic if you look at it. The city has seen some tremendous gentrification over the last decade or so, either by Yuppies or by immigrants that have money or work and get money. Not surprisingly, crime has plummeted in that time. It's a lot more than a coincidence.

The same can be said of rehabilitation of buildings, development of vacant lots, cleaning of streets, graffiti, etc.

Without the middle, upper middle, and (especially) wealthy, the poor in this city would be a lot worse off. Who do you think pays all those lovely taxes? Who pays for all that Medicaid?

What is considered BAD gentrification? Is it the artists moving into slums? Is is the banker pushing out the artist? Is it the Jamaican immigrant pushing out the American black? Is is the Chinese and Koreans pricing out the middle income whites? What's the problem? Why is it someone who likes lattes and steak frites should have less rights then someone who likes Oxtail soup or Paella? Please, explain.

[Schadenfrau]

Crime stats and neighborhood borders are readily available on NYC.gov.


Why is it someone who likes lattes and steak frites should have less rights then someone who likes Oxtail soup or Paella? Please, explain.

I assume that you're suggesting rich white people like the former and poor brown people prefer the latter?

Working with that in mind, I'm perplexed as to how you've come to the conclusion that the wealthy have "less rights" than poor people. Money brings privilege and the capacity for choice.

If someone comes along and wants to force you out of your home by paying double the rent, you've pretty much got no choice in the matter. You will have to leave. If you're a poor person, chances are slim that you're going to find an affordable new place to live anywhere in the city, because you were maxing yourself out with what you had been paying.

Thus, the latte-lover inherently has more rights than the poor could ever dream of.

[pianoman11686]

Cheek by Jowl

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/07/09/nyregion/10feat_xlg.jpg
Patrons at La Bottega restaurant on Ninth Avenue have a view of Fulton Houses, a public housing complex.

By JOHN FREEMAN GILL

Published: July 10, 2005

IVAN LOPEZ, an unemployed forklift operator who has lived most of his life in Chelsea, was chatting about his recent lunch with Harrison Ford, a newcomer to the neighborhood. "I met him at La Taza de Oro," Mr. Lopez said, referring to a small rice-and-beans shop on Eighth Avenue.

"Well, I didn't really meet him," he admitted. "I was sitting there, and he was so close." Mr. Lopez could hear Mr. Ford talking about the luxurious loft he had bought. "I got his autograph."

This is today's Chelsea, a neighborhood of sometimes stunning cheek-by-jowl incongruity, where no one was at all surprised the other day to see a wrinkled Latino man in a Panama hat tooling up Ninth Avenue in a motorized wheelchair past two impeccably coiffed blond men in tuxedos hailing a cab.

But perhaps the biggest incongruity is this: On Ninth Avenue, in the middle of $2.7 million penthouses on West 19th Street and $3,400 jackets at Chelsea Market, stand Fulton Houses, the 944-unit public housing project stretching from 16th to 19th Streets. Although the average Chelsea household earned about $83,000 in 2000, the most recent year for which data is available, average household income among the 2,215 residents of Fulton Houses is just under $25,000.

Once, the two worlds were more similar. When Fulton Houses' 11 brick buildings were completed in 1965, the economic divide between the project's residents and those in the predominantly working-class neighborhood around it was far less pronounced. The average household income at Fulton was $5,408 in 1970, while the average Chelsea household earned $8,505.

But the character of Chelsea has evolved considerably. Gentrification proceeded gradually in the 1960's and 70's, gathering force in the late 80's and 90's with an accelerating influx of gay professionals and middle-class families. Bodegas and workingman's bars gave way to upscale restaurants. The 1990's also brought Chelsea Piers and a thriving gallery scene in West Chelsea, lending an air of hip prestige that has helped drive real estate prices skyward.

Other neighborhoods have experienced rampant gentrification around public housing. But as Chelsea becomes a place where two restaurants within three blocks have bathroom valets, the changes around Fulton vividly demonstrate what happens when a mixed-income neighborhood is pressed by forces of wealth and fabulousness.

And the area is poised to transform further still. Late last month, the City Council approved a plan to rezone 68 acres of far west Chelsea between 16th and 30th Streets. The centerpiece of the plan is the transformation of the High Line elevated railway into a 22-block-long ribbon of green space, but the rezoning will also add 5,500 units of housing to the neighborhood.

While the plan calls for about 1,200 of the units to be affordable to households with low, moderate and middle incomes, the remaining 4,300 would be market rate. And in Chelsea's sizzling real estate environment, where the median sale price of a three-bedroom condominium is currently $3 million, that means even more luxury will be bumping up against Fulton Houses.

As these waves of wealth wash up on its shores, some inside the complex feel increasingly cut off.

"We're an isolated little island," said Ann Marie Baronowski, secretary of the Fulton Houses Tenants Association. "We have great apartments and great rent, but we can't afford to do anything here. The only thing we can afford is Western Beef. There are no restaurants you can afford, no food shops you can afford, no clothing stores you can afford. You're living here, but basically all you can do is sleep here."

Inside the Brick Towers

Thursday through Sunday nights, the Fulton Houses apartment of Sonia Jamison throbs with music, laughter and alcohol-tinged conviviality. Unfortunately for her, this good cheer originates not in her home but across Ninth Avenue in the Maritime Hotel building at 17th Street, where La Bottega's restaurant, cafe and two cabanas regularly overflow with well-dressed night owls.

"I have never been over there because I can't afford that," Ms. Jamison said one recent afternoon while chatting with friends in a Fulton Houses playground. "But I see who goes in and out of there: movie stars, P. Diddy, Jay-Z. A couple weeks ago, some guys came out of there arguing and fighting because they were drunk."

Ms. Jamison, a mother of three who works as a bank customer sales representative, jabbed a finger toward the gleaming white hotel. "They put it right across the street from the project," she said, her anger building. "The bottom line is, it's for rich people."

Not everyone living in Fulton Houses resents the presence of trendy newcomers like the Maritime, the former home of a sailors' union that was redeveloped in 2003.

"Because I work and my whole family is successful, I appreciate this," David Nelson, a supervisor at United Parcel Service, said of the proximity of upscale clubs and restaurants. Mr. Nelson, who had just returned from his shift and was sitting on a playground bench, talked proudly about his eldest son, a 25-year-old movie actor whose mother grew up in Fulton Houses with famous siblings, the Wayans brothers comedians.

"It brings up the whole area," Mr. Nelson said of the high-end new businesses. "The problem is the drug dealers. If you're building around projects and you bring clientele to places around here, you're making them more money."

A Golden-Lit Playground

The midnight scene at the Maritime Hotel on a recent Saturday looked like a cross between Times Square and Tavern on the Green. Honking cabs lined up two deep along Ninth Avenue, disgorging well-scrubbed young men along with young women clutching designer handbags. A white Hummer stretch limo glided by. Above the raised plaza of La Bottega, glowing Chinese lanterns wafted in the breeze, hovering bowls of inviting golden light that provided a striking contrast to the mostly darkened windows of the Fulton Houses across the street.

In the northern cabana atop La Bottega's restaurant, accessible only through two sets of gatekeepers, young patrons sipped martinis and grooved to Foxy Brown's new single, "Come Fly With Me."

Maurice Rodriguez, the Maritime's director of operations, said petty theft had been a problem, and attributed it to young people from Fulton Houses. "In fact," he said, "on Thursday night we caught two kids who lived in the projects purse snatching." Mr. Rodriguez said that the two youths had told the hotel's security staff that they lived in Fulton Houses.

Law enforcement officials said they saw no pattern of Fulton Houses residents' being arrested for robbery.

Many patrons, meanwhile, were oblivious to the proximity of Fulton Houses. "Are they projects?" asked Lianne Graubart, a Chelsea resident and real estate agent, when told that a public housing complex sat across the street. "Are they really projects? Really?"

"Housing projects? No way," added her boyfriend, Morris Amiri, an asset manager who was wearing a white linen shirt, True Religion jeans and a tan acquired while attending a friend's wedding in Maui. "That's sad. They're all screwed up, and we're over here having a good time. I hope they're not going to be chased out."

Between shots of Patron tequila, he added: "The rich are getting so rich, and the poor are getting more poor, so you're seeing a situation where extravagance is driving people's happiness. The more they get, the more they want."

Exit the Middle Class

Melva Max, a funkily elegant restaurateur who opened the unpretentious French bistro La Lunchonette on 18th Street and 10th Avenue with her chef husband in 1988, is not among those who want more extravagance in Chelsea.

"I'm happy about a lot of the changes, like the galleries, but now it's going too far," she said the other day, pointing to lots down the block from the projects where luxury condominiums are slated to rise. "The building of all these super, very, very expensive apartments is disturbing to me."

Ms. Max, who lives in a rent-stabilized apartment, noted that many customers had been priced out of the area by rising rents, while friends had sold their brownstones for $5 million and moved away. "These are like normal people, really working-class, middle-class people with kids," she said. "And it's just shocking to me that they're all selling and moving out. I just feel kind of sad."

The New, the Rich

Some people buy used mattresses on the Craigslist Web site. Austin Nagel, a 22-year-old Brooklyn real estate developer, bought a $2.7 million triplex penthouse in Chelsea Club, an icy-chic luxury condominium, 12 stories of tinted glass and cast stone rising on the site of a former parking lot on 19th Street near 10th Avenue.

Mr. Nagel, who has made a quick fortune turning Brooklyn Heights town houses into condos, stood atop his private roof recently and grew giddy as he scanned his sweeping views. He surveyed Chelsea Piers, where he works out; the high-rise where his acupuncturist keeps his office; docked boats bobbing in the glittering Hudson River; and the blocklong Chelsea Market, where one of his new neighbors, a celebrity hair-and-makeup artist, stores fine wines in the Chelsea Wine Vault. He also surveyed the dingy brick buildings of Fulton Houses, where the average monthly rent is $348.

"It doesn't even bother me that I'm looking over this," he said of the project. "These people will talk with you if you talk to them. You'll see them when you're walking your dog. They'll say, 'What's up?' They'll get to know you. On the Upper East Side, no one will talk to you."

Isolated by Affluence?

Inside the concrete-block-walled office of the Fulton Houses Tenants Association, the group's president, Jimmy Pelsey, sat with a few of the association's members and discussed the scarcity of neighborhood jobs for Fulton residents. A parade of new upscale Chelsea businesses had promised employment for Fulton residents at meetings of Community Board 4, only to later break their word, said Mr. Pelsey, who is a board member.

When Richard Born, a co-owner of the Maritime, sought a variance in 2001 to add two structures to its raised plaza, Mr. Pelsey said, "I asked in Community Board 4, 'What are you going to offer to people in the development?' " Mr. Born, board minutes show, replied that 90 percent of his project's 150 to 175 jobs would be open to the community. Later, said Miguel Acevedo, another board member, "I personally brought over 150 applicants with applications." But according to the two men, no Fulton residents were hired.

"We have several people that live within walking distance that work here," said Mr. Rodriguez, the Maritime's director of operations, who oversees most of the business's 450 employees, including one living in Covenant House, the center next door for at-risk youth. "I don't know if they specifically live at the Fulton House. We hire people of all colors and races."

The fear that rising rents and the burgeoning development of luxury condominiums might further isolate Fulton Houses and other nearby projects, the Chelsea and Elliott Houses, in a sea of affluence impelled Mr. Acevedo and others to argue strenuously for the city to include affordable housing in the rezoning of far west Chelsea. As the new zoning plan shows, they largely succeeded, and 100 of the mixed-income units will be developed on a Fulton Houses parking lot.

While Mr. Acevedo maintained that such mixed-income housing would give the children of Fulton residents a chance to stay in the neighborhood, not everyone at the gathering was so optimistic.

Joe Schuler, a powerfully built man with a salt-and-pepper Fu Manchu mustache, believes that Fulton Houses will eventually be sold to private developers. His comments echoed a longstanding rumor making the rounds at the project. "You don't have millions spent around a ghetto and have it remain a ghetto," Mr. Schuler said. "We're the sore spot in this neighborhood."

Howard Marder, a spokesman for the New York City Housing Authority, insisted that the authority had no plans to privatize Fulton Houses. "That rumor pops up all over the city, for some reason, whenever a neighborhood undergoes gentrification," he said.

Still a Gay Ghetto'

The evening after the city's gay pride parade last month, hundreds of well-groomed "Chelsea Boys" poured into the Park restaurant on Tenth Avenue near 17th Street for the club's regular Sunday party. Some chatted in the outdoor garden, which is planted with softly illuminated Japanese maples. Others cavorted in the hot tub in the Asian-theme rooftop bar area.

But Sophia Lamar, a Cuban-born transsexual who was performing at the party and wore a polka-dotted Balenciaga bathing suit and high heels, was not entirely sanguine about the area's status as a magnet for gays. "Chelsea is still a gay ghetto," Ms. Lamar said, crossing one gartered leg over the other. "I'm against ghettos, whether they're youth ghettos or black ghettos or minority ghettos or gay ghettos. I don't think there's any need to separate yourself from the rest of the society."

For this reason, she said, the juxtaposition of glamorous wealthy people with the low-income residents of Fulton Houses is a terrific thing. "I've lived in different cities in the U.S., and the housing projects are always in places where people don't go," continued Ms. Lamar, who has visited a friend's mother at the housing project and has never felt uncomfortable among its residents. "And here I think it's wonderful because it shows that there's room for everyone. Rich people are going to a supermarket, and poor people are going to the same supermarket, and that doesn't happen in any other city."

What the Barber Knows

When Manuel Manolo and his two fellow barbers are snipping away in the misleadingly named New Barber Shop on Ninth Avenue near 19th Street, the talk, by turns in Spanish and English, ranges from baseball to politics. On a recent Saturday, it settled on Fulton Houses.

Eddie Andujar, a longtime Fulton Houses resident who worked as a groundskeeper for the project for 25 years, said that it had been beautiful until about 1990, but had gone downhill since. "Because of the drug dealers, it's very dangerous over here at nighttime," he added.

There have been two homicides at Fulton Houses since late January, the police said, but neither was thought to be drug-related. "Crime in the 10th Precinct has declined dramatically in recent years," said Deputy Commissioner Paul J. Browne. "The Police Department pays close attention to conditions there and responds accordingly." Since 1993, robbery in the precinct has dropped 74 percent and felony assault 53 percent.

Near the spinning barber pole, George Weaver, a 30-year-old Fulton Houses resident in a faded Million Youth March T-shirt, awaited his turn in Mr. Manolo's chair. Mr. Weaver, who recently received an associate's degree in business administration from Monroe College in the West Bronx, said he wished the Housing Authority would screen prospective Fulton Houses residents more thoroughly. "People from shelters don't necessarily have a sense of community," he said.

To illustrate his idea of how a community should work, he nodded toward Mr. Manolo. "He always encouraged me to stay in school every time," Mr. Weaver said.

Mr. Manolo, who has lived in Fulton Houses for 40 years and cut hair for just as long, grinned. "I took a picture of him the day he graduated from college," he said proudly as Mr. Weaver climbed into his red leather chair. With that, the courtly barber took a straight razor and ran it gently across Mr. Weaver's Afro, which fell in leisurely dark clumps onto the worn linoleum floor, mingling with the blond hair and eyebrow trimmings snipped from the customer in the neighboring chair.

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The Maritime Hotel, left, overflows with well-dressed night owls and celebrities. On the other side of Ninth Avenue, residents of Fulton Houses pay an average monthly rent of $348.

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The glowing Chinese lanterns of La Bottega, where patrons sip martinis and groove to music, oblivious to the proximity of Fulton Houses. "We're an isolated little island," said one Fulton resident.

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Rich and poor rub shoulders on Ninth Avenue. Gentrification gathered force in Chelsea in the late 80's and 90's with an accelerating influx of gay professionals and middle-class families.

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The lively scene at the Park restaurant, part of the burgeoning collection of restaurants and nightspots that have given Chelsea an air of hip prestige.

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The New Barber Shop, where Manuel Manolo, a 40-year resident of Fulton Houses, cuts hair along with two fellow barbers. Changes around Fulton vividly demonstrate what happens when a mixed-income neighborhood is pressed by forces of wealth and fabulousness.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

[krulltime]

Lincoln Square, Manhattan:


Grand Buildings, but Also a Sense of Community


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The refurbished Columbus Circle is a gathering place at the boundary of a neighborhood that seems to
specialize in vibrant friendliness.


By C. J. HUGHES
Published: April 30, 2006

IF each neighborhood were a nation, Lincoln Square might win points for patriotism. Its residents tend to cheer frequently about how wonderful it is, and they rarely want to pack up and move away.

And to be fair, it can be hard to begrudge them. The older sections of this West Side neighborhood, those closest to Central Park, can seem downright utopian. The area is graced with buildings as grand as castles, and yet, like a small country village, people know their neighbors' names as well as their butcher's.

But despite its intimacy, Lincoln Square, which runs from Central Park West to the Hudson River and from West 59th Street to West 72nd, is unmistakably urban.

The population is ethnically diverse, and many residents are employed in the media and arts. Lincoln Square has some of the nation's finest private and public schools, and Lincoln Center, home to world-class performances of music, opera and dance, is at its geographic and cultural heart.

In the next year or so, emigrating to Lincoln Square will be easier, with the opening of a handful of new condominium buildings. The 1,000 new apartments will be some of the city's most luxurious, with landscaped rooftop bars, in-house dining rooms, 35-seat screening rooms and 75-foot-long swimming pools.

This building boom, mostly around the neighborhood's southern and western edges, rivals the urban renewal projects of the 1960's in terms of square footage. But this time around, entire blocks of the neighborhood are protected within a landmark district that is the largest in the city in terms of the number of buildings, thanks to residents like Arlene Simon, who in 1985 founded Landmark West, a still-active preservation group.

Mrs. Simon worries that the new condos will be merely be pieds-à-terre and consequently, that their owners won't have much of a stake in the community.

"When you're a brownstone owner, you talk about your modest garden and restoring your stoop," said Mrs. Simon, a former children's clothing designer who has lived with her husband, Bruce, a labor lawyer, in the Lincoln Square neighborhood since 1960. Their current home is a 2,300-square-foot duplex, with five bedrooms and two and a half baths, that they bought for $60,000 in 1973.

"With these new buildings, it's all about who has the best view, and too much 'can you top this?' " she said.

Yet at least some people who are buying new condos plan on living in them full time and are just as die-hard about Lincoln Square as the old guard like Mrs. Simon.

Last September, Justin Marcus, who runs a staffing company in Manhattan, paid $2.73 million for a 1,500-square-foot condo with two bedrooms and two and half baths on the 23rd floor of 15 Central Park West, currently a mishmash of cranes and scaffolding.

Mr. Marcus, who is single, said his second bedroom would become a rehearsal space — he plays both piano and guitar — and when his second CD comes out next January, he hopes to hold the release party at Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola, the theater in the Time Warner Center where he attends jazz performances.

"There used to be a concentration of musicians in the East Village and West Village, but they all left for Brooklyn or Queens," Mr. Marcus said. "This is one of the few places left in New York that retains its musical heritage."


What You'll Find


Lincoln Square's most memorable buildings may be the co-ops with multiple towers along Central Park West. The neighborhood's other defining architectural style can be found on the side streets: four-story brownstones, whose twisting stoops and rampart facades resemble fairy-tale forts.

Yet new buildings are never far away in Lincoln Square. At Columbus Circle, sales recently closed on the last of the Time Warner Center's 200 units. Along the Hudson, residents have moved into 120 Riverside Boulevard, the seventh and final building in the complex developed by Donald Trump.

At 15 Central Park West, 60 percent of the 199 units have been spoken for. They range from one-bedrooms to full floors, priced from $2 million to $45 million. Sales of apartments on the lower floors of the 43-story building won't close until the spring of 2007, said Richard Wallgren, the sales director.

The 20-story Hudson, at 225 West 60th Street, between West End and Amsterdam Avenues, has 80 units, starting at $625,000 for one-bedrooms. Fifty-five percent have been sold, though buyers can't move in until this summer, said Samantha Behringer, the sales manager.

On the same block is 10 West End Avenue, which is expected to be completed in about a year. It will have 173 apartments, ranging from small one-bedrooms up to four-bedrooms, priced from $750,000 to $4.5 million.

Next door, at 555 West 59th Street, the foundation is being completed for the Element, which will have 198 apartments and 35 stories, along with a basketball court and three pools. Its one- to four-bedrooms are $750,000 to $6.5 million.

Closer to the river, the 32-story Avery, at 100 Riverside Boulevard, is also at the foundation stage. Gary Barnett, the president of the Extell Development Company, the project's developer, said that 35 percent of its one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments, priced from $850,000 to $3 million, have been sold.

"Even a year ago, people wanted prewar character and charm and all the old moldings," said Barry Rudnick, a vice president of the Corcoran Group who has been selling apartments in Lincoln Square for four years. "Now it's all about service and luxury and new construction."


What You'll Pay


When all the new condominiums come to market, Mr. Rudnick said, they may push prices down. But for now, prices for both condos and co-ops seem to be holding their own, he said. Prices are about the same no matter the type of ownership. The condos tend to have a little more space and higher quality finishes, but the co-ops are in older sought-after buildings. The two factors tend to equalize prices.

The listing price for a 500-square-foot studio in Lincoln Square would typically be $400,000, Mr. Rudnick said, while a 750-square-foot one-bedroom, one-bath unit might be listed at $800,000.

With two-bedrooms, there's greater range in price, Mr. Rudnick said. While a typical Lincoln Square 1,300-square-foot two-bedroom might cost $1.75 million, he recently sold a 1,450-square-foot two-bedroom, two-bath condo at 220 Riverside Boulevard for $2.45 million. It went for its asking price, he said, because it was on the 44th floor and had great views.

Rentals make up about half the market in Lincoln Square, said Josephine Vinci, a sales associate at Citi Habitats. The most in-demand rentals, she said, are in brownstones; one-bedrooms start at $2,600 a month, and two-bedrooms at $4,000.

In Lincoln Square's newer high-rises, studios start at $2,300 a month, one-bedrooms at $3,200 and two-bedrooms at $5,000, Ms. Vinci said.

Demand for condos, as opposed to co-ops, seems to be growing in lockstep with the wave of construction in the neighborhood. Condos require a lower down payment and are easier to sublet, two of the factors that are winning favor among buyers.

Gregory Heym, the chief economist at Brown Harris Stevens, said that in the first quarter of 2006, 70 percent of all units sold in Lincoln Square were condos. The median sales price was $972,000, a 43 percent increase over the same quarter a year earlier but in line with other highly desirable addresses elsewhere in the city.

"You don't have the action at the high end of the market that you had a year ago," Mr. Heym said, referring to the Time Warner Center. "But the whole market has shifted upward."


What to Do


Whatever the city offers, so does Lincoln Square. And then some.

Two spectacular parks — Central and Riverside South — form the neighborhood's bookends. And the median malls along Broadway, planted with fresh beds of red tulips, end like an exclamation point at the refurbished Columbus Circle.

There, on a recent weekday afternoon, a lunchtime crowd of political activists, teenage skateboarders and office workers reading books gathered around the tall monument at the circle's center.

For those who can't afford Lincoln Center's indoor offerings, there are free outdoor shows in the warmer months. At Pier One in Riverside Park South, a seasonal restaurant is set up in summer, along with a screen for outdoor movies.

And for the fit and dexterous, there are two indoor rock-climbing walls, one in the Harmony Atrium, at Broadway and 62nd Street, and the other at Recreation Center 59, at 533 West 59th Street.

The Shops at Columbus Circle offer three floors of stores like J. Crew, Tumi and L'Occitane. Trendier wear can be found along Columbus Avenue at boutiques like Betsey Johnson, Theory and Lucky.


The Schools


Some of the city's best public high schools are in Lincoln Square. Fiorello H. La Guardia, at 100 Amsterdam Avenue (65th Street), is strong in the arts and offers a pre-conservatory program. In 2004, 77.2 percent of its seniors went to four-year colleges.

On the SAT reasoning tests in 2004, La Guardia students had an average verbal score of 536 and an average math score of 534, compared with 444 verbal and 472 math for the city.

Another well-regarded high school is Beacon, at 227 West 61st Street. In 2004, seniors' average SAT scores were 506 verbal and 502 math; 70.7 percent went to four-year colleges.

Some of the city's top private schools — among them, Collegiate, Calhoun, Dwight and Trinity — are in the neighborhood, or close to it. Annual tuitions are steep. At Trinity, for example, high-school students will pay $29,770 for the next school year.


The History


The land along the Hudson River south of Riverside Park was once home to a bustling, smoke-belching industrial area. New York Central trains clacked down the piers with loads of grain, milk and vegetables.

At Pier D, at the foot of 67th Street, a rusting hulk is all that's left of a warehouse that burned down in 1971. When a breeze blows through, its metal ribs clang like industrial-size wind chimes.


What We Like


Because the developers worked so closely with neighborhood residents in planning them, the massive new buildings seem to fit in, giving Lincoln Square a pleasant mix of old and new.


Going Forward


The new buildings seem designed to give their residents little reason to go out, and this could compromise the neighborhood's friendly feel and vibrant street life.


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Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

[krulltime]

The Lower East Side, Manhattan:


Two Bridges: Development spills into bitty, gritty nabe
Could the Two Bridges area be the last frontier for Lower East Side gentrification?


http://www.therealdeal.net//issues/APRIL_2006/images/1143732183.jpg
Jacob Goldman, owner of LoHo Realty,
in front of Co-op Village, which sparked
gentrification in the area when units
went market-rate.


By Emma Johnson
April 2006 Issue

In the real estate haven that has been New York in the past decade, it is oft lamented that Manhattan is void of undiscovered areas -- nothing left to gentrify, no deals to be had.

This may be true, but the nugget of the Lower East Side coined by the media as "Two Bridges" has piqued the interest of brokers who say the area encompassed by Grand Street on the north, Bowery on the west, and the East River to the east and south, is benefiting from overspill from hip, bordering neighborhoods.

The momentum behind this development is strong enough that Two Bridges has weathered the softening market thanks to being part of the larger-than-life force that is the Lower East Side, according to brokers.

"The market here is still extremely hot -- I believe it is the hottest market in sense of excitement of the neighborhood," said Jacob Goldman, owner of LoHo Realty, which specializes in the areas to the south and east of Houston Street. But Goldman claims he hadn't even heard the term "Two Bridges" before the New York Post interviewed him for a recent story on the area.

While MenuPages, the New York restaurant Web site, lists 85 establishments under "Chinatown/ Two Bridges," for example, not everyone is convinced that the area is as booming as some reports would suggest. Just as it will take quite a while, if ever, before Hell's Kitchen becomes Clinton, the Two Bridges sobriquet may not catch on, despite the efforts of the real estate industry and media.

"'Two Bridges' hasn't really hit the lexicon on the street," said Rob Gross, a senior vice president at Prudential Douglas Elliman who specializes in the Lower East Side. "Demographically, it's kind of the way the Lower East Side was five to eight years ago -- there's not a lot of big parcels, a lot of tenement buildings, and not a lot of opportunity for tons of development. There's not a lot of loft buildings."

While change is indeed slow, there is an undercurrent of gentrification. When the 4,500 units of Co-Op Village became available in 2000, the area caught some new attention and the standard process of "every building being bought and redone, tenements being torn down and big buildings being erected" is now under way, Goldman said.

Glenn Schiller with the Corcoran Group recently sold what he calls a "rare piece of property" -- a 2,300-square-foot floor-through loft condo on Grand Street between Essex and Ludlow for $1.8 million. In Soho or Nolita -- both once-disparaged neighborhoods that have enjoyed their respective moments in the real estate headlines -- that apartment would have gone for $1 million more, he said.

Some notable new projects in the area include the Two Bridges Condos at 48 Canal Street, with units from $660,000 to $1.6 million with ubiquitous stainless steel kitchens, open layouts, and other amenities that appeal to the young, affluent buyer. A condo development at 142 Henry Street has units listed at $535,000 to $1.8 million.

The Forward Building that formerly housed the Yiddish socialist newspaper at 175 East Broadway is another project. It is comprised of 29 luxury units priced at $575,000 to $5.5 million and scheduled for May or June completion. Michael Bolla, exclusive broker for the property, said that half the condos are already sold -- but not to the demographic project principals predicted.

"I expected it to be geared to young, cool, hip single people, but that's not what happened," Bolla said. "It's mostly families from the West Village and Greenwich, Conn."

The main attraction with these buyers is the strong nearby public schools, Bolla said, especially Shuang Wen PS 184M, which produces 10-year-olds fluent in Mandarin and English. Other area amenities include nearby subway stops on the J/M and F/V lines and the nearby, newly renovated Seward Park and East River promenade. The city is also in negotiations with Basketball City, which hopes to move its Chelsea courts and event center to a 64,000 square-foot warehouse at Pier 36 just north of Manhattan Bridge.

While he is not convinced that Two Bridges is yet a significantly hip location, Rob Gross is sure it will see its day. "Will Two Bridges become the way Chelsea was?" he said. "Demographically, before Chelsea became the gayest zip code, it was a Hispanic neighborhood and all brownstones. That is the beauty of New York."


Copyright © 2003-2005 The Real Deal.

[krulltime]

The Lower East Side, Manhattan:


How Low Can You Go?


By Matt Gross
May 8, 2006 issue of New York Magazine

Not so long ago, you’d have done anything to get away from the Lower–Lower East Side. Now you’ll do anything to come back. The French bistros and avant-garde boutiques that spilled across Houston Street from the East Village have crossed Delancey and creep right up to the borders of Chinatown. Hip-hop brunch joints sit peacefully cheek by jowl with slick-floored fishmongers. Million-dollar lofts peer down at one-buck-dumpling shops. And a 25-block zone once occupied mainly by Chinese meat markets and the odd yarmulke emporium has become the most intriguing neighborhood in Manhattan.


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1. The Lower East Side Tenement Museum
108 Orchard St., at Delancey St. 212-431-0233

The ultimate repository of local history runs tours through the restored homes of the German, Jewish, and Italian immigrants who lived here more than a century ago. The museum’s coolest project is right up to date: “Folk Songs for the Five Points,” at tenement.org/folksongs, lets you create a neighborhood soundtrack by mixing sound samples.


2. Blue Moon Hotel
100 Orchard St., nr. Delancey St. 212-533-9080

From the outside, the neighborhood’s first boutique hotel looks like a tenement. But the 22 rooms ($275 to $875 per night), named for bygone celebs like Tommy Dorsey and Al Jolson, look like ghetto grottoes gone upscale, with ceiling fans and wrought-iron beds. An immigrant-themed restaurant, Sweet Dreams, is expected to open by early autumn.


3. Congee Village
100 Allen St., nr. Delancey St.

212-941-1818 This Cantonese hot spot has earned acclaim for its namesake rice porridge, which is best with roast duck and meatballs (classic pork and preserved egg is a favorite, too). Book a private room, bring a dozen friends, and order the house-special chicken. Karaoke is optional.


4. Il Laboratorio del Gelato
95 Orchard St., nr. Broome St.

212-343-9922 A spring expansion will mean the city’s best frozen treats come in twenty flavors, including brand-new blends such as Cheddar cheese and wasabi.


5. Recollections
90 Orchard St., nr. Broome St.

212-387-0341 When you want your million-dollar loft to look like a nineteenth-century hovel, stop at the Tenement Museum’s store for chandeliers, old wallpaper, and enameled cast-iron stoves.


6. Kehila Kedosha Janina
280 Broome St., nr. Allen St.

212-431-1619 Delve into the fascinating history of the 2,000-year-old Greek-Jewish heritage at this untouched synagogue; see particularly the large collection of alephs, hand-painted birth certificates unique to the Romaniotes sect.


7. Bo Bo Poultry Market
287 Broome St., nr. Eldridge St. 212-274-0130

There’s nothing like a freshly slaughtered bird for dinner. These poultry perfectionists will provide you with, say, a $12 pair of partridges from their farms upstate.


8. Milk & Honey
134 Eldridge St., nr. Delancey St.

Disguised as a tailor’s shop, Sasha Petraske’s semi-secret ode to the cocktail bars of yore requires a reservation. It’s worth it: The throwback cocktails are the best in the city, and the leather banquettes are plush enough to make you think you’re in The Sting.


9. Happy Ending
302 Broome St., nr. Forsyth St. 212-334-9676

The slickest ex-brothel turned trendy bar in the area. Upcoming guests at Amanda Stern’s acclaimed reading series include Arthur Bradford, Lydia Davis, and Sigrid Nunez.


10. Deadly Dragon Sound
102B Forsyth St., nr. Broome St. 646-613-0139

Looking for an obscure ska band on 45? Or just the latest dancehall hits from Kingston? You’ll find both—probably on vinyl—at this tiny storefront devoted to all things reggae.


11. Fontana’s
105 Eldridge St., nr. Grand St. 212-334-6740

A cavernous bar for guys’ guys—with paintings of Elvis, Clint, and breasts— owned by the four women behind the East Village’s 85A. The newly opened basement hosts local bands.


12. Dumpling House
118A Eldridge St., nr. Broome St. 212-625-8008

It’s a scientific fact: Dumpling House has the best fried pork dumplings in Manhattan. What science has yet to explain, however, is how such flavor-dense little packets can cost just $1 for five.


13. Manpolo International Trading Corp.
301 Grand St., nr. Allen St.; 212-966-0289

Good fortune is on sale here in the form of lacquered altars and statues of Chinese gods. Luck doesn’t come cheap, however: An eighteen-inch Guangong, the red-faced warrior god, can easily top $200.


14. Hello Sari
261 Broome St., at Orchard St. 212-274-0791

All your subcontinental fashion needs fulfilled, from Pakistani beaded sandals ($25) to glowing silk saris ($95), which, if you’re not quite ready to dress like a Delhi bride, look great draped across a sofa.


15. 88 Orchard
88 Orchard St., at Broome St. 212-228-8880

Eight is a lucky number in Chinese culture, and the Jewish owners of this sun-drenched corner café certainly got lucky when they opened three years ago: It’s always filled with customers sipping coffee, surfing the Net, and playing board games.


16. Barrio Chino
253 Broome St., nr. Orchard St. 212-228-6710

Yummily authentic tacos and high-end tequilas downed at a friendly communal table in a room watched over by enormous vintage Chinese ancestor portraits. Weekend nights get crowded, so come after work for a michelada (beer mixed with assorted sauces) and some fresh-made guacamole.


17. Babycakes NYC
248 Broome St., nr. Ludlow St. 212-677-5047

If your belly says no to gluten, nuts, refined sugar, dairy, and eggs, stop here for cupcakes so good you’ll forget they’re vegan.


18. Guss’ Pickles
87 Orchard St., nr. Broome St. 516-569-0909

Brined cukes, marinated ’shrooms, and barrels of kraut, from people who know from pickles (the business is about 90 years old).


19. Little Giant
85 Orchard St., nr. Broome St. 212-226-5047

An Ikea dining room hosts seasonal New American dishes with playful names like Beet Box (roasted beets with Humboldt Fog cheese, $10) and Babys Got Bass (wild striped bass with clams, lentils, bacon, and aïoli, $25). The Swine of the Week is $22.


20. El Bocadito
79 Orchard St., nr. Broome St. 212-343-3331

A new Mexican tapas joint serving “little bites”—e.g., taquitos—to the spillover crowd from Barrio Chino.


21. Forward
72 Orchard St., nr. Grand St.

646-264-3233 The shelves at this incubator for fashion designers currently feature lush, sexy lingerie from Martha Colón.


22. East Side Company Bar
49 Essex St., at Grand St. 212-614-7408

Another cocktail nest from Sasha Petraske (see Milk & Honey) but less exclusive. Huddle up in a booth, order a delicious Pimm’s Cup, and watch the candlelight play off the pressed-tin roof.


23. Kossar’s Bialys
367 Grand St., nr. Essex St. 877-424-2597

New York isn’t exactly packed with bialy stockers. But even in a town with 1,000 of them, Kossar’s light, bready, onion-smeared renditions would be the best.


24. Doughnut Plant
379 Grand St., at Norfolk St. 212-505-3700

Forget Dunkin’ Donuts, Krispy Kreme, and your local cart. These superb sugar-caked rings of fried dough come in offbeat flavors like vanilla bean and strawberry cake.


25. Orchard
47 Orchard St., nr Hester St. 212-219-1061

It’s hard to categorize the collective behind this gallery space. And that’s kind of the point: Take the current show, “Vera,” which mixes Jason Simon’s film of a woman talking about her passion for shopping with one-off karaoke and video art nights.


26. Girls Love Shoes
85 Hester St., nr. Orchard St. 917-250-3268

Paradise for lovers of vintage footwear. There are 1,000 pairs for sale (a Maud Frizon tiger-print pump is $150), and 1,000 more for rent at this store run by Zia Ziprin, whose great-grandfather started a yeshiva on East Broadway and whose beatnik mother opened a vintage store nearby in the sixties.


27. The Sweet Life
63 Hester St., at Ludlow St. 800-692-6887

Sugar aficionados get hives just looking at the buckets and buckets of honey-glazed pecans, giant swirl lollipops, Pez dispensers, halvah, and Turkish delight in the window.


28. Brown
61 Hester St., at Ludlow St. 212-477-2427

The epicenter of LES life below Grand Street serves remarkably fresh salads, baked eggs, and sandwiches (try the mortadella-and-Garrotxa on ciabatta) to local hipsters, who linger over rich espressos and Wallpaper*. Next door is Orange, a grocery, and across the street is Green, the catering wing.


29. A NY Thing
51 Hester St., nr. Essex St. 212-777-0919

Everything a skateboarder needs—baggy clothes, LPs, stickers, and ’tude—except actual skateboards.


30. Classic Coffee Shop
56 Hester St., nr. Ludlow St. 917-685-3306

“Classic” is right—with Rocky Marciano photos on the wall and post-bebop jazz on the stereo, Carmine Morales’s tidy hole-in-the-wall is just the place for a tuna melt and an egg cream.


31. 48 Hester
48 Hester St., nr. Essex St. 212-473-3496

This minuscule boutique carries Trovata, Rag & Bone, sass & bide, and Nobody jeans—the same brands at owner Denise Williamson’s Mercer Street showroom. Now in: Williamson’s own women’s line, Franck.


32. The Main Squeeze
19 Essex St., nr. Hester St. 212-614-3109

Walter Kuehr’s squeezebox emporium—he offers his own line of accordions and lessons in how to play them—looks like a relic of the 1890s, even though it opened in 1996.


33. Organic Avenue
23 Ludlow St., nr. Hester St., second floor; 212-334-4593

A treasure trove of materials for natural living: wild jungle peanuts, cruelty-free silks, and a hemp Brazilian bikini.


34. Les Enfants Terribles
37 Canal St., nr. Ludlow St. 212-777-7518

An exquisitely designed French-African restaurant (worn leather banquettes, gold leaf ceiling) that’s hybrid in every sense. By day, locals munch on merguez sandwiches; by night, it’s a sexy multiculti scene. Try the Ivorian sliced-steak korhogofefemougou (a mouthful in more ways than one).


35. Clandestino
35 Canal St., nr. Ludlow St. 212-475-5505

A gloriously simple French-owned bar that opened in early February with the kind of stealth that usually produces La Esquina–level buzz. Expect it to be mobbed by . . . oh, right about now.


36. Happy Joy Restaurant
25 Canal St., nr. Ludlow St. 212-388-0264

Everyone from families to construction workers loves the friendly waiters and very tasty Chinese-Malaysian food here. Eggy tofu is house-made; kuey teow noodles a filling standby; curried skate wing a sour-spicy marvel.


37. Good World Bar & Grill
3 Orchard St., at Canal St. 212-925-9975

The pioneer. In 1999, Annika Sundvik converted a sketchy barbershop (i.e., brothel) into a wood-floored bar and Swedish restaurant. Then the world discovered Good World’s long beer list, house cocktails (the Berzerker: aquavit, Absolut Citron, ginger ale, dry vermouth, and a cucumber slice), and Scandinavian staples. Now weekends are uncomfortably crowded; Sundays with a pint of Hoegaarden in the rear courtyard, however, remain perfect.


38. Super Taste
26 Eldridge St., nr. Canal St. 212-625-1198

In northern China, hand-pulled noodles are a common streetside snack, but they’ve yet to penetrate New York foodie brains. Order No. 2 on the menu—noodles in spicy beef broth, $4—and feel your consciousness rise, along with your body temperature.


39. Cup & Saucer
89 Canal St., nr. Eldridge St. 212-925-3298

This is the kind of ancient lunch counter that restaurateurs spend millions to re-create.


Real Estate

Most Lower East Side buildings are tenements in need of renovation, which means you just might find a one-bedroom rental for less than $1,000 (it helps to speak Chinese). Rare loft conversions are still a relative bargain.


40. 50 Orchard Street

This Christmas, the sixteen two-bedroom condos in this new luxury development will sell in the $1.5 million to low $3 million range. For that, you get Bosch appliances, Italian cabinetry, and a communal roof deck. Through Larry Michaels at Douglas Elliman, 212-891-7072.


41. 345 Grand Street

“The only cast-iron building in the Lower East Side,” claims Corcoran’s Glenn E. Schiller (212-941-2561). Three of its six units sold for less than $2 million—a million less than a few blocks west in Soho.


42. 173–175 East Broadway

The landmarked home of the Yiddish-language Daily Forward newspaper went condo a few years ago, but its units are only now coming on the market, for $575,000 to $4.5 million. Through Michael Bolla at 212-334-4855.


43. 118 Forsyth Street

From the outside, you’d never suspect this building is full of pristine 2,300-square-foot co-ops for $1.6 million (they went for far less two years back). Call Jeffrey Stockwell at 646-613-2715.


44. 79 Delancey Street

Renovated about three years ago, this former bank—the first Jewish financial institution in the city, according to Misrahi Realty’s Chris Crane (212-475-6660)—has rare vacancies for big-windowed apartments that range from $1,900 to $3,000.


Copyright © 2006, New York Magazine Holdings LLC.

[krulltime]

Hell's Kitchen (Clinton), Manhattan:


HELL'S HISTORY


By MAX GROSS
May 4, 2006

"Hell hath no limits," declared Christopher Marlowe's Mephistopheles.
But Hell's Kitchen is limited from 36th Street up to 59th Street and from Eighth Avenue westward.

According to James Trager's "The New York Chronology," the neighborhood's name came about in 1882, when a newspaper reporter called a particularly decrepit tenement "Hell's Kitchen" - but the description sounded right for the neighborhood as a whole, which had long been dogged by gang warfare and lawlessness.

According to another version of the story, the name came when a rookie cop said to his veteran partner, "This place is hell itself." No, the veteran replied, "Hell's a mild climate. This is hell's kitchen."

The neighborhood was born 30 years earlier, when the Hudson River Railroad opened along 11th Avenue in 1851 and mostly Irish immigrants began putting up shanties.

"Here they raised pigs and goats, scavenged for food and firewood, hired out as day laborers, and found jobs in the industrialized areas," writes Edwin Burrows and Mike Wallace in "Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898."

During the 1860s and '70s, African-Americans moved in because the neighborhood was within walking distance to the longshoreman and service jobs that were open to them, but the neighborhood remained heavily Irish and saw clashes between Protestants and Catholics - with a particularly bloody dustup in the summer of 1871.

When New York's Irish-American population finally surpassed its German-American population in the 1890s, one of its greatest concentrations was in Hell's Kitchen.

During the 1930s, the neighborhood's worst tenements were finally torn down and the elevated train - which was noisy and blocked out most of the natural light - was dismantled. In the 1950s, much of the neighborhood was renamed Clinton, in honor of former mayor and governor DeWitt Clinton.

Respectability had definitely arrived by 1989 when 1 Worldwide Plaza, a $550 million complex of offices and condos, opened at 880 Eighth Ave. (Those are 1989 dollars, remember.) Since then, everything has only heated up in Hell's Kitchen.

"Where hell is," Mephistopholes added, "there must we ever be."


HELL YEAH!
MIDTOWN WEST SIZZLES AS FLASHY NEW CONDOS AND RENTALS TURN UP THE HEAT WEST OF EIGHTH AVENUE


By ADAM BONISLAWSKI

May 4, 2006 -- Go West, young man!" New York newspaperman Horace Greeley wasn't talking about the Manhattan real-estate market when he offered that famous advice, but given the current rate of development along the city's occidental edge, he could have been.

With a new crop of buildings popping up along Ninth, 10th and 11th avenues in Midtown, Gotham is undergoing its own sort of westward expansion. Instead of log cabins along the Mississippi, though, we've got high-rises over the Hudson. And that's not corn they're growing - those are luxury condos.

Area resident Karl Miller has seen change sweep over the neighborhood since he moved to the Strand building on West 43rd Street and 10th Avenue three years ago.

"It's really in a big redevelopment cycle," he says. "That's why I bought here three years ago. I was on the Upper West Side, which is a beautiful area, but it was pretty much done with building new buildings."

And, in fact, Miller just purchased a new studio in one of the buildings that's been giving the neighborhood much of its buzz - the much ballyhooed Atelier.

A joint project from the Moinian Group and MacFarlane Partners, the 46-story, 478-unit condo development has drawn notice with amenities like a sun deck and sky-lit indoor pool and a sleek Costas Kondylis design inspired by the many generations of ocean liners that have docked just across the way at the Hudson River piers. With units ranging from studios to two-bedrooms, apartments in the building begin around $600,000 and top out at $1.5 million - which, to Miller's mind, was too good a deal to pass up.

"I really wasn't even looking to move," he says of his decision to head to Atelier, "but I just really liked the look of the building - the lobby, the basketball courts. It just looked great. I just thought it was a great opportunity."

A couple blocks away at the Orion building at 350 W. 42nd St., Long Island resident Michael Moloney experienced a similar case of love at first sight. Moloney and his wife had been looking for months for a place in the city to use as a pied-…-terre.

"We were all over the place," he says, "uptown, downtown. We looked for a good eight to 10 weeks."

Then, while on the West Side looking at another building, Moloney's broker suggested they swing by the Orion. Taken with features like the 551-unit development's pool, spa, gym, sun deck and housekeeping and concierge services, Moloney pulled the trigger on a two-bedroom right then and there.

"We put a deposit on it that day," he says. "It was exactly what we were looking for."

In addition to the building itself, Moloney was sold on the neighborhood - in particular its curious mix of quiet and commotion.

"We were looking for a place that had activities - shows, restaurants, things like that - but that wasn't right on Broadway. We figured we'd look on the outskirts of areas that were going to be up-and-coming.

"This is a developing area. I see it being revitalized."

His eyes don't lie. In addition to Atelier and the Orion, a host of other buildings are going up in the area. A block west of the Orion, a 800-plus-unit condo/rental development from Twining Property, Related Companies and MacFarlane Partners is slated to rise at 440 W. 42nd St. Down the way at 650 W. 42nd St., Silverstein Properties' One River Place already stands - its 921 rental units rising 40 stories above the Hudson - and there are plans for another 53-story condo development, Two River Place, next door.

Plus, as Moinian Group CEO Joseph Moinian notes, a 900-unit mixed rental-condo building is planned to go up next to Atelier within the next four years. Add to this the developments from the early 2000s like the Ivy Tower rental building at 350 W. 42nd St. and the Zebra rentals at 420 W. 42nd St., and you've got an area where construction has been going gangbusters.

"What we saw in the late '90s and the first few years after the millennium was an influx of rental construction - large buildings with high-wealth, professional individuals that started to settle and get comfortable there," says Corcoran Sunshine Marketing managing director Daniel Cordeiro, describing the neighborhood's progression. "So, with that, now there's a huge condominium demand from people who have either lived there before or have been exposed to it socially."

Much of the activity has centered around the 42nd Street corridor, but there's plenty of action to be found moving northward as well. And whether you call the area Hell's Kitchen, Clinton or Midtown West, people are flocking to it.

Greg Fraser moved to the neighborhood from Philadelphia this March, taking a studio in the new 149-unit Clinton West building at West 47th and 10th Avenue. Thus far, he's found the convenience of Midtown to be key.

"There are great restaurants in the area, a number of parks," he says. "And I can walk to Penn Station, I can walk to Central Park and I can walk to my office - you can't do much better than that."

And unlike much of Manhattan, there are many brand-new apartments for renters along with all the new condos.

At West 52nd and 10th, the Dermot Co. is putting up a four-building, 300-unit rental complex called the Mosaic. The project, which will contain studios and one- and two-bedrooms renting for $2,000 and up, is an environmentally friendly, or "green," development, constructed in accordance with environmental building standards set by Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. A few blocks north at 57th and 11th stands another "green" building, the Helena - a 580-unit rental development built by the Durst Organization and Rose Associates.

The allure of the area is "your urban, traditional New York experience with lots of smaller retail use and a thriving restaurant and arts scene," says Daniel Kaplan, principal with FXFOWLE, the architect for both developments.

"It's so much different between 57th and 42nd Street than it was five years ago," says Dermot Co. principal Stephen Benjamin. "This is really the last piece of development that hasn't been completed - that 10th, 11th, 12th avenue area over by the river."

As Atelier buyer Miller says: "This area seems to be getting really built up now. It seems to be the new up-and-coming hot spot."


Copyright 2006 NYP Holdings, Inc.

[pianoman11686]

New York's Newest Suburb

BY GABRIELLE BIRKNER - Staff Reporter of the Sun

June 12, 2006

URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/34220

Welcome to "TriBurBia."

That's what the former artists enclave known as TriBeCa is now called by the young families rapidly putting down roots in the neighborhood.

Baby buggies crowd recently lonely sidewalks, nursery schools are fielding a record number of applications, and a slew of new businesses catering to the under-5 set are capitalizing on TriBeCa's transformation into family-land.

Less than five years ago, after the attacks of September 11, 2001, the Triangle Below Canal just north of the World Trade Center was uninhabitable. Lower Manhattan's future looked so bleak that a state agency gave away $500 a month for up to two years to people willing to move downtown.

These days, $500 won't put a dent in the rent. The neighborhood now boasts the city's priciest apartments and is establishing itself as New York's most family-friendly neighborhood amid the proliferation of converted residential lofts.

"Our secret is out," a 39-year-old TriBeCa resident, Karie Parker Davidson, said. "There used to be nobody on the sidewalks, and you knew absolutely everyone in the neighborhood. Now, there are tons of strollers, but chances are you still know everyone." Ms. Parker Davidson, an attorney who moved with her husband to the neighborhood in 1991, has two daughters, ages 4 and 6.

"It's starting to feel a little crowded," Ms. Parker Davidson said. "The economics are different; the demographics are different. People here have tried to maintain that downtown, artsy feel, but you can't have an edgy, artistic neighborhood without artists."

Still, it is the enclave's perceived intimacy and the stellar reputation of Public School 234 that convinced a father of 5- and 2-year-old boys, Daniel Gluck, to head downtown.

"You go into a store, and say, 'Hi Bill' or 'Hi Mary,'" Mr.Gluck, 38, the founder of the Museum of Sex, said. "It's not that it feels just like the suburbs, but there is a sense of community that you don't get on the Upper East Side, or even the Upper West Side."

U.S. Census data from 2000 shows fewer than 35,000 Manhattan residents lived below Canal Street. While toxic fumes and debris forced some area residents from their homes for weeks and months after September 11, Lower Manhattan's population has since soared past 50,000, according to the chairwoman of the area's Community Board 8, Julie Menin.

The influx of families is breeding a new generation of schools and family friendly businesses, and many more are anticipated as six new luxury condominiums open in the next few years.

A 23-year TriBeCa resident who is a local history columnist, Oliver Allen, said he never would have predicted TriBeCa's fashionable popularity and abundant wealth. Mr. Allen writes about neighborhood history for the Tribeca Trib and is the author of the 1999 book "Tales of Old Tribeca: An illustrated history of New York'sTriangle Below Canal Street."

"When we moved to the area, we thought it would always be a little unusual, a little peculiar, not upscale in any way," he said. "Boy were we fooled."

A ranking from Forbes magazine shows median home sales topping $1.8 million and $1.6 million in TriBeCa's 10013 and 10007 zip codes. The high prices aren't an impediment to young families enjoying inheritances, Wall Street salaries, and real estate riches.

"Even with all the money that's coming down here, the people have made a conscious choice to get away from some of the stuff going on uptown - the social ambitiousness," an Upper East Side native who moved to TriBeCa in November 2001, Catherine Greenman, said. "They want a tighter sense of community. It is in danger of getting more crowded but, hopefully, that feeling and that intention will remain."

While social ambitions may dissipate south of Canal Street, preschool competition only heats up in a neighborhood with few options. Ms. Greenman, a 39-year-old writer and mother of two sons, ages 4 and 2, said she was asked to write three recommendations for would-be students of TriBeCa preschools.

Neighborhood growth has forced P.S. 234, which is now building an annex, to operate at more than 120% capacity, closing a computer lab to accommodate the overflow and shutting its prekindergarten program.

The increasingly competitive atmosphere for preschool is a relatively new phenomenon in the neighborhood, the founder and head of Washington Market School, Ronnie Moskowitz, said.

"It became more of a concerted effort about five years ago," Ms. Moskowitz said, reflecting on the 30 years since she opened a school in her TriBeCa loft. Washington Market now serves more than 300 students in two neighborhood locations.

With the classes full at the neighborhood's existing preschools, the Montessori School of Manhattan opened three years ago with 22 students. This fall, the Beach Street nursery school will reach its cap of 250 students. It is turning away 90% of applicants, the head of school, Bridie Gauthier, said.

"I don't see it dying down anytime soon," she said, predicting that the neighborhood's population would continue to grow for at least another 15 years. To meet that demand, Ms. Gauthier said the school - where annual tuition ranges from $10,000 to $20,000 - plans a second Lower Manhattan location in September 2007.

For older children, the for-profit Claremont Preparatory School opened on Broad Street last year. Enrollment at the school is expected to double to 120 students next fall, the incoming headmaster, Irwin Shlachter, said.

Another yardstick of TriBeCa's baby boom is the influx of young family-friendly businesses. An indoor activities center for young children and their parents, "miniMasters," opened in April with classes including motherbaby Pilates, art, ballet, and Suzuki-method violin and piano lessons. Parents can get manicures, pedicures, and massages while their children play.

"It's a wonderful place to hang out with other mothers," a TriBeCa resident with a 2-year-old daughter, Stacy Cadolini, said. "It's a great networking environment."

Ms. Cadolini said an indoor play space is a delightful departure from the crowded Washington Market Park along the West Side Highway. "It's so busy all the time," she said. "You can't go there during certain hours because it's so crowded."

The neighborhood's demographic shift also means earlier crowds at Roc, the Duane Street Italian restaurant that Ms. Cadolini and her husband, Rocco, own. "At first everyone was single, and now it seems they've all gotten married and had children," she said.

Families are the core clientele of the Soda Shop, an old-fashioned milkshake and sandwich shop that opened last fall on Chambers Street. "The number of pregnant women you see - it's unbelievable," an owner of the Soda Shop, Craig Bero, said. "It's a real community down here."

Mr. Bero said he hopes the Soda Shop will be a first-date place for TriBeCa's youngsters when they hit their teens. For now, he's creating a tree house-themed room for children's birthday parties that will include a cupcake bar, a pinball machine, and a bevy of vintage toys.

"Living here - it's almost as if you bought a house in a new, family-friendly development in the suburbs," the owner of TriBeCa Girls clothing store, Bryn Asen, said. "There are not a lot of single people, and there aren't many older people." Ms. Asen and her husband, Robert, opened the store ago on Duane Street to serve the proliferation of young "TriBurBans."

While it's a sure boon for business, the rapid growth is met with ambivalence among old-timers who want to preserve TriBeCa as a lightly populated haven. The neighborhood's crowded Food Emporium grocery store will soon compete with a Whole Foods market slated to open alongside a Barnes & Noble bookstore at the base of a 420-unit condominium complex on Warren Street.

A TriBeCa resident since 2000, Isabel Rose, said the neighborhood "is heaven if you have kids."

"There's a total absence, right now, of pretension, of showiness, of gaudiness that's associated with uptown living," Ms. Rose, who is in her late 30s and has a 4-year-old daughter, said. "Outside the preschools here, you don't have the pileup of Town Cars that you might see in front of the 92nd Street Y."

She said she hopes the neighborhood can strike a balance between development and preservation. "I'm hoping we won't end up with three more Starbucks and a Victoria's Secret - the shops that have turned the Upper West Side into a mall," said Ms. Rose, author of the 2005 novel, "The J.A.P. Chronicles." "I hope that TriBeCa gets the amenities it needs while maintaining its individualistic spirit. I do hope it's not spoiled."

© 2006 The New York Sun, One SL, LLC. All rights reserved.

[clubBR]

what neighborhoods have rent for less than $1000 rent/month for a 1 bedroom apt.?
-Excluding the ghetto
an area that maintains its distance from manhattan (to keep prices low) but having ample transportation and its own commercial strip? Looking in Queens, Staten Island, or Manhattan itself.

[krulltime]

Washington Heights, Manhattan:


New Winds at an Island Outpost


http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/03/04/nyregion/domi600.jpg
Inside Los Guarinos bodega in Washington Heights.


By MANNY FERNANDEZ
March 4, 2007

STANDING behind the cramped counter of Los Guarinos, his bodega in Washington Heights, Joel Olivo deals not in big money but in small change. Jolly Ranchers candies, at a nickel apiece, are among his biggest sellers. Los Guarinos also sells cold beer and cigarettes, but on most days it is sweetness that prevails there. Neighborhood children ask for chocolate bars, and an arcade game in the corner fills the bodega with an electronic lullaby.

In Mr. Olivo’s establishment, in a modest storefront on Amsterdam Avenue near 161st Street, gambling is discouraged. Yet there is a running bet in the store that is a sign of changing times in this neighborhood: How many years will it take for Dominicans, who have dominated Washington Heights for decades, to become the minority there, and for whites to become the new majority?

Some of Mr. Olivo’s customers and friends say five years. Others predict seven. “I say 10 years,” Mr. Olivo said.

This is not your ordinary gentrification story. Washington Heights, the densely developed square mile that extends from 155th Street to roughly Dyckman Street, and from river to river, is to Dominicans what Harlem has been to blacks: a cultural capital with deep symbolic meaning. But over the past few years, this neighborhood of five- and six-story prewar apartment buildings has grown wealthier, hipper and better educated.

As the neighborhood has changed, a growing number of its Dominicans have moved to University Heights, Morris Heights and other neighborhoods in the west Bronx; some have left the city altogether. The wager at Los Guarinos is a lighthearted take not only on this exodus, but also on the questions it raises about the future of Washington Heights as a working-class Dominican stronghold.

The Dominican migration, powered by rising rents and other costs, is scattering families and friends who lived in the neighborhood for generations. This reshuffling is also fueling an uptown real estate boom, widening the gap between rich and poor, and realigning Dominican political power in the city. The shifts have even inspired an Off Broadway musical.

Mr. Olivo is confident about his prediction as to the neighborhood’s future. “I know I’ll win,” he said, “because everyone is moving.” But he does not believe that he will be around to collect. “The rent,” he explained, “will kick me out.”

•

Washington Heights has welcomed immigrants for a century. The Irish arrived in the early 1900s. European Jews, among them the family of Henry Kissinger, flocked there to escape the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s, around the time that affluent African-Americans like the jazz musician Count Basie migrated up from Harlem. By the 1950s and 1960s, so many Greeks lived in Washington Heights that the neighborhood was known as the Astoria of Manhattan. Even as that label gained currency, Cubans and Puerto Ricans were beginning to move in.

The ’80s and the ’90s, however, belonged to the Dominicans.

Bremilde Ramos, a 29-year-old waitress with dark hair and a bright smile, remembers the summers: old men playing dominoes on tables on the sidewalk, the packed streets transformed into playgrounds. She also remembers the scary times, like the day in 1999 when a man was shot and killed inside her building on West 162nd Street. And she remembers that one apartment operated as a makeshift brothel.

Yet Ms. Ramos, who, like thousands of her fellow Dominicans, immigrated to Washington Heights with her family as a child, also recalls the vibrancy amid the grime. “You felt like you were in your own,” she said. “This was your own little country, you know, so many Hispanics were around.”

New York has many Hispanic enclaves, but only in Washington Heights did the size, density and visibility of the Latino population create a kind of sixth borough. From this high perch, visitors often wonder if they have accidentally stumbled into the 31st province of the Dominican Republic.

Those visitors can pass a barbershop on 181st Street and see a customer who happens to be the nephew of Joaquín Balaguer, a former president of the Dominican Republic. They can find not only Dominican merchants, but also Dominican doctors and Dominican lawyers. The red, white and blue Dominican flag flies from fire escapes, streetlights, even Pepsi trucks.

One morning in 2004, the local streets erupted with noisy political debate as thousands of voters cast their ballots for president. But the focus was not on Bush and Kerry. It was on Mejía and Fernández, candidates for the Dominican presidency. The vote represented the first time that Dominicans living abroad could vote in a Dominican presidential election.


‘Rich Folks and Hipsters’


The recent transformation of Washington Heights is reflected not only on the streets but also on the stage. “In the Heights,” a charming little musical that opened last month at 37 Arts, on West 37th Street near 10th Avenue, offers a snapshot of a neighborhood in flux. “When this whole city is rich folks and hipsters,” a bodega owner wonders, “who’s going to miss this raggedy little business?” The owner of a hair salon announces that she is moving her shop to the Bronx, where rents are cheaper.

When another character learns that the bodega is shutting for good, he screams: “This is the end of an era!” The line is intended as a joke, but seven miles north of the theater, in the shops and restaurants of Washington Heights, the words resonate less cheerfully.

Signs of change, many small but telling, fill the streets. You can still get a crispy chicken empanada for $1 at 181st Street and Audubon Avenue, where Jose Castillo has been selling them from a pushcart for nearly a decade, but you can also buy an $8 goat cheese tartine a half-mile away at In Vino Veritas, on St. Nicholas Avenue. While some tenants still pay $600 a month for a one-bedroom apartment, others pay triple that.

In a sense, the neighborhood is becoming two neighborhoods, even down to its name. Old-timers call it the Heights; newcomers, particularly those who log onto www.washington-heights.us, refer to Washington Heights and its northern neighbor Inwood as WaHI, in a kind of SoHo-speak.

The corner of 181st Street and Audubon Avenue still bustles noon to night with flashes of rapid-fire Spanish conversations and bursts of merengue blaring from passing cars. But the signs of change are increasingly visible. New residents can enjoy live jazz Thursday nights at Plum Pomidor on Broadway. They can visit the Starbucks on 181st Street. At the elegant Hispaniola restaurant a few doors down from Starbucks, they can dine on miso butterfish with steamed rice for $28.

Ms. Ramos, the waitress, sees fewer Dominican mom-and-pop stores and more chain stores. Mr. Olivo can now count among his Dominican customers six people who moved to the Bronx. And when Ms. Ramos visits her mother’s building on 162nd Street, she notices more non-Hispanic white faces. Her best friend, who used to live on the same floor, has moved to the Bronx. Others have migrated to Florida.

“The neighborhood was one way, and now you look and you don’t know anybody,” Ms. Ramos said. “Everybody’s gone.”

A new set of census-based numbers, prepared by the Center for Latin American, Caribbean and Latino Studies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, illustrates the neighborhood’s gradual change, while offering signs that the Dominican presence remains strong.

From 1990 to 2000, the Dominican population in Washington Heights and Inwood soared, from about 88,000 to nearly 117,000. But in the following five years their numbers dropped slightly, to fewer than 113,000. During those same five years, the total number of Latinos in the area also fell, from about 165,000 to 155,000, while the number of non-Hispanic whites increased from fewer than 29,000 to more than 30,000.

Laird Bergad, the center’s director, described the decrease of Dominicans as statistically insignificant, possibly a reflection of a small drop in the area’s overall population. Dominicans, in fact, increased as a percentage of the total population in Washington Heights and Inwood, from 43 percent in 1990 to 53 percent in 2005.

What the census figures do clearly show, however, is a sharp decline in the number of foreign-born Dominicans in the area. In 1990, 89 percent of Dominicans in Washington Heights and Inwood between 15 and 44 years old had been born in the Dominican Republic. Ten years later, that figure was down to 78 percent. In 2005, it was 67 percent.

“This is unmistakable evidence that immigration has slowed,” Professor Bergad said, pointing out that this trend casts a shadow on one of the most important roles of Washington Heights — as Dominicans’ main portal into New York. However, with the area buffeted by that shift and by the influx of wealthier residents and the migration of Dominicans to the Bronx and elsewhere, it is hard to surmise what the future face of Washington Heights will be.

These trends come vividly to life in the experiences of Ms. Ramos. Nearly two years ago, she moved to the South Bronx with her boyfriend and her 8-year-old son. She would have preferred to stay in Washington Heights, but her new home, a two-bedroom brick town house at Boston Road and Third Avenue, cost only $416,000. Half a mile from the building where her mother still lives, a three-bedroom condo was recently on the market for $1 million.

Ms. Ramos likes her new home. The neighborhood is calm, and there’s a bus stop just two blocks away. But she misses her old place in the Heights, especially the way it used to be. “It’s very, very quiet,” she said of her old building now. “People just pass by you and you don’t even notice them because they keep to themselves.”


Bilingual Karaoke


Not everyone sees the changes in Washington Heights as a threat to its Dominican identity.

One person who is confident that the neighborhood will remain a Dominican stronghold for decades to come is Josephine Infante, executive director of the Hunts Point Economic Development Corporation in the Bronx. Although a growing number of Dominicans live in her borough, she notes that they are spread out, and that there is no concentration of Dominican stores, restaurants and hair salons.

“That’s why everyone goes to Washington Heights,” Ms. Infante said. “There’s an aroma. There’s something there that’s very special.”

Politically speaking, too, Dominicans in the Bronx are barely visible. Even though the Dominican population, at 213,000, is not too distant from the Puerto Rican population of 300,000, the borough has no elected Dominican officials.

“You have this kind of Puerto Rican political machine right now in the Bronx that’s pretty formidable,” said Angelo Falcón, president and founder of the National Institute for Latino Policy, a New York-based research and advocacy group.

But in the opinion of Adriano Espaillat, who has represented Washington Heights since he was elected the first Dominican member of the State Assembly in 1996, the Dominican political base in the neighborhood remains strong despite the exodus to the Bronx. In the 2005 Democratic primary, for instance, the turnout among registered Democrats in the average election district citywide was 15 percent; in Washington Heights it was roughly 24 percent.

“Our voting power in the Heights is very strong compared to some of the other emerging communities,” Mr. Espaillat said.

In income, however, Washington Heights looks very different from how it once looked. In 2005, the median household income for non-Hispanic whites in Washington Heights was $56,300. For Dominicans, it was just $32,800. In that same year, 35 percent of non-Hispanic white households earned $75,000 to $200,000, compared with just 12 percent of Dominican households.

“The old question of class is still present,” Professor Bergad said, “and nothing highlights that better than this question of income distribution.”

Perhaps surprisingly, these disparities do not appear to be stirring tensions between Dominicans and whites. The sidewalk menu at L’Fonda restaurant on Amsterdam Avenue, for example, which used to be entirely in Spanish, now lists some items in Spanish (“salcocho”) on one side and in English on the other side (“Dominican-style soup”). At Coogan’s, a restaurant and bar on Broadway at 169th Street, Tuesday and Saturday nights feature bilingual karaoke.

Coogan’s, in fact, has become something of a bridge between the two sides. Owned by a pair of gregarious Irish-Americans, David Hunt and Peter Walsh, the bar is a gathering spot for politicians and even sponsors an annual race called the Salsa, Blues and Shamrocks 5K Run, which this year kicks off, rain or shine, at 9 this morning.


Battling the Landlords


But good will doesn’t extend to every corner of the neighborhood, especially when most of its 200,000 residents are renters and relations between tenants and landlords are increasingly strained.

Raysa Castillo, a lawyer who represents many Washington Heights tenants in housing court, says, as do many housing activists and community leaders, that some landlords make cosmetic improvements to their buildings to justify rent increases, then try to evict those unable to pay. The advocates also say some landlords falsely accuse tenants of violating leases, or drive out tenants by letting their apartments deteriorate. In response, Roberta Bernstein, president of the Small Property Owners of New York, an advocacy group, said that building owners who go to the trouble and expense of taking tenants to court often do so for legitimate reasons. “If they’re dragging tenants into court, it’s because they’re not paying rent,” said Mrs. Bernstein, whose group includes a number of Washington Heights landlords. “I won’t deny that there’s some bad owners, but there’s also some bad tenants.”

Nevertheless, Ms. Castillo finds the broad housing picture, typical of modern gentrification, to be disheartening. “We are experiencing something totally different than what was experienced by the Greeks, Irish, Cubans and Puerto Ricans who were here,” she said. “The majority of our folks are not leaving because they’re doing better. The majority are leaving because they cannot afford rent.”

In 2004, for instance, more than 15,000 eviction notices were filed in housing court for tenants in Washington Heights and its northern and southern neighbors, Inwood and Hamilton Heights, said Mr. Espaillat, the assemblyman. The next year, he said, the number climbed to more than 19,000.

Ms. Castillo, who lives on Cabrini Boulevard at 187th Street, has seen such economic struggles firsthand. The buildings in the few blocks around her home were once full of blue-collar Dominicans, she said, but many of those neighbors have left in search of cheaper housing. As for the Dominican families who remain, she said she knew precisely who they are and where they live.

How could she know all those names and locations? Because she can count those who remain on one hand. Five.


http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/03/04/nyregion/domi2650.jpg
The window of Jossy's Photo Studio.


Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

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Preaching the Gospel of Real Estate

by Dana Rubinstein | April 16, 2008

http://observer.cast.advomatic.com/files/imagecache/vertical/files/HillsideAve-CanterosArch.jpg

A Washington Heights church has divined the gospel of real estate, selling a portion of its land to a developer, who, in turn, will help build a new church three times the size of the old, dilapidated one.

Of course, the developer gets something out of this, too – in this case, the land on which to build a 16-story residential high rise with 75 units; 20 percent of which will be affordable housing.

Rocky Mountain Development LLC is now in contract to buy the land from Rocky Mount Baptist Church in Washington Heights for approximately $6 million. That’s a 4,286 percent appreciation since 1980, when the church bought the spot for $140,000.

“We had no idea our church was worth that kind of money,” said Rev. Eugene Hudson in a statement. “So when the surveyor told me the news, I was elated, ecstatic, and almost speechless…I really thanked the Lord for that. He must want us to continue to do our good works.”

As part of the terms of the contract, the developers will replace the existing 5,000-square-foot church with a 15,000-square-foot house of worship on the
same site, at 37-41 Hillside Avenue.

Even better, the new housing could prove a fertile ground for new congregants.

Construction should be completed in 2010.

Copyright 2008 The New York Observer.

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Streetscapes | Second Avenue at Eighth Street

1880s Features, Unveiled Again

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/08/17/realestate/17scap-600.jpg
Left: Byron Collection, Museum of the City of New York. Right: Ruby Washington/The New York Times

ENDURING GIFTS The German Dispensary and adjacent library on Second Avenue near East Eighth Street, in 1899, left, and as they look today, right, were founded by Anna Ottendorfer and her husband, Oswald.

By CHRISTOPHER GRAY (http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=CHRISTOPHER GRAY&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=CHRISTOPHER GRAY&inline=nyt-per)
Published: August 15, 2008

FOR most of the last half-century, the striking Victorian interior of the German Dispensary, built in 1884 at 137 Second Avenue, near East Eighth Street, was neglected and forlorn. Now, the rich red-brick-and-terra-cotta building has a new owner, and work is under way on uncovering its unusual decoration from 50 years of entombment.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/08/15/realestate/17scap.1-190.jpg Kings Notable New Yorkers/Office for Metropolitan History
The Ottendorfers were philanthropists and owned the influential German- American newspaper New-Yorker Staats-Zeitung in the 19th century.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/08/15/realestate/17scap.2-500.jpgRuby Washington/The New York Times
The sculptures on the dispensary’s exterior include portrait busts of medical and scientific pioneers.

Like the branch library next door, the Second Avenue building of the German Dispensary was the gift of Anna and Oswald Ottendorfer, who ran the German newspaper New-Yorker Staats-Zeitung. That journal had great influence in Little Germany, on the Lower East Side around First and Second Avenues below 14th Street. The 1886 edition of Appleton’s Dictionary of New York described an area in which “lager-beer shops are numerous, and nearly all the signs are of German names.”

The dispensary had been founded in 1857 and evolved into what is now Lenox Hill Hospital, at 77th Street and Park Avenue.

In the mid-19th century, charitable institutions flourished and dispensaries met the needs of walk-in patients who did not have regular doctors.

There were hospitals, orphanages and similar institutions for various nationalities and religions, among them Norwegians, French, Swiss, Italians, Jews, Presbyterians and Baptists.

Of dispensaries, New York had about a dozen, including the Good-Samaritan, DeMilt, Northeastern, Northern, Harlem (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/classifieds/realestate/locations/newyork/newyorkcity/manhattan/?inline=nyt-geo), Trinity Church and Eclectic Dispensaries. The Germans had a strong presence, and more than one dedicated facility in the area: just a few blocks away, at 78 Seventh Street, there was one called the German Poliklinik.

Mrs. Ottendorfer was particularly interested in the Second Avenue project and picked the architect herself: William Schickel, who trained in Germany and came to the United States in the 1870s. He worked for Richard Morris Hunt before embarking on his own career, eventually becoming the top designer for the city’s Germans.

Mrs. Ottendorfer’s gift opened in 1884. Though well received by the German community, it did not win over a critic for the Real Estate Record & Guide, who described an “entirely commonplace” building in a “Germanized renaissance” style, and singled out the porch as “very unschooled and uncouth.” But the writer, who was unidentified, did praise the “charm and precision of the color” of the terra cotta.

The three-story building, practically incandescent in color, carries on its portico deeply modeled portrait busts of medical and scientific pioneers like Hippocrates, who gave his name to the medical oath, and Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine. Just visible in the recesses is the name Löher, most likely a reference to Alois Loeher, a well-known sculptor of the period.

The frieze of busts at the top of the building is harder to see, but looks to be by the same hand: William Harvey, English physiologist; Carl von Linne (also known as Carl Linnaeus), Swedish botanist; Alexander von Humboldt, German scientist; Antoine Lavoisier, French chemist; and Christoph Hufeland, German physician. Photographs of some of the sculptures are posted at http://gammablog.com/tag/stuyvesant-polyclinic (http://gammablog.com/tag/stuyvesant-polyclinic)/.

This was an early period for terra cotta, and there is a fresh innocence to the vigorous, deep carving, quite different from such work in later years, which often looked routine.

The 1888 Charity Directory said the German Dispensary had treated 28,000 patients in the prior year.

By 1905 the dispensary had moved out to a new building on the Upper East Side and sold its old building to the German Poliklinik. Both institutions changed their names during World War I, the Poliklinik to Stuyvesant Polyclinic.

By the 1960s the Germans had been replaced by a younger, quite different generation. Dr. Arnold Bernstein, the institution’s chief psychologist, told The New York Times in 1961 that he treated actors, poets, painters and writers, for up to $1.50 per visit. Most of “these infantile, immature personalities,” the doctor said, have “a very sincere desire to do something useful and creative.”

In more recent years — until its sale last year — the old dispensary building was part of Cabrini Medical Center. Although hospitals are notoriously hard on historic architecture, the interior of the Schickel building was remarkably intact, if run-down, with intricate stairway ironwork and door enframements, red marble wainscoting and a highly colored tile floor. Views of these are posted at http://curbed.com (http://curbed.com/) (search the site for Stuyvesant Polyclinic).

Now the architect David Mayerfeld is working on an alteration for a future occupant, which he describes only as “a think-tank sort of thing, that works on business problems.”

He plans to strip the paint from the intricate ironwork stairway railings and columns, and will have to add a sprinkler system throughout to retain the open stair hall. He says that removing half a century of dropped ceilings and tacked-on flooring has been a process of discovery, as bits of tile, tin ceiling and other finishes suddenly appear.

E-mail: streetscapes@nytimes.com

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Copyright 2008 (http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html) The New York Times Company (http://www.nytco.com/)

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Living In | Manhattanville

At Harlem’s Heart, an Enigmatic Neighborhood

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/08/17/realestate/17living-600.jpg Andrew Henderson/The New York Times
WITH PARKING Fairway, tucked under the viaduct at 131st Street, is one attraction of Manhattanville. These days, some residents are disquieted by Columbia University’s plans to absorb a chunk of the area into its campus. More Photos > (http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/08/14/realestate/20080817LIVINGIN_index.html)

By DEBORAH BALDWIN
Published: August 15, 2008

STEP off the elevated subway at the center of Manhattanville and you may wonder if there’s really a there there. The view from the station above 125th Street and Broadway can be disorienting: no little shops and bodegas to say, “This is it.” What you see instead are warehouses, bus depots and factories, as well as unmarked towers and a crosshatch of diagonal streets more reminiscent of the West Village. Yet there’s something slightly magical about the way hills rise up around the area. A recent group exhibition of photographs dedicated to Manhattanville characterized its haunting mix of low-lying back streets, vaulted overpasses, vintage churches and riverfront as “strange, unresolved or unsettling.”

Multimedia

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No wonder few people agree on its future — or even, for that matter, whether it exists in the first place. “I’ve considered the whole area Harlem (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/classifieds/realestate/locations/newyork/newyorkcity/manhattan/?inline=nyt-geo),” said Sarah Martin, who has lived in the Grant Houses complex in Manhattanville since 1957, voicing the dismissive sentiment of some longtime residents.

Others say you hear the name these days mainly because it’s attached to the controversial plan by Columbia University (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/c/columbia_university/index.html?inline=nyt-org) to transform 17 acres of Manhattanville into an extended campus.

But there is a there there, insists Eric K. Washington, the author of “Manhattanville: Old Heart of West Harlem.”

“It’s not a neighborhood that you walk through and all of a sudden you’ve stepped into a Jane Austen (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/a/jane_austen/index.html?inline=nyt-per) novel,” Mr. Washington said. “But it does have a quality of intrigue. It seems to whisper to you, ‘Boy, have I got stories.’ ”

He described how it was incorporated as a village in 1806, straddling two thoroughfares now known as Broadway and 125th, its streets laid out old-style, pregrid. Some east-west streets still hold onto names like Tiemann Place — “a real cabbie-stumper,” said Mr. Washington, who lived on it for 20 years.

The 2000 census counted roughly 39,000 residents, 51 percent Hispanic or Latino (of any race), 32 percent non-Hispanic black and 10 percent white.

Many more people simply pass through, to shop at the sprawling Fairway supermarket on West 131st, line up with the crowds at Dinosaur-Bar-B-Que on 12th Avenue, and rubberneck at the film crews that set up under the arches of the Riverside Drive overpass.

With more warehouses than town houses, it’s an area that real estate agents like to redraw as part of higher-profile neighborhoods, as if tugging on the corners of a Google map. Though upscale condominiums occasionally come onto the market, the pickings are slim, according to Sidney Whelan, a sales associate at Halstead Property.

You can hardly blame people for trying to live there, though. West Harlem Piers Park opened this summer near Fairway; there’s a bike path along the river and a strip of hot new watering holes just up 12th Avenue; and the Henry Hudson Parkway is right there, offering a quick route upstate. And where else would a doll factory face an auto-body shop, or a renovated commercial space called the Mink Building — rich people’s furs used to summer there — sit opposite a live poultry shop?


WHAT YOU’LL FIND
For an area so small — 122nd to 136th Streets, from the Hudson River to St. Nicholas and Manhattan (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/classifieds/realestate/locations/newyork/newyorkcity/manhattan/?inline=nyt-geo) Avenues — Manhattanville covers a lot of psychogeographical ground. West 125th, home to the Cotton Club, feels like Harlem, while the southwest corner is oriented toward Riverside Park, where “you can stand at the top of the hill and see the George Washington Bridge,” said Linda Mahoney, who lives on Tiemann Place.

Farther north, on Broadway, you pick up a Dominican flavor. “It’s always been polyglot, unlike Harlem,” Mr. Washington said. “It forces you to rethink where you’re visiting — it’s a bit more complex.”

Today’s multiethnic mosaic includes Latinos who don’t speak Spanish and Middle Easterners who do, said Jordi Reyes-Montblanc, a member of the local community board who has lived on West 136th since 1964. Holding it together, he says, is not only tolerance but also the residual glue that brought the community together in the 1990s to fight a common enemy: the drug lords who ruled northern Manhattanville’s streets.

By 2005, the dealers retreated indoors, he said. He credits not only a police crackdown but also newcomers determined to make the area their home. One of them was Judith Matloff, who lives a few blocks north of Manhattanville and has written a pungent memoir, “Home Girl,” about her family’s 2000 purchase of a dilapidated house on a block then ruled by Dominican dealers.

Ms. Matloff paused during a recent walk around the area to stare at movers unloading a mattress — a once-popular way to transfer cocaine, she noted. Then she rallied, heading toward Broadway and its signs of a gradual upswing. “Ray’s Wines and Liquors is having wine tastings,” she said wryly. “Gallo tastings — behind bulletproof glass.”

Critics of Columbia’s plans say these signs of revitalization seem natural and organic, in contrast to the university’s buy-and-hold approach. “Even before a shovel has been dropped in the ground, the expansion has caused disruption and a sense of impending loss,” said Tom DeMott of the Coalition to Preserve Community.

Robert Kasdin, Columbia’s senior executive vice president, argued that rather than disrupt the area, redevelopment would improve its infrastructure. He said the university had taken steps to help preserve and develop housing.

There isn’t a vast stock right now; apart from plentiful student and public housing, inventory is negligible. But for those who qualify, the public housing comes in the form of “H.D.F.C. co-ops,” referring to the Housing Development Fund Corporation — some in stately prewar buildings.

Created after the landlord flight of the 1970s, when tenants bought their buildings from the city, these co-ops have buyer income restrictions and caps on sale prices.

Christa Myers, who lives in an H.D.F.C. building near Convent Avenue and 129th Street and is buying a two-bedroom apartment there, said she was drawn to the building because it was on a quiet block in “a neighborhood that is getting nicer and nicer.”

“I will say, having been raised in Harlem and seeing gentrification, I have mixed feelings,” Ms. Myers said. “I’m an alumna of Columbia, and I love my alma mater,” but the growth will take place “at the expense of some people.”


WHAT YOU’LL PAY
A condo in a former warehouse on St. Nicholas Avenue near West 123rd recently sold for more than $1 million. Such properties are relatively rare.

The going price for co-ops is about $700 a square foot, said Patty LaRocco, a Prudential Douglas Elliman senior vice president.

Bellmarc Realty is offering a 1,000-square-foot two-bedroom at 501 West 122nd at $750,000, and Willie Kathryn Suggs, the well-known Harlem broker, valued an apartment she will be listing on Riverside Drive, overlooking the Hudson, at $800 a square foot.

For those who qualify and do not mind purchase and sales curbs, H.D.F.C. co-ops often go for less than $100,000. (See nyc.gov/html/hpd/html/developers/til.shtml (http://nyc.gov/html/hpd/html/developers/til.shtml).)

Renters should expect to pay up to $2,500 a month for a two-bedroom two-bath apartment, and $1,900 to $2,100 for a one-bedroom, Mr. Whelan said.


THE SCHOOLS
At the Mott Hall School, serving Grades 4 through 8, 93.9 percent of eighth graders showed proficiency in English and 98 percent in math, versus 43 percent and 60 percent citywide. At Kipp Infinity Charter School, serving Grades 5 through 7, 98.5 percent of the seventh graders showed proficiency in English, and 100 percent in math. At the Kipp Star College Prep School, serving Grades 5 through 8, 54 percent of the eighth graders showed proficiency in English, 95.3 percent in math.

The High School for Mathematics, Science and Engineering at City College, which admits by test only, reported 2007 SAT averages of 576 in reading, 627 in math and 551 in writing, versus 441, 462 and 433 citywide.


WHAT TO DO
West Harlem Piers Park extends from West 125th to 132nd Street.
Fairway opened on West 131st Street in 1995. When asked why there, the owner, Howard Glickberg, said, “There aren’t many places in Manhattan where you can have 40,000 square feet of selling area and a parking lot also.” How true. Don’t miss the meat section, which fills an entire refrigerated room.

Just north on 12th Avenue are the Hudson River Cafe at West 133rd Street and a restaurant row at West 135th.


THE COMMUTE
Midtown is a quick subway ride from the 1, 2 and 3 stop at 125th and Broadway. Switch to the express at 96th; you’ll get there in 15 minutes.


THE HISTORY
In the early 1800s, Manhattanville was a port village with a crooked main drag called Bloomingdale Road. In the early 1900s, Riverside Drive Viaduct went up, along with a subway line held aloft by Eiffel Tower-like arches, and the village became part of the city. The New York Times bemoaned the changes. “Quaint Landmarks in Manhattanville Passing Away for Modern Improvements,” read a headline in 1912.

[URL]http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/17/realestate/17livi.html?pagewanted=1&ref=realestate

Copyright 2008 (http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html) The New York Times Company (http://www.nytco.com/)

[brianac]

Streetscapes | 532-538 Madison Avenue

Four Modest Neighbors and How They Fared

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/08/24/realestate/24scap-600.jpg Left: Culver Pictures. Right: Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times
THINGS CHANGE The quartet of high-stoop brownstones built in 1870 at the northwest corner of Madison Avenue and 54th Street — shown in 1914, left, and today, right — was in a fashionable area for a while, but commercial neighbors started to intrude.

By CHRISTOPHER GRAY (http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=CHRISTOPHER GRAY&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=CHRISTOPHER GRAY&inline=nyt-per)
Published: August 22, 2008

IN a city swamped by development, how bad are the chances for four little buildings on a prime Madison Avenue corner in Midtown? Well, maybe not all that grim, despite the big “for sale” sign on one, 534 Madison Avenue, built in 1870 as one of a quartet of brownstones at the northwest corner of 54th Street.


In 1870, John Sares, a builder, put up four high-stoop brownstone houses on that site, as development began to wash over the area. The houses cost $10,000 each to build; they were ostensibly designed by Mortimer C. Merritt, but they followed the tried-and-true formula for such structures so closely that the amount of designing they required is questionable.

The group faced Madison Avenue, which was emerging as a fashionable address. Nevertheless, Mr. Sares, like almost every other developer, built in the usual style of the day, even as it was generally derided. In 1869, for instance, The Real Estate Record and Guide bemoaned the city’s “same never-ending high stoops and gloomy brownstone fronts.”

The arrival of the Vanderbilt mansions on Fifth Avenue between 50th and 58th Streets in the 1880s cast a reflected glamour on Madison, but the Vanderbilts proved to be a transitory presence. After 1900, shops, hotels and crowds began to force householders north of 59th Street, and the four brownstones at Madison and 54th had a less idyllic setting.

Still, in 1910 the family of Washington E. Connor, a stockbroker, inhabited the corner building, No. 532, along with seven servants. It was around that time that rules against sidewalk encroachments got tighter — at least on the avenues, where automobiles needed more room — and stoops, window bays and other projections were stripped away.

The disturbance and cost of these alterations caused an instant migration of families; their houses were converted to shops and apartments for residents of much more modest means.

In 1928, a society woman, Sybil Sellar, opened a gown shop in the old Connor house, “a little jewel box,” she told The New York Times, with the walls and ceiling done in gold.

In 1930, the census taker recorded, at No. 538, the decorator Rose Cumming, 42. Born to an Australian sheep rancher, she lived in the brownstone with her sister Dorothy, 30, who had been a prominent silent film actress until 1929 but did not make the transition to talkies (perhaps because of her Australian accent).

In 1936, the Park Curiosity Shop took over No. 536, and the architects Charles N. and Selig Whinston redesigned the exterior “after the fashion of an old London curiosity shop,” according to The New York Times. Old photographs show slate peaked roofs and extensive half-timbering on the facade, although only its pointed roof gables remain.

In 1957, the restaurant chain Chock Full o’Nuts bought the former Connor house and built in its stead the existing trim, modernist seven-story building of swimming-pool blue brick and plate glass. This little gem was designed by Horace Ginsbern, one of the few architects practicing in the era to cut against the grain of absolute simplicity. In the 1950s, a time of humorless white and buff brick, his choice of blue was unusual.

Since 1980, the brownstone character of East Midtown, once quite evident, has become as a sand grain among boulders — 40-plus-story boulders, like the building at 520 Madison Avenue built in 1981 on the southwest corner of 54th. Its splayed lower floors make it look like an elephant’s foot. That wave of colossi all but wiped out the dinged-up little brownstones with oddball stores and funny walk-up apartments that once typified the area.

But, even much altered, the four little buildings on the 54th Street corner still capture some of the flavor of the older neighborhood — back when it was still a neighborhood.

The most exotic is No. 534, with the venerable Persian Shop, run by the Terzis family for decades. In the 1960s, the shop window was filled with intriguing artifacts like jewelry with secret compartments, intricate metalwork and mysteriously named “poison rings.” But although the shop still has its old-fashioned air and the original 1940s-era black glass storefront, Andrew Terzis says his stock is mostly modern jewelry now. “I have to focus on what sells,” he said.

The Terzis building has a “for sale” sign over the door; the asking price is $20 million. According to Mr. Terzis, “there’s been a lot of interest, but I can’t really discuss it now.”

So how has this little outpost of four small buildings survived? Well, the footprint of their entire site — 70 feet by 100 feet — is modest. The broker for 534 Madison Avenue is Paul Massey, president of Massey Knakal Realty Services, and he says the zoning for the site would theoretically allow a 10- or 15-story building. But difficulties with the small lot size make that improbable.

And it is even more improbable that four different owners would agree to sell, even over time. Evans Cyprus, who owns No. 536, the old Park Curiosity Shop building, says he likes Burger Heaven, the venerable lunch spot he owns at the address, right where it is. “Yeah,” he said, “people have made offers, but where can I get another place for a restaurant in Midtown?”

E-mail: streetscapes@nytimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/24/realestate/24scap.html?ref=realestate

Copyright 2008 (http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html) The New York Times Company (http://www.nytco.com/)

[brianac]

45 Grove Street

The Many Lives of a Village Dowager

By CHRISTOPHER GRAY (http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=CHRISTOPHER GRAY&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=CHRISTOPHER GRAY&inline=nyt-per)
Published: October 17, 2008

EVEN among the oddball buildings of the West Village, 45 Grove Street defies all typology: it is an 1871 apartment building created from an 1830 mansion.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/10/19/realestate/19streetscapes_190.jpg New York Historical Society
TALE OF SURVIVAL The structure at 45 Grove Street in the West Village was built in 1830 as a single-family home.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/10/16/realestate/19streetscapes2_190.jpg G. Paul Burnett/The New York Times
The building, at top in 1905 and today, has retained much of its Federal style and original character, including black marble fireplaces, below, and hardwood doors.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/10/16/realestate/19streetscapes3_650.jpgG. Paul Burnett/The New York Times

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/10/16/realestate/19streetscapes4_650.jpgG. Paul Burnett/The New York Times

A new owner is now uncovering the multilayered history of this remarkable structure, just off Bleecker Street, which has ties to both John Wilkes Booth and Hart Crane.

The house was built by Samuel Whittemore, a well-to-do manufacturer, and the census of 1830 records nine members of the Whittemore family, as well as two “free colored persons,” living there.

Though it now has four floors, it began life as a two-story structure. The surviving Federal-style lintels on the second floor windows and the rich, molded door surround are of that period. It is not clear whether the house was originally free-standing, but it is now sandwiched in between other structures.

Whittemore sold the house in 1851, and seven years later The New York Times carried an advertisement calling it “Whittemore House” and extolling it as a “first-class boarding house.”

Samuel K. Chester, an actor, lived there around the beginning of 1865. According to testimony from Chester published in The Times in May 1865, John Wilkes Booth had gone there to try to persuade Chester to join a “conspiracy to take over the government” and kidnap President Abraham Lincoln (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/l/abraham_lincoln/index.html?inline=nyt-per), but Chester declined. Booth assassinated the president in April.

Through the twists and turns of history, 45 Grove became the “Lincoln Home” for destitute soldiers and sailors later that year.

In 1871, Elisha Bloomer, a hatter, retained the architect Benjamin G. Wells for a most unusual alteration, adding two stories and converting the old Whittemore residence into an apartment house.

Instead of completely Victorianizing the structure, Wells duplicated the Federal-style lintels on the upper two floors, and carefully retained most of the interior details, at least on the first floor.

He also enlarged the windows on the first floor, perhaps for store or office use. The tenants in 1890 included a metals dealer and a barber, but in the 1910s the Village underwent a bohemian transformation.

In 1923, the writer Hart Crane lived on the second floor, struggling to eke out a living, and the 1930 census showed the building filled with artistic types, like the Russian-born Zelda Dorfman, a 24-year-old theatrical manager.

In 1937, as the Department of Buildings required the upgrading of old apartment houses, the owners of 45 Grove requested permission to retain the hardwood doors to the apartments on the first floor, “as these doors are highly ornamental.” They described the house as “one of the landmarks in the Greenwich Village section.” The department denied the request, asserting that metal doors were required. But the old wooden doors are still in place.

Somehow, 45 Grove has escaped both demolition and restoration; it has long had the slightly ruined quality that has almost vanished from the rest of the Village: loose wires hanging down from the fire escapes, and tin coverings over the main-floor windows’ wood trim dented and askew.

Inside, crusted paint swamps the old moldings, but the spectacular plasterwork may still leave a visitor gaping: long intact runs of intricately worked bead, reel, rosette and banded-reed decoration on the ceiling, and lovely three-part Federal over-door treatments, with swags in the center.

Just inside the front door is a sculpture niche from the Whittemore period, framed by deeply veined marble.

But there is Victoriana, too: a Minton-type tile floor in the vestibule and heavy molded doors on the outside.

An unusually delicate door assembly at the top of the stairs at the rear is peculiar for its out-of-the-way placement. It has an intricate fanlight at the top, fluted columns on the sides, and a carved or molded decorative meander, rosette and similar details. It appears to have been moved; if it was the original front door, Bloomer was either thrifty about using salvage or appreciative of the piece’s architectural value.

One tenant, Beverly Maher, a guitar instructor, has an apartment that is little changed, with the same detailing as in the lobby. In addition, she has two remarkable black marble fireplaces, one with Ionic columns, the other with an iron frieze of the Last Supper — perhaps these are from the 1871 renovation.

Grove Equities, a partnership, bought 45 Grove Street, which has 15 residential units and two commercial units, earlier this year, and Daniel Lavian, one of the partners, said that they didn’t quite realize what they had acquired.

They have uncovered the ground floor front window woodwork of 1871 — tinned up for at least several decades — and uncovered a crazy quilt of decayed columns, brackets and cornices.

“Our first plan was to just do the doorways,” he said, sounding like any renovator swamped by circumstance, “but then we saw all the intricate detail work, and we’re starting to see our numbers going up.”

E-mail: streetscapes@nytimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/19/realestate/19scap.html?ref=realestate

Copyright 2008 (http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html) The New York Times Company (http://www.nytco.com/)

[brianac]

A Tiny Enclave’s Changing Persona

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/11/02/realestate/02scap-600.jpg
Left, New York City Municipal Archives; Right, John Marshall Mantel for The New York Times
1940 At left, a view of Sutton Square overlooking the East River. The square's town houses are in the center of the photo. Originally brownstones, most had been rebuilt in the 1920s. MODERN DAY Houses on Sutton Square today, at right, are worth $10 million and up, and ownership often is veiled behind various corporate names.

By CHRISTOPHER GRAY (http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=CHRISTOPHER GRAY&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=CHRISTOPHER GRAY&inline=nyt-per)
Published: October 31, 2008

IF few people have heard of the East River enclave Sutton Place, then even fewer know about its tiny adjunct, Sutton Square, a set of six houses at the foot of East 58th Street. Rebuilt in the 1920s from a moldy set of 1880s brownstones, these town houses share a sweeping common garden with the houses on Sutton Place. Now an architectural question mark from the 1970s appears poised for resolution.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/multimedia/icons/video_icon.gif Video: Neighbors on the Neighborhood (http://gallery.me.com/jmmantel/100222) (Video Courtesy of John Marshall Mantel)


http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/11/02/realestate/02scap-2-650.jpg
John Marshall Mantel for The New York Times

Most of the brownstones in the riverfront block between 57th and 58th Streets on what was then Avenue A faced the avenue, but seven faced 58th Street before it dead-ended at the East River. The seven were 502 through 514 East 58th Street, by present numbering 4 through 16 Sutton Square.

At the beginning, these high-stoop brownstones were occupied by prosperous businessmen. In 1890, Albert Ludorff, who had a bottling business on 10th Avenue, lived at 508 East 58th (now part of 8 Sutton Square). But the row had a brush with bohemianism — the Ashcan painter Robert Henri lived at 512 East 58th Street (now 14 Sutton Square) in 1901.

In 1920, the real estate company Webb & Knapp bought the 57th to 58th Street block and worked out a plan to completely remake it and sell off the lots. A 50-year covenant created a large common garden out of the backyards; required that kitchens and laundries face the street, not the garden; and established an architectural review process for the expected new facades. The developers renamed this part of 58th Street Sutton Square.

The house at No. 4 Sutton Square was made over in 1921 for Henry Sprague, an inventor. The architect he hired designed a simple brick front with a large second-floor triple window topped by an exquisite oval arch. It was removed last month.

Next door was one of the most ingenious houses in New York or, rather, pair of houses. Joseph Chamberlain, a law professor, and his brother-in-law Edgar Stillman, a physician, together bought three of the old brownstones on the former East 58th Street, and their architect, Murphy & Dana, made the three into two: Nos. 6 and 8 Sutton Square. The architects employed the simple detailing by which old money tends to distinguish itself, reusing brick from the old building “so that an agreeable texture has been preserved,” according to The Architectural Record in 1922.

On the inside the architects made the buildings interlocking, to stagger the widths of the rooms. Thus No. 8 has, on its second floor, a music room 31 feet wide — but the flanking library of No. 6 is only 15 feet wide.

In the 1930 census the value of Chamberlain’s house was listed as $100,000.

Because Nos. 6 and 8 Sutton Square were made from three houses, there is no No. 10. Next door at No. 12 lived Dr. Kenneth Taylor, who had run military hospitals in Paris during World War I. He was the first to renovate on the square, in 1920; Delano & Aldrich designed him an elegant brick and limestone house in the neo-Georgian style.

At No. 14, Foster Kennedy, a doctor who had worked with the shell-shocked in World War I, left his old brownstone pretty much as is. The last house in the row, 16 Sutton Square, was purchased by Lillie Havemeyer, who also made few changes to the exterior.

As time went on, this little enclave changed gradually. In 1940, work on the East River Drive required Mrs. Havemeyer to move out while her house was demolished and rebuilt. Aristotle Onassis lived at 16 Sutton Square around 1950.

In 1963, the Sutton Square owners renewed the 1920 covenant for another 50 years, and in 1973 the investor Neil McConnell, owner of the adjacent Chamberlain and Taylor houses (Nos. 8 and 12), combined them on the inside. Current floor plans are posted on curbed.com (http://curbed.com/).

On the outside, his architect, Page Cross, created an unsettling hybrid.

He left the upper two stories of No. 8 intact, so it still matched its twin at No. 6 on those floors. But Mr. Cross rebuilt the plain brick lower floors of No. 8 to match the neo-Georgian Taylor house at No. 12, resulting in a kind of architectural puzzle.

Houses on Sutton Square are now worth $10 million and up, and ownership is veiled behind various corporate names. It appears that Michael Jeffries, the president of Abercrombie & Fitch, owns the Sprague house at No. 4 Sutton Square, and that Yue-Sai Kan, a television star in China, owns No. 6.

Bonnard Holdings recently bought Neil McConnell’s old houses, the conjoined pair at 8-12 Sutton Square; the Real Deal reports that the purchase occurred this year for $30 million. Gregory Hayes, a Connecticut (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/classifieds/realestate/locations/connecticut/?inline=nyt-geo) lawyer listed as president of Bonnard, would not describe pending work.

But Evan Blum, the founder of Irreplaceable Artifacts, says that he was asked to bid on salvage in the building, and that he is offering some of the exterior stonework in the new arrivals department at demolitiondepot.com (http://demolitiondepot.com/).

The plans show a more symmetrical, harmonious house, Mr. Blum said.

That would involve a major change to one or both buildings, promising an interesting time to come on Sutton Square.

E-mail: streetscapes@nytimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/02/realestate/02scap.html?ref=realestate

Copyright 2008 (http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html) The New York Times Company (http://www.nytco.com/)

[brianac]

Streetscapes | 1 Park Avenue

History Lessons by the Numbers

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/11/09/realestate/09scap-600.jpg Office for Metropolitan History
TWO NO. 1'S The Hansel-and-Gretel Gothic-style cottage on the corner of 34th Street, left, was the first to use the address No. 1 Park Avenue in the 1800s. The building was boarded up in 1953, right, and that same year was replaced with an apartment building, now known as 7 Park Avenue.

By CHRISTOPHER GRAY (http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=CHRISTOPHER GRAY&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=CHRISTOPHER GRAY&inline=nyt-per)
Published: November 7, 2008

REUBEN ROSE-REDWOOD has made a specialty of studying the street layout of New York and has now tackled a subject essentially ignored: how buildings in New York and elsewhere were numbered.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/11/07/realestate/09scap-2-500.jpgChester Higgins Jr./The New York Times
The current No. 1 Park Avenue is at 32nd Street.

An assistant professor at Texas A&M University (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/t/texas_a_and_m_university/index.html?inline=nyt-org), he devoted his Ph.D. thesis to the subject, going back to the British imposition of numbering in the 1770s to keep better tabs on the civilian population during the occupation of the city.

He also chronicles how directory publishers were the biggest backers of house numbering, often doing it themselves, and how the city established Fifth Avenue in 1838 as the dividing line between east and west numbering on the side streets.

House numbering is not just a bureaucratic footnote in the life of the city. One of Dr. Rose-Redwood’s cases is that of Martha Bacon, who in the 1920s fought a tenacious battle out of her peculiar Gothic house at 34th and Park Avenue — until the 1 in her No. 1 Park Avenue was taken away from her.

Park Avenue came into existence in the 1850s when the city built a landscaped mall over a deep railroad cut that ran through Murray Hill along Fourth Avenue.

The new Park Avenue designation began at the first of the malls, at 34th Street.

The broad boulevard attracted development, and in 1857, Margaret Ten Eyck built a Hansel-and-Gretel Gothic-style cottage at the northeast corner of 34th and Park. She appears to have been the wife of Peter Ten Eyck, a doctor who used the address 65 East 34th Street. At that point, street numbering on either side of Park Avenue was not yet firmly established.

In 1860, Mrs. Ten Eyck sold the house to Charles W. Kearney, a Washington Street paper dealer listed in the city directory at “E 34 c Fourth,” c being the abbreviation for corner. Later it was occupied by Augustus Berrian, a shipwright, who used the address 101 East 34th, and in the 1880s by Edward Keyes, a doctor and the first owner to use the address No. 1 Park Avenue.

In 1897 Martha and Robert Bacon, a partner at J. P. Morgan & Company, bought the house. The New York Times described it in 1905 as “embedded in vines” and looking “more the residence of an artist than of a millionaire financier.” The 1910 census found the Bacons there with four children and three servants, but Mr. Bacon died in 1919, and in 1920 the new widow was in the house all alone, except for nine servants.

In 1923, Henry Mandel, a developer, bought the east side of Fourth Avenue between 32nd and 33rd Streets, operating in the name of the “One Park Avenue Corporation.” He successfully lobbied the Board of Aldermen to extend Park Avenue to 32nd Street, which gave his building Mrs. Bacon’s number.

She joined with the Murray Hill and the Fifth Avenue Associations in petitioning the aldermen to rescind the name change, which they did by a vote of 62 to 3. But Mayor John F. Hylan vetoed the bill.

Mrs. Bacon continued her fight, and in January 1927, The Park Avenue Social Bulletin called the name change a “glaring piece of class legislation.” That November, the appellate division of the state Supreme Court struck down the change. Mr. Mandel’s new No. 1 Park Avenue was thus left with the humdrum 461-477 Fourth Avenue.

The court scorned the politics behind the change, noting that the number had been taken away for no real public purpose, but because the new corporation coveted it. Park Avenue, the court said, was named for the park in the middle, and there was no park south of 34th.

But in 1928, the developers again took the case to court, and this time Mrs. Bacon lost. An editorial in The New York Times decried the decision, saying it ran against “common decency and respect for ordinary human rights.” It endorsed a proposal to call the disputed section Park Avenue South, and suggested that a “graceful act” by the developer would be to adopt that address. But no such grace was forthcoming.

Mrs. Bacon surrendered, changing her listing in the Social Register to “Park Avenue at 34th.” A further indignity came in 1930, when an 18-story apartment house went up, surrounding her corner plot. She died 10 years later, at age 80.

A 1953 photo shows the Bacon residence boarded up like a dust bowl farmhouse. That year the gingerbread survivor was replaced with an apartment building, now known as 7 Park Avenue.

Park Avenue South came into being in 1959, but the name change would not have satisfied Mrs. Bacon: Park Avenue South begins at 32nd Street. She would have winced as she passed her nemesis, with her old address, One Park Avenue, carved over the doorway.

E-mail: streetscapes@nytimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/09/realestate/09scape.html?ref=realestate

Copyright 2008 (http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html) The New York Times Company (http://www.nytco.com/)

[brianac]

Streetscapes | West End Avenue

Homage to the Humdrum

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/11/21/realestate/23scapes-600.jpg
Photographs from The Museum of the City of New York except left; Librado Romero/The New York Times

ARCHITECTURAL STANDOUTS Much of West End Avenue is lined with post-1910 apartment buildings, including, left to right, No. 565, at the corner of 87th Street; the Umbria, at 82nd Street; No. 640, at 91st Street; and the Dallieu, at the corner of 101st Street.

By CHRISTOPHER GRAY (http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=CHRISTOPHER GRAY&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=CHRISTOPHER GRAY&inline=nyt-per)
Published: November 21, 2008

A NEIGHBORHOOD coalition, the West End Preservation Society, has proposed the designation of the entire stretch of West End Avenue from 70th to 107th Street as a historic district, with the support of the preservation group Landmark West.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/11/21/realestate/23scapes-3-650.jpgLibrado Romero/The New York Times
The building has a distinctive drive-through entrance.


http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/11/21/realestate/23scapes-2-650.jpgLibrado Romero/The New York Times
The 1913 Cleburne building, at 924 West End, rises at the northeast corner of 105th Street.

This comfortable boulevard, which epitomizes the West Side’s easygoing character, is lined with mostly humdrum apartment buildings of the 1910s and 1920s, but a handful stand well above the architectural mean.

West End evolved into an apartment street after 1910, when the first tall apartment buildings went up, mostly replacing the roomy brownstones that had sprung up in the 1880s. By the end of the 1920s, only isolated corners remained unimproved, and in a 1931 issue of The Saturday Review of Literature, Christopher Morley called West End “incomparably the most agreeable and convenient” of New York’s large streets, in part because of its unexceptional architecture, “just even bulks of masonry,” as he put it.

The avenue in the 70s is notable at 75th Street for Neville & Bagge’s richly colored Esplanade of 1916, a very competent urban palazzo, its warm orange brick facade richly festooned with balconies and relief sculpture. At 78th Street comes the rear of the magnificent Apthorp apartments, really a Broadway building.

The architect George F. Pelham Jr. struck an unusual note of modernism at the southwest corner of 80th. Built in 1936, the interior of 411 West End marked a departure from the apartments of the 1910s and 1920s: stepped-down living rooms, glass-enclosed tubs and highly colored tile bathrooms.

The bulk of the facade is typical of its period. It is the stainless steel icicle-like trim at the upper floors that makes it amusing to look at.

At the northwest corner of 82nd Street stands West End’s most architecturally singular apartment building, the Umbria, built in 1911 by Harry Schiff and designed by D. Everett Waid in light brick and terra cotta.

As with most of its cohort, Schiff gave the Umbria all the bells and whistles: wall safes, filtered water, cedar closets, a mail chute and central vacuum cleaning. The apartments, from 7 to 12 rooms, rented for $200 to $375 per month.

Another Depression-era apartment building stands out at 87th Street, the only full-blown Art Deco work on the avenue. Designed in 1936 for the developer Mose Goodman by H. I. Feldman, 565 West End had apartments as small as three rooms, marking a new era for the avenue, which had hitherto been mostly family-style. The striped orange and black brickwork on the first floor gives it a luscious chromatic presence.

A sleeper building is 640 West End, at the northeast corner of 91st, designed in 1912 by the veteran West Side architect Ralph Townsend for a syndicate of which he was a member. Its simple Renaissance styling and large windows in broad wall surfaces give it a dignity beyond the usual shoebox peppered with rectangular holes. This repose seems a minor touch until you see how few other architects achieved it, although it should be noted that Townsend had only two apartments per floor to work in.

The Dallieu, at the southeast corner of 101st Street, is one of George and Edward Blum’s exceptional designs, built for the Tishman family in 1913. It has lost its original windows, rich cornice and, recently, its intricate lobby doors — each disappearance a little tragedy — but its recessed brick joints and hypnotic patterns of masonry and terra-cotta decoration still make it one of the great apartment buildings of the West Side.

The Dallieu, like its brethren, served the prosperous — brokers, diamond importers and wholesalers. Of the 45 families recorded there by the 1920 census taker, 39 had live-in cooks.

The Blums’ frequent competitor, Gaetano Ajello, got a plum commission from the Paterno brothers, with his triplet 885-895-905 West End Avenue, flanking 103rd Street and built between 1913 and 1917. These are competent individually but imposing as a group, a comprehensive effort rare for New York.

The 1913 Cleburne, 924 West End, rises at the northeast corner of 105th. It is also by Harry Schiff, here working with Schwartz & Gross. The exterior and the lobby have an Arts and Crafts character, but what is most interesting is the great drive-through entrance, on the 105th Street side.

Does West End itself rise to historic-district quality? On the East Side, the certifiably famous Park Avenue has been included in historic districts only incidentally, and most of its length above 78th Street is unregulated.

Central Park South is not designated, nor the Grand Concourse. Perhaps the greatest claim to prominence West End Avenue can offer is that it is, as Mr. Morley said, supremely “discreet and undemonstrative.” If it becomes a historic district, it will perhaps be because it makes no fuss better than any other comparable street in New York.

E-mail: streetscapes@nytimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/realestate/23stre.html?scp=1&sq=WEst%20End%20Avenue%20&st=cse

Copyright 2008 (http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html) The New York Times Company (http://www.nytco.com/)

[Merry]

January 11, 2009
New York by the Numbers

Neighborhoods, Up Close and Personal

By SAM ROBERTS (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/sam_roberts/index.html?inline=nyt-per)

EVEN if the latest economic slump stunts the explosion of New York’s population before the end of the decade, you can count on the fact that the city’s proverbial changing neighborhoods will keep changing.

Detailed census figures released last month and analyzed for The New York Times by Andrew Beveridge, chairman of the sociology department at Queens College (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/q/queens_college/index.html?inline=nyt-org), reveal just how vividly many neighborhoods have changed since 2000.

Through 2007, more whites moved to Harlem.

More young children live in Lower Manhattan, the Upper West Side and the Upper East Side.

In Flatbush, 40 percent fewer residents lacked a high school diploma in 2007 than in 2000.

The rich got richer: In 2000, the richest neighborhood was the Upper East Side; in 2007, it was the bottom tip of Manhattan. The poorest, both years, was the South Bronx, which got even poorer.

The Rockaways registered the biggest percentage gain in population. Coney Island had the biggest loss.

The number of blacks in southern Staten Island grew by half; Elmhurst lost 1 in 3. Asians recorded the greatest gains in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, and Hispanics in Bay Ridge.

Among people who don’t speak English at home, the Upper East Side lost the largest share, while southern Staten Island gained the most.

The accompanying graphic (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/09/14/nyregion/thecity/20090111_thecity_census.html) shows other highlights of how each neighborhood has changed since 2000. The districts correspond to the community districts created by law in 1975; a few are combined because the data were released by the Census Bureau (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/c/census_bureau/index.html?inline=nyt-org) for areas of at least 100,000 in population. All percentages have been rounded off to the nearest whole number.


http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/01/11/nyregion/thecity/11map.large.jpg

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/nyregion/thecity/11intr.html

[Merry]

Room for the new, and the ‘creaky charm’ in Hudson Square

By Josh Rogers

Hudson Square is a neighborhood of contrasts. Bordered by a state highway and one of the most congested streets in the city, it’s also home to Holland Tunnel entrances, making it difficult for pedestrians to navigate. Yet it is increasingly becoming the choice destination of creative and new media firms.

Workers and residents often cite the lack of retail as a neighborhood drawback, yet it is also home to a diverse mix of small restaurants.

City Winery, a high end music venue and wine making club, opened in the neighborhood last year, but no-frills concert spaces like Jazz Gallery, S.O.B.’s and Don Hill’s are still able to carry on at a time when similar spaces in other Downtown neighborhoods have closed.

Ellen Baer, president of the new Hudson Square Business Improvement District, said she thinks there will always be room for the small shops and less expensive music spaces because of the mix of small and medium size retail spots.

“We are every bit as interested in the venues with the creaky chairs,” Baer said in an interview last week. “That is part of the charm of this neighborhood. We’ve got City Winery and we’ve got the Jazz Gallery.”

The local music scene has caught the attention of the College Music Journal, a nationally-based series which schedules concerts around New York City. C.M.J. began highlighting a neighborhood last year, directing its members to Lower East Side restaurants and other businesses with passes. At the end of next month, Hudson Square will be the featured neighborhood for the festival.

And the neighborhood also got a pharmacy two months ago. Even more noteworthy, Baer believes Hudson Square Pharmacy is the first store to use the neighborhood name.

“We wanted to make a mark in the new neighborhood, be a landmark, a pillar,” said Al Solman, owner of the drug and convenience store at Hudson and King Sts.

Solman also owns King’s Pharmacy in Tribeca and said he is glad he has more space to stock additional food and other items on Hudson St. because demand is high in the Square. Recently he solved a crisis at CBS Radio when a frantic ad employee came down in a desperate search for a Rubik’s Cube. “She said you make our dreams come true,” Solman said.

Baer said “if a store in 2009 thinks that having Soho as their designation is valuable, I’m hoping that by 2010 and 2011, they’ll think having Hudson Square has value to them. I understand that it’s a business… Yeah, I’d like to see those stores say Hudson Square, but I also understand it is incumbent on us to make that a valuable designation.”



http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_335/colorpers.jpg

The Hudson Square BID is beginning to work on ways
to solve the neighborhood’s traffic problems including
the area around the Holland Tunnel.



Once the center of the city’s printing district, the neighborhood has a mix of offices (many owned by Trinity Church), converted condos and small hotels. Baer said officially there are only a few hundred people living in the neighborhood but she knows that there are many people quietly living in buildings that are not zoned for residential uses and is quite certain the real number is much higher.

The neighborhood is home to architectural and creative companies, many media firms including Newsweek, WNYC Radio and Community Media, owners of The Villager and Downtown Express. Large firms like Edelman public relations and Corbis photography have also moved into the neighborhood. Development projects have slowed as they have throughout the city but work continues on the skyscraper being built by Donald Trump and partners. Though it is situated at Spring and Varick Sts., the condo-hotel will be called Trump Soho.

Baer and many say one of the biggest problems is traffic, and she admits one of the first steps to beginning to solve it will be a Band-Aid approach. Actually it’s much less an admission than it is the name for the first phase of the plan.

“The Band-Aid approach is: let’s just improve enforcement,” she said. “Let’s get some people out on the street who can communicate with one another about how traffic is being routed and moved.”

She said one of the BID’s duties is to work with all of the parties in charge of traffic — the First Precinct, the N.Y.P.D.’s traffic division, the Port Authority, which controls the tunnel, and the state and city Departments of Transportation.

Longer term, she and her staff of three will be working on things like improving the streetscape. Hudson Square’s side streets have many loading docks and blank street walls, making it uninviting to walk east or west. Baer noticed that often workers and residents on Hudson St. are not aware of stores on Varick Ss., and vice versa, and she thinks improving the look of the streets and sidewalks will begin to change that.

The BID will also be hiring a traffic consultant to develop new ideas and sift through existing proposals to improve the safety.

“I have 4 million ideas [that have been suggested] but I’m not a traffic expert,” she said. She said there will be many public meetings with Community Board 2 and others as the ideas are developed.

The BID will be able to sell bonds to help finance projects to change street patterns and perhaps add more plaza space, and will also look for federal transportation and environmental funds as well.

Baer is also beginning an effort to promote “sustainability” throughout the neighborhood. She says it’s a word that is used so much it is losing its meaning, but the effort will extend beyond green policies and will also encourage philanthropic initiatives — the sort of things that attract new firms and youn employees to an area.

“Whatever that new new thing is,” she said, “I hope it finds a home at Hudson Square.”

http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_335/roomforthenew.html


Some older articles about Hudson Square:

http://www.thevillager.com/villager_231/hudsonsquare/inkisnotdry.html

http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_282/hudsonsquare.html

Map from the Downtown Express article above:

http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_282/hudsonss.gif

[Merry]

Living In | Hudson Heights

An Aerie Straight Out of the Deco Era

By ELIZABETH A. HARRIS

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http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/10/18/realestate/18livi_600.jpg
HEIGHTS IS RIGHT The George Washington Bridge as seen from Castle Village, a five-building co-op complex
described as an “anchor” of a neighborhood with a distinct architectural appearance

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Castle Village

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Castle Village wall collapse 2005

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Hudson View Gardens

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Corner of 181st Street and Fort Washington Avenue

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Cloisters

More Photos > (http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/10/15/realestate/1018-livingin-slideshow_index.html)

LOOK down: The names of New York neighborhoods are not carved into the sidewalk. As an area begins to gentrify, a new label often pops up to match the rising property values. A southern piece of Harlem was recently rebranded SoHa, and Park Slope, Brooklyn, keeps creeping south into territory once known as Sunset Park.

Usually, these nicknames are the invention of brokers trying to sell the area’s new feel. But in Hudson Heights, which makes up the northwest corner of Washington Heights, a community group founded in 1993 to fight neighborhood decline claims the credit.

“The Hudson Heights Owners Coalition, H.H.O.C., came up with it,” said Simone Song, a principal broker at Simone Song Properties, “though the real estate brokers got blamed for it.”

Elizabeth Lorris Ritter, the owners group president, said, “We didn’t set out to change the name of the neighborhood, but we were careful in how we selected the name of the organization.” To try to give their neighborhood a boost, members lobbied city officials, invested in area parks, and organized events.

“It’s a phony name,” countered Andrew S. Dolkart, the director of Columbia University’s historic preservation program. “It was Fort Washington — that’s the historic name of the neighborhood.”

Whatever you want to call it, this microneighborhood has always had a look and feel that set it apart from the larger area in which it nestles. For one thing, there’s the architecture. The area was developed in the 1920s and 1930s, later than the rest of Washington Heights, so it has a significant concentration of Art Deco buildings.

The cultural makeup of Hudson Heights sets it apart as well. The larger neighborhood has an enormous concentration of Dominicans, while Hudson Heights is more diverse. According to figures from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, just over half of the population of Washington Heights and Inwood is Dominican; 62.9 percent are Hispanic.

Hudson Heights had an influx of Dominicans, Mr. Dolkart said, “but it didn’t become as heavily Dominican as areas to the south and to the east.”
According to him, the 1980s brought another wave to the area: “what I call refugees of the Upper West Side and Park Slope. Prices were relatively low compared to other areas in Manhattan.”

Though real estate prices have gone way up in the last 20 years, a dollar still takes you much further in Hudson Heights than it does downtown.
Steven Benini and his wife, Ana Rodriguez, who rented in Hudson Heights for 10 years, bought a two-bedroom last winter. He declined to say how much they had paid; these days, two-bedrooms generally start at $400,000.

“We can actually get eight people at our dining room table,” Mr. Benini said. “That’s not something you can normally do with a Manhattan apartment. And quite frankly, farther downtown, we would not have been able to afford it.”

This affordability pulls in a lot of young families with children — the neighborhood is full of strollers and toddlers — but it also attracts retirees.
Frank Garcia and his wife, Clare, both grew up in Washington Heights. After spending more than 35 years in New Jersey raising a family and three years in a rental at Peter Cooper Village, they’ve just moved back, settling in a one-bedroom co-op on West 190th Street, which they bought for $425,000.

Mr. Garcia cited the affordability as a factor in their return, but another is the area’s dynamism. It has always been a neighborhood of immigrants, he pointed out, so it’s always changing. Mr. Garcia, who is of Puerto Rican descent, and Mrs. Garcia, who is of Irish origin, say they also appreciate the diversity. “It’s New York,” was how she put it.

WHAT YOU’LL FIND

Geographically, Hudson Heights is set apart. The Hudson to the west is as clear a barrier as one could find, and Fort Tryon Park — home to the Cloisters — caps off the northern edge. The eastern boundary is more contentious, though most often it is said to be west of Broadway. And while many people consider the southern tip to be at the George Washington Bridge on 181st Street, others suggest that the neighborhood now stretches down to J. Hood Wright Park at 173rd Street.

The area feels more residential than most of Manhattan. The only commercial stretches are on 187th Street, which has small shops, and 181st, which in addition to local stores has chains, like the Starbucks on Fort Washington Avenue.

“It’s not as relentlessly urban as other parts of Manhattan,” said Alexis Higgins, who has lived in the area for five years. “I would even say this neighborhood is like the semi-burbs.”

Ms. Higgins, along with her husband, Scott, and their 2-year-old son, lives in Castle Village on Cabrini Boulevard, a five-building complex overlooking the river. They have a two-bedroom one-bath co-op, which they bought in 2005.

Built in the 1930s for renters, the five X-shaped towers went co-op in 1986. Along with Hudson View Gardens, a 1920s Tudor co-op complex across the street, they are among the largest buildings around.
“Architecturally, they’re great,” Mr. Dolkart said. “They’re anchors of the neighborhood.”

Castle Village received a lot of attention in May 2005, when part of a 75-foot-high retaining wall below the complex collapsed onto the West Side Highway.

According to Gerald Fingerhut, the president of the co-op board, repairs cost $26 million. The co-op is still involved in litigation — with parties ranging from insurance brokers to engineers — to recoup a portion of the costs.

But Castle Village is also known for something else: children. When Ms. Higgins, who is pregnant with her second child, told her old obstetrician that she now lived in Castle Village, she said, “Oh, you live in kid village.”

The complex has private gardens, but there are public parks throughout Hudson Heights. In addition to Fort Tryon and J. Hood Wright Parks, there is Bennett Park, on 185th Street between Fort Washington and Pinehurst Avenues. According to the Department of Parks and Recreation, its small patch of grass and playground is the highest point of land on the island of Manhattan, clocking in at 265.05 feet above sea level.

WHAT TO DO

There are restaurants and bars, but not many. Neighborhood life revolves around the parks, but there are also community events open to the public.
“Aside from the baby brigade, myself included,” Ms. Higgins said, “there are a ton of artists and creative people. It’s not going to become a cultural wasteland with that kind of demographic.”

There is a monthly chamber music series called Concerts in the Heights, and classical music at Our Saviour’s Atonement Lutheran Church. There is a film club and a speed-walking group, which marches through Fort Tryon Park three times a week.

There is an annual Harvest Festival in Bennett Park and, in the summer, an Uptown Arts Stroll, with visual and performing arts. Fort Tryon also hosts the city’s annual Medieval Festival.

WHAT YOU’LL PAY

Much of the housing stock in Washington Heights is rental, and there are rentals available in Hudson Heights as well. A one-bedroom runs about $1,200 to $1,700 per month.

But another factor that distinguishes Hudson from Washington Heights is the abundance of owner-occupied housing, most of it in co-ops.

According to brokers like Ms. Song of Simone Song Properties and Gus Perry of Stein-Perry Real Estate, one-bedrooms run from $260,000 to $400,000 and two-bedrooms from $400,000 to $650,000. Apartments in Castle Village, which has doormen, large gardens and sweeping views of the Hudson and the Palisades, can be a bit more.

“Like every other neighborhood in the city, we’ve been affected,” Mr. Perry said of the last year’s decline in real estate values. “But we’re probably less affected than other neighborhoods.” He estimates that prices have come down 5 to 10 percent.

THE SCHOOLS

At the combined elementary and middle school known as No. 187 Hudson Cliffs, on Cabrini Boulevard, 70.7 percent of fourth graders met state standards in English and 88.2 percent in math. Of eighth graders, 72.6 percent satisfied requirements in English and 88.4 percent in math.
The closest public high school is Gregorio Luperon Prep, on 165th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. Its SAT averages last year were 340 in reading, 370 in math and 347 in writing, versus 435, 459 and 432 citywide.

THE COMMUTE

The A train runs through Hudson Heights, traveling express from 125th to 59th Street, and reaching Midtown in about 25 minutes.

THE HISTORY

The 1930s brought in a flood of Central European Jews. One famous son is the statesman Henry Kissinger, whose family settled in Hudson Heights after fleeing Germany in 1938.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/18/realestate/18livi.html?_r=1

[brianac]

Note. Photographs from the slide show in this article have been posted to the New York in Black and White thread HERE (http://wirednewyork.com/forum/showpost.php?p=316149&postcount=172)


Streetscapes | Broadway from 26th to 31st Street

A Hip Replacement for a Down-at-the-Heels ’Hood

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Left, Office for Metropolitan History; Andrea Mohin/The New York Times
Businesses like Poland Spring, shown about 1910 and now, reflected the fading of the area as a destination for out-of-towners.

By CHRISTOPHER GRAY (http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=CHRISTOPHER GRAY&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=CHRISTOPHER GRAY&inline=nyt-per)

Published: February 10, 2010

BY day it’s the Canal Street of Midtown, a blurry tumble of frantic shop fronts in an epic half-mile panorama, Perfume-Hairpieces-Jewelry-Sweatshirts-Sunglasses. But by night the stretch of Broadway from 26th to 31st Street, between the Shake Shack and Herald Square, gives a foretaste of what promises to be a hip new hotel center.

Multimedia

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An Aging Hotel Row (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/02/14/realestate/20100214-scapes.html?ref=realestate)

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The 1904 Breslin Hotel, at Broadway and 29th, is now the Ace Hotel. Several old nearby hotels are also being spruced up.

This section of Broadway got its big break in the 1870s, as a new entertainment district coalesced north of Madison Square, bringing hotels and restaurants. The marble-fronted Grand Hotel, at the southeast corner of 31st Street, opened in 1868, followed in 1871 by the gangly 300-room Gilsey Hotel, at the northeast corner of 29th.

The Gilsey is today described as Second Empire for its colossal mansard roof, but The Real Estate Record and Guide called it Palladian in 1870. As much steamboat as hotel, it is a giant tooting spectacle of cast iron painted to look like stone, with cornices, columns, pediments and other details cascading down to the angle it makes with Broadway.

In 1895 Alfred Zucker designed the entrancing temple-topped Baudouine Building, at 28th Street, with escutcheons of anthemions topped by lion’s heads over many of its windows.

The double-height temple space is so unusual that it must have been designed for a particular tenant, perhaps the Baudouine family, which had offices at that address. The crisp, unorthodox handling is typical of Mr. Zucker’s distinctive work.

More big structures came after 1900, like the Johnston Building at 28th and Broadway, now under renovation as the NoMad Hotel. Designed by Schickel & Ditmars, it has an all-limestone facade, unusual for what appears to be a typical commercial building. In its current state, the temporary Broadway entrance presents a palimpsest of architectural debris. The mid-20th-century dropped ceiling in the lobby has been pulled down, revealing peeled paint, bare steel beams, carved plasterwork and an octopus of tangled electrical conduits and downlights.

One block north, James H. Breslin’s eponymous hotel went up in 1904, its high-style French Renaissance brick and terra cotta showing up the old-fashioned Gilsey Hotel, previously operated by Mr. Breslin.

By this time, Broadway below Herald Square was off the beaten track for entertainment and hotels, although Louis Abernathy, 6, and his brother Temple, 10, chose the Breslin as the finish line for their journey to New York from Oklahoma in 1910, 60 days on horseback, unescorted.

The high life quickly faded. Theaters like Weber’s, Wallack’s and Proctor’s still operated on this stretch, but were gradually edged out by railroad offices, manicurists, hatmakers and dentists. Poland Spring took over 1180 Broadway around 1910.

The Gilsey and other older buildings were reconstructed as lofts and commercial space. The year the Abernathy boys rode into town, James T. Lee, a grandfather of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/o/jacqueline_kennedy_onassis/index.html?inline=nyt-per), had just finished a 17-story loft building next to the Breslin. The architects, Rouse & Goldstone, gave it a classical design and the name Centvrian Bvilding, Roman-style, carved into the frieze.

The educated tone of the Centurian was not sustained, and there was little later construction of note. But in 1959 the architects Telchin & Campanella made a bizarre modernization of buildings at the northeast corner of Broadway and 27th. Their comical assemblage of supersized maroon and black stripes separated by vertical metal strips looks like a weird packing case, perhaps the one the building came in.

At night you can still see the old garment and manufacturing firms in the upper floors. At 27th Street, a five-story building has dirty windows, stacks of fabrics, towers of boxes, and falling ceiling tiles, all evocative of the old-economy New York of the mid-20th century.

Now this little strip verges on transition. The Breslin is now the Ace Hotel, a project of GFI Development. The lobby of the Ace is a mix of old and new: salvaged paneling, hip metal tables, an oddball display of stuffed birds. You might call this post-preservation style, a later generation of old-building renovation, which treats vintage elements with an ironic insouciance, not veneration.

The old paneling, taken from another location, is mounted on a steel armature projecting out from the wall, so visitors know that it is fake, which itself defies fakery. The huge columns were originally faux-painted as Italian marble. Now they are plain white, and ringed by simple circles of pipe, with schoolhouse-style light fixtures attached.

On a recent evening there were about 85 people in the lobby, average age 30, two-thirds of whom were typing away on laptops, BlackBerrys and other keypads. One guy was reading a book, and a woman who at first appeared to be lost in thought was instead listening to an iPod, its earbud hidden by her hair.

The NoMad should be completed next year, and another hotel, the Flatiron on 27th Street, is scheduled to open its doors this spring. So at the moment, the Ace has for company Lola Trading, X-Tensions hair products, the synergistic Perfume and Digital Inc., and a dwindling cohort of manufacturers on upper floors, a particularly unusual hybrid even in the miscellany of New York streets.

E-mail: streetscapes@nytimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/realestate/14streets.html

Copyright 2010 (http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html) The New York Times Company (http://www.nytco.com/)

[stewartrama]

NoMad has so much potential. The neighborhood is chock full of gorgeous old gems that could be spruced up and converted into new hotels and apartments. it is close to midtown and downtown, and has great transportation...Thats why I hope they preserve the old buildings, as opposed to knocking them down and building crap like Eventi... I think in 10 years this neighborhood will be completely gentrified.

[Merry]

A Time Capsule Invaded

By JAKE MOONEY

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slide show (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/03/28/realestate/20100328living_ss.html?ref=realestate)

VISIT NoLIta early enough on a weekday, before all the boutiques stir to life at 11 or even noon, and you might feel as if you had traveled back in time 75 years. Weathered walk-up tenement buildings cast shadows over the side streets; homeless men trudge through on their way to the Bowery; pizza shop workers settle in for a day at the ovens.

But even in its quiet moments, there are signs that this neighborhood, framed by Houston, Lafayette and Kenmare Streets and the Bowery, is now something very different. A woman strolling past St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral does so in Chanel flats; a trash pile on Prince Street includes a white leather handbag in like-new condition.

And about those tenement buildings: Many are expensive to live in, when they are available at all.

Andrew Anderson, a senior vice president of Prudential Douglas Elliman, said recently that only around two dozen units were for sale in the neighborhood. Prices reflect that scarcity. When people are dead set on being in NoLIta, Mr. Anderson said, “I think what ends up happening, most of the time, is they buy right outside the neighborhood.”

He was in that position himself once and now lives on East Fourth Street, to the north. “You end up living within arm’s reach of NoLIta,” he said. “I still eat dinner there every night.”

The allure is clear. The 16-square-block neighborhood of approximately 4,500 people, whose name is an elision of “north of Little Italy,” is quieter and homier than nearby SoHo, though its businesses and nightlife scene draw the same well-heeled crowd. Residents prize its central-downtown location and are fiercely protective of what remains of its Old New York atmosphere.

In some cases, their ire finds an outlet in the name. Bob Gormley, the district manager of Community Board 2, which represents the area, recalled a conversation with one resident: “She said, ‘You know, there are people who’ve lived here a long time who get really angry when you mention the name NoLIta, because that’s really a concoction of the real estate industry.’ ”

“Some of the old-timers,” he added, “they still like to say that they live in Little Italy.”

But old and new residents alike, Mr. Gormley said, have been united in their resistance to new bars — and even some restaurants serving beer and wine. As in several other downtown neighborhoods, he said, new liquor licenses and the related issues of noise and crowding are of great concern.

In 2007, residents thwarted the opening of a burlesque club on Kenmare Street. Just this year, they blocked the arrival of a Shake Shack burger joint that had been proposed, with a takeout window and a rooftop terrace, for Prince Street.

“Sometimes the neighborhood feels like it’s beyond the saturation point, and where is it going to end?” Mr. Gormley said. “When you have so many places and it’s such a small area, it kind of gets people on edge.”

This worry is, of course, a form of love.

Debra Zimmerman, who has lived in a rent-stabilized building on Prince Street for 32 years and who helped lead opposition to the Shake Shack, recalled renting her apartment for $175 a month when there was a chicken slaughterhouse across the street, then spending decades getting to know the neighborhood’s people and its odd quirks.

“It’s a really special little corner of New York,” said Ms. Zimmerman, who runs a nonprofit group for women who are filmmakers. “I’ve watched kids grow up in the neighborhood. There’s old Italian women, there’s young hipsters, there’s the Dominicans in bodegas, there’s all the bridge-and-tunnel people who come to eat in Delicatessen.”

There are also, she said, people like her, who are involved in the arts and who may have sought to live in SoHo years ago but found plenty of appeal in the neighborhood next door. Ms. Zimmerman’s office is at Grand Street and Broadway; her previous one was at Lafayette and Spring Streets.
“I am the quintessential ‘Don’t go above 14th Street’ person,” she said. “I don’t go above Houston and I don’t go below Canal. If you live here, why not?”

WHAT YOU’LL FIND

The Bowery and Lafayette Street are the heavily trafficked eastern and western boundaries, with taller buildings, wider sidewalks and more cars. But inside the neighborhood, Prince and Spring Streets are the main commercial strips; smaller shops and restaurants are found on the ground floors of five- and six-story tenements on Mulberry, Mott and Elizabeth Streets.

On a recent morning, several storefronts on those streets appeared empty or soon to be. Mike Bennett, who owns a commercial and residential building on Mulberry, said commercial rents were down as much as 35 percent, though that also could be said of other Manhattan neighborhoods.

Despite the turnover, he said, the area remains popular.

“You can see on the weekend people walking around with their New York maps,” Mr. Bennett said. “It’s a lot like the Lower East Side — people are really interested in these little spots that have kind of become New York landmarks.”

That includes vestiges of Italian-American culture sprinkled here and there, like the Parisi Bakery on Mott Street and Albanese Meats and Poultry on Elizabeth. More notoriously, the Ravenite Social Club at 247 Mulberry Street, long known for its association with John Gotti, is now a shoe store.

WHAT YOU’LL PAY

Co-op apartments in NoLIta sell for at least $800 to $1,000 per square foot, and as much as $1,200 per square foot in especially high-quality buildings, said Darren Kearns, a senior vice president of the Corcoran Group.

“It’s just rare to find anything for sale,” Mr. Kearns said. “Most of those buildings never turn over. When something does come up, it still demands really good prices per square foot.”

Condominiums are even pricier. Mr. Anderson, at Prudential Douglas Elliman, said units could be had for $1,200 per square foot but added that in rare new construction, like a highly regarded brick building at 211 Elizabeth Street, prices were $2,000 per square foot or higher. One-bedrooms there are on the market for $1.5 million to $2.4 million, depending on their size, he said.

Still, Mr. Kearns said, most of the buildings on Mulberry, Mott and Elizabeth, like tenement buildings in the nearby East Village, are rentals. As many as 25 percent of those, he said, are rent-stabilized or rent controlled.

As for the rentals, listings on Craigslist begin just over $2,000 a month for basic one-bedrooms — less for the occasional studio — though prices for nicer units are much higher. Mr. Kearns cited a building on Mulberry Street where loft-style apartments were renting for $4 per square foot; he also said he had recently handled a 2,200-square-foot penthouse duplex on Mulberry in the same building that rented for $9,250 per month.

WHAT TO DO

The area is a hub for tiny fashion-forward boutiques — shoes, wedding dresses, jewelry, baby clothes and more — and for restaurants, Italian and otherwise. Café Habana, at Prince and Elizabeth, is a favorite, crowded for dinner and brunch, and there are many fancier places, as well as two of the city’s more historic (if congested) pizza places: Lombardi’s and Ray’s.

The Feast of San Gennaro, a decades-old Little Italy street fair, runs for 10 days every September on Mulberry Street. The festivities draw crowds and plenty of complaints from neighbors.

NoLIta is short on green space, but Lieutenant Petrosino Square, a 0.3-acre sliver of land with a few benches between Centre and Lafayette Streets, was expanded and newly landscaped last year.

THE SCHOOLS

All elementary students are zoned to attend Public School 130, a few blocks south of the area on Baxter Street. The school, which serves more than 1,000 students from prekindergarten through fifth grade, received an A on its most recent city progress report, with 92.4 percent of students meeting standards in English and 98.9 percent in math.

Middle School 131, outside the area on Hester Street, also got an A, with 62.4 percent proficient in English and 84.9 percent in math.

THE COMMUTE

The 6 train stops at Spring and Lafayette Streets, on the western edge of the area, and the Broadway-Lafayette station, at the northwest corner, is served by the B, D, F and V lines. The R and W trains, at Prince Street in SoHo, and the J and M trains, at the Bowery by Delancey Street, are also within walking distance.

THE HISTORY

Traditionally considered a part of Little Italy, the area got its name in the 1990s, as signs of Italian culture faded. Italians had first settled there in the late decades of the 1800s and predominated through most of the 20th century.

St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral, framed by Prince, Mott and Mulberry Streets, was built between 1809 and 1815, and served as the seat of the Catholic Archdiocese of New York until 1879, when St. Patrick’s Cathedral took over.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/realestate/28Living.html

[Merry]

Beauty and Variety vs. Crowds and Costs

By JEFF VANDAM

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The intersection of Charles Street and West Fourth Street

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Near Hudson Street, the enclave of Grove Court with its private, gated courtyard is tucked back on Grove Street

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Patchin Place, off of 10th Street

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Charles Street townhouses

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Gay Street

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Jefferson Market Garden on Greenwich Street

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Bleecker Street

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St. Vincent’s Hospital

LIVING in the West Village has its tradeoffs, just like living anywhere else. On the minus side, there are the tourist buses inching through the neighborhood each day, the near-farcical property prices, the creep of luxury stores up Bleecker Street, the 3 a.m. spillover from bars.

But on the plus side?

“This block that I live on is one of the most beautiful in the city, actually,” said Albert Bennett, who has been a resident of the same house on Morton Street for 55 years. “It’s the best place in the world to live.”

For Mr. Bennett and thousands of others who populate the West Village’s oddly angled street grid, there is a lot to love in the restored 1800s town houses, the ironclad community spirit and the multiplicity of choice in shopping and dining. So much to love, in fact, that residents overlook certain things, as did Howard and Jessica Jamner last year when they spent their first night at One Jackson Square, a new building on Greenwich Avenue. That night happened to be Halloween.

“It’s 2 in the morning and we’re looking outside, and it’s utter gridlock,” said Mr. Jamner, who along with his wife is retired. “There’s 20,000 people just in our view outside the building. Jessica turns to me and goes, ‘Do you think it’s going to be like this every night?’ ”

It isn’t, of course. Most nights, a stroll down Waverly Place or Charles Street is more serene architectural tour than raucous bar crawl. But the option for either is always there, and the variety of choices in the neighborhood is just what attracted Ben Rubinstein and Cheryl Goldwasser, a couple in their 20s who got engaged on the Christopher Street Pier last November.

The housing stock, even at an upper-middle-income level, can be “distressing” in its spareness, Mr. Rubinstein said. The couple rent a 500-square-foot one-bedroom on Christopher Street for $2,700 a month — though they got one free month this year — their second in the neighborhood. And film crews may stop them on the sidewalk to keep them from walking through scenes in production. But the restaurants, the quiet walks, the creative buzz and the waterfront pathways a few blocks away overwhelmingly make up for any drawbacks.

“The fact is, you take the tradeoffs,” Mr. Rubinstein said. “It comes with the territory. I’d rather live in an interesting place.”

WHAT YOU’LL FIND

As evidenced by requests for directions from camera-toting tourists, Manhattan’s straightforward grid of avenues and streets meets defeat in the West Village. But newcomers should rest assured that a place where West Fourth and West 10th Streets intersect eventually begins to make sense.

“One does learn, somehow,” said Mr. Bennett, the Morton Street resident, who also heads his block association. “It’s osmosis.”

Adding up the tracts between the Far West Village, on the other side of Hudson Street, and the Avenue of the Americas, 2000 census data found that it has 24,110 residents (though that number will probably change after this year’s count). It is a population packed mostly into a varied collection of 19th-century town houses, though apartment buildings do occasionally show up, especially at the neighborhood’s edges.

Hudson Street, Seventh Avenue and Avenue of the Americas are all commercial strips, though there is commerce on those curving interior streets as well. Bleecker Street moves from Murray’s Cheese and Faicco’s Pork Store, near Avenue of the Americas, to Marc Jacobs and Ralph Lauren heading north toward Hudson, a transition that irks those who desire more local businesses. West Fourth Street has its own shops, as do Carmine and many others.

Nearly all of the northern half of the neighborhood, and much of the southern, is governed by the regulations of the Greenwich Village Historic District, one of the city’s first, dating to the 1960s. Today, an extension to the district is being considered; the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission said a vote should occur this summer. Residents are watching closely.

“It is zealously defended,” said David Gruber, the president of the Carmine Street Block Association, speaking of the neighborhood’s historic character. “It’s the legacy we have to pass on to the next generation.”

This protection means new construction is mostly unheard of, yet the One Jackson Square building, named for the small park it overlooks, recently welcomed its first residents. And near the neighborhood’s southern border, a new development called the Townhomes of Downing Street is under construction.

One issue that brought residents together in protest recently is St. Vincent’s Hospital, which closed its doors on April 30. An urgent-care facility is to open on its site, but residents say the subtraction of the hospital and all of its services represents a major loss for the neighborhood.

WHAT YOU’LL PAY

The story of property in the West Village is one of inventory, or the lack thereof. From a recent analysis of the market, Mike Lubin, a vice president of Brown Harris Stevens, found that there were just two apartments of two bedrooms or more in full-service buildings for under $3 million, and only eight town houses under $7 million.

“You always hear about little inventory,” Mr. Lubin said, “but when you assign a real number to it, it’s shocking. I can’t tell you how many times we have buyers and there’s literally nothing to show them.”

The resulting effect on prices is evident. Town houses in good condition typically fall within the range of $2,000 to $2,800 per square foot, said Jill Bane, a director of sales at Leslie J. Garfield & Company, pointing out that this was still lower than the $3,500 levels in 2007 and 2008, before the financial crisis.

“It’s not sky-high like it was in 2007,” said Alex Nicholas, a senior vice president of the Corcoran Group, “but there are certainly strong numbers.”

Ms. Bane sold a house on Bank Street in December for $8.995 million; the house had 5,960 square feet of space and was in need of renovation, she said. Mr. Nicholas sold the Edna St. Vincent Millay house on Bedford Street, known as “the narrowest house in New York” for its nine-and-a-half-foot width, this past winter for $2.175 million. The square footage was about 1,200, he said.

The neighborhood has fewer condominiums than co-ops, Mr. Lubin said, adding that with many cost $1,000 to $2,000 a square foot, depending on size and degree of renovation.

Since One Jackson Square entered the market in summer 2007, 25 of 30 units have sold, said David Penick, a vice president of Hines, the company that developed the property. Sales have ranged from $1.7 million, for a one-bedroom with 1,200 square feet, to $8 million for a full-floor apartment with a large terrace and 2,700 square feet .

One-bedroom rentals in the neighborhood typically cost $2,500 to $3,500 a month, Mr. Lubin said. Two-bedrooms start around $3,000, but the climb can be steep from there.

THE SCHOOLS

The West Village is stocked with schools, both public and private. At Public School 41 on West 11th Street last year, 98.1 percent of students met standards in math, 95.4 percent in English.

Some students are zoned to attend Junior High School 104, the Simon Baruch School, on East 21st. Last year, 86.2 percent of students met standards in math, 76.8 percent in English.

Last year at City-as-School, a public high school on Clarkson Street, SAT averages were 491 in reading, 471 in math and 465 in writing, versus 435, 432 and 439 statewide.
Private schools include the City and Country School on West 13th, and St. Luke’s School on Hudson.

WHAT TO DO

Aside from untold numbers of shopping and dining options, there are plenty of neighborly activities like the Charles Street Spring Planting, which just took place last weekend; residents are advised to look to bulletin boards for others. For recreation-seekers without memberships to the area’s multiple gyms, the Hudson River and its well-traveled waterside trails are a short walk away.

THE COMMUTE

Residents are never far from a subway that can quickly get them to Midtown or the financial district. They can choose from any of the lines along 14th Street, including the A, C, E and L at Eighth Avenue, the 1, 2 and 3 at Seventh Avenue, and the F, V and L (and the PATH train) at Avenue of the Americas. The 1 train also stops at Christopher Street and Seventh Avenue; the B, D, F, V, A, C and E all stop at West Fourth Street and Avenue of the Americas. Finally, the 1 train has a stop at Houston and Varick Streets.

THE HISTORY

Once a marsh, then farmland, the West Village and environs really only took off as a neighborhood when disease beset the city in the early 19th century. Those who came in search of a place free of cholera and yellow fever decided to build houses and open stores.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/realestate/09living.html

[Merry]

NoHo

By C. J. HUGHES

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40 Bond Street

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88 Bleecker Street

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Great Jones Street

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Bleecker Street

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ON New York’s streets, finding a comfortable place to sit outdoors usually requires ordering something off a menu. While busy sidewalks may offer many delights, they are known to be short on free benches.

But there are many inviting exceptions to this rule in NoHo, a small former manufacturing hub in downtown Manhattan that makes up in style what it lacks in size.

Street furniture, in the form of four metal seats welded in place, beckons on a shaded stretch of Bleecker Street, near Mott, and somebody has also graciously provided a pair of wooden benches a few blocks away, by Broadway. Weathered benches face one another on Bond Street, too, so visitors can kick back, perhaps, after touring the many home-furnishings shops.

When Jonathan Kenyon arrived in New York from London in 2003, perches like this were ideal for contemplating the seemingly unhurried pace of life, particularly after cocktail-fueled evenings nearby in the East Village, where Mr. Kenyon rented a two-bedroom. “I would sit and have a smoke and watch the world go by,” he said, “and I would dream about living here.”

Last year those dreams came true. Mr. Kenyon, who runs a design studio, and his partner, Tory Clarke, paid $1.66 million for a 2,400-square-foot NoHo loft. People-watching now takes place from up above, through windows that reveal quaint studies in contrast, like cars bumping down stone-surfaced roads past shiny metal condominiums.

For Mr. Kenyon, NoHo’s chief appeal is an artistic pedigree strikingly evident even in passing. A huge plywood copy of part of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel fresco hangs on a corner of Lafayette Street; gleaming golden figurines dance on a building’s fire escape; a giant origami-like mural soars above a Gristedes on West Third Street.

The artist population has fallen in recent years, but even so, buildings like Mr. Kenyon’s co-op still teem with them. His neighbors include a painter, a sculptor and a filmmaker. Mr. Kenyon himself makes silk-screen prints.

Technically speaking, living in NoHo more or less requires being an artist, under the terms of a 1976 zoning amendment. Although it left the 20-block area mostly zoned for manufacturing, the amendment was passed to benefit early colonists already camped out in NoHo’s cavernous spaces as commercial tenants were vacating.

Today New York rarely enforces the artist-in-residence rule. And most co-ops look the other way, according to residents and city officials, as long as buyers sign a waiver acknowledging they’re breaking the law.

Some argue that the rule should be scrapped, because the makeup of the neighborhood has radically changed anyway — with artistic types having given way to bankers.

There are even artists who would pull the plug on the special zoning. Stan Reis, a photographer, believes that doing so would not only generate diversity but also help achieve fairer market values. His own loft has 2,900 square feet, nine north-facing windows and maple floors. In 1974, it cost $25,000, he says; today it could sell for 100 times that.

“I used to say, ‘A million four and I’m out the door,’ and then it became two million, and now I’m not taking three,” Mr. Reis said. “This neighborhood has constantly improved.”

WHAT YOU’LL FIND

Shaped like a tooth, NoHo is bordered by Mercer Street and the Bowery, from East Ninth to East Houston Street, according to the Landmarks Preservation Commission, which declared most of the area a 125-building historic district.

Many of those antiques are Romanesque, with brick of varying tones and huge arched windows. And they’re comparatively short, allowing a sense of airiness, much as when Bucky Wunderlick surveyed the scene in Don DeLillo’s 1973 novel “Great Jones Street.”

NoHo’s buildings then were “half as tall as they should have been, as if deprived by light by the great skyscraper ranges to the north and south,” in Bucky’s view.

Traces of NoHo’s workaday past remain, like the “Jos. Scott TKGN Corp. Stables” lettering in a cornice on Great Jones Street. But many factories have been lovingly converted, like the former tent company at 10 Bleecker Street, which is now a 22-unit co-op, and 250 Mercer Street, whose 277 apartments were fashioned from joined commercial buildings above Dojo restaurant.

At the same time, NoHo has splashily added condos, which have been met with varying degrees of approval. Some, for instance, criticize the wavy glass facade at 445 Lafayette Street, a Related Companies development on Astor Place, by Gwathmey Siegel and Associates, for being out of context.

But 40 Bond Street, developed by Ian Schrager and designed by Herzog and de Meuron, has won raves from established neighbors who might be expected to object to avant-garde construction. Most approve of its finish, which resembles the foil used to wrap holiday wine.

Its block has become a stop on architectural star maps: there is No. 25, a nine-unit building with a chipped limestone finish, by BKSK Architects, and No. 48, a 17-unit structure by Deborah Berke and Partners Architects, whose windows slant outward.

The anchor of the block is No. 54, a white cast-iron former bank, whose three upstairs apartments are on the market starting at $4.5 million. “We started with something that had a very hard life and brought it back,” said Adam Gordon, its developer, who predicts more of the same now that the landmarks commission has effectively banned demolitions.

The rental stock used to be made up of lofts that lacked final certificates of occupancy. These days things have evolved somewhat, one example being 2 Cooper, a 15-story luxury rental building with a weathered brick skin. Of its 144 units, 35 percent have been leased since May. Studios start at $2,925 a month.

WHAT YOU’LL PAY

In late June there were 58 listings on the market, at an average asking price of $3 million. They ranged from a studio for $299,000 at 88 Bleecker Street — a rare postwar co-op — to the entire fourth floor of 25 Bond, with four fireplaces and a balcony, for $19.5 million.

But prices and activity have trended downward over the last few years, and more sharply than in similar Manhattan neighborhoods. At the market’s peak in 2007, for example, there were 116 sales for an average of $2.7 million, according to data prepared by the Corcoran Group. That year was led by the $18.03 million sale of the 10th-floor condo at 794 Broadway, known as the Dandy, though there were also 24 sales at 77 Bleecker Street, a more modest block-through 242-unit co-op.

In 2009, 21 units sold, for an average of $1.37 million. That works out to a 50 percent price drop — about twice what other desirable neighborhoods experienced. That year, the biggest deal was $3.55 million for a three-bedroom condo at 21 Astor, which is above a Starbucks.

WHAT TO DO

Audiophiles enjoy Other Music, whose displays include shrink-wrapped vinyl albums, like the Velvet Underground and Nico’s “banana” record ($18.99) and the National’s Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers ($17.95).

Dashwood Books, a basement-level shop, is dedicated to photography.

NoHo Star, which has thrived in a former publishing plant since 1985, offers a lively brunch. From a cart outside, you can buy balsamic-infused ice cream.

THE SCHOOLS

The high-performing Public School 41 on West 11th Street has an enrollment of about 750 from kindergarten through Grade 5. On state exams last year, 100 percent of fourth-graders met standards in math, 96 percent in reading.

At Simon Baruch Middle School, 81 percent of eighth-graders met standards in math, 79 percent in reading.

Washington Irving High School, just outside the area, has almost 1,400 students. It has a 33 percent dropout rate. SAT averages last year were 386 in math, 386 in reading and 376 in writing, versus 502, 485 and 478 statewide.

THE COMMUTE
NoHo is well served by subways. The N and R trains stop at Eighth Street, while the B, D, F and M trains are available at Broadway-Lafayette, along with a connection to the downtown No. 6 train (which also stops at Astor Place). A connecting passageway is being built as part of a $94 million station renovation to allow access to the uptown No. 6.

THE HISTORY

In many ways, the high-end housing takes NoHo back to its 1830s roots, when Bond Street with its rows of town houses was a prestigious address. The area has few green spaces today; it once had Vauxhall Gardens, near the site of Joe’s Pub. “Couples strolled along gravel paths among shrubs and flowers and classical statuary,” writes Mary Knapp, the historian at the Merchant’s House Museum, in a forthcoming book, “An Old Merchant’s House: Life in a Nineteenth-Century New York City Home, 1835-65.” The museum, on East Fourth Street, is a relic of that era.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/11/realestate/11living.html