One of those days

On Fulton Street near Water Street.

Opinion: For the first time "NYC is going to struggle with questions about its reason for being"

From Peggy Noonan's column in The Wall Street Journal Friday:

In New York some signs of that future are obvious: fewer cars, less traffic, less of the old busy hum of the economic beehive. New York will, literally, get dimmer. Its magical bright-light nighttime skyline will glitter less as fewer companies inhabit the skyscrapers and put on the lights that make the city glow.

A prediction: By 2010 the mayor, in a variation on broken-window theory, will quietly enact a bright-light theory, demanding that developers leave the lights on whether there are tenants in the buildings or not, lest the world stand on a rise in New Jersey and get the impression no one's here and nobody cares.

The New York of the years 1750 to 2008 — a city that existed for money and for all the arts and delights and beauties money brings — is for the first time going to struggle with questions about its reason for being. This will cause profound dislocations. For a good while the young will continue to flock in, for cheaper rents. Artists will still want to gather with artists — you cannot pick up the Metropolitan Museum and put it in Alma, Mich. But there will be a certain diminution in the assumption of superiority on which New York has long run, and been allowed, by America, to run.

The only free-standing single-family mansion in Manhattan can be yours (for $30 million)

Seems reasonable to me! Considering what you get at 351 Riverside Drive at the northeast corner of 107th Street, the home known as the Schinasi Mansion. According to New York Architecture, the Schinasi mansion was built in 1909 for Morris Schinasi, an immigrant from Turkey who made his fortune introducing Turkish tobacco to the United States. There's plenty of fascinating history about this space.

This is info on the place from Brown Harris Stevens, who featured the pad in their spring-summer 2009 "Important Residential Properties" catalog:

This magnificent mansion, built in 1909 by William Tuthill, the architect who designed Carnegie Hall, is presently the only free-standing single-family mansion in Manhattan. It is an exquisite French Renaissance jewel box executed in pristine white marble, boasting deep green roof tiles and bronze grills on the balconies and at the main entrance. The building is 41' wide and 73' deep, surrounded by private grounds, and located on a corner lot overlooking the Hudson River. The Interior is approximately 12,000 square feet, comprised of four stories plus an English basement. An extraordinary amount of unique original detail has been retained and the mansion has superb views, with luminescent sunlight glass windows. Exterior space is approximately 3,400 square feet. There are numerous fireplaces, a library, and other grand public rooms. Truly a European palazzo.

Among other features (like FIVE kitchens!), the mansion had a tunnel down to the Hudson River for bringing in tobacco. Unfortunately, this has been sealed up. (Or so they claim!)

According to a May 1997 article in the Times:

In 1979, Hans Smit, a law professor at Columbia University, bought the building, and has been working on the restoration for almost two decades. In an interview last month, he said he was now "just a couple of inside doors" short of a complete interior restoration. The new exterior iron doors are among the final touches on the exterior restoration. The outside is presentable, but not pristine. "If I really fix up the outside, the undesirable elements will pay attention" Smit says. "When I bought it, most people said, 'You're a raving maniac.'

But it's the best investment I ever made."

I'll say! After Morris Schinasi died in 1930, the place became a finishing school for girls. According to an April 2007 article in the Times: "By the 1960s, the mansion had been bought by Columbia University as part of a larger land purchase. At different times, its tenants were an Episcopal private school, a publication called the Digest of Soviet Press and a day care center.

"Then in 1979, Dr. Smit noticed the house while biking and bought it from Columbia for $325,000. He has been working on its restoration for nearly three decades."

Also, as the article points out, Smit "has never lived in the house but rents it out for movie shoots, including the Woody Allen film 'Bullets Over Broadway,' and holds pizza parties for his students there. His son, Robert, also a lawyer, has lived in the home since the early 1980s after he graduated from college, sharing it with his two daughters in a much more relaxed style than the original owner."

The New York Sun reported in September 2006 that Smit lived in the house when he wasn't at "his home in upstate New York, or his Chateau in Burgundy, France." By the way, his son is Robert Smit, a partner at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett.

Anyway, as far as I can tell, the house, er, mansion, was put on the market for $31 million in 2006. The price was lowered to $20 million. Now, it's back up to $30 million. In 2007, there was reportedly interest in the property by a foundation seeking a headquarters and a British men’s club.

Oh, and there's a video tour here. As your hostess, Felise Gross of Brown Harris Stevens, says in the video, it will be another 100 years before another property like this hits the market. So hurry!

For further reading:
Morris Schinasi and the Manisa Children's Hospital (Turk of America)

People who viewed 351 Riverside Drive also viewed...former William Randolph Hearst mansion in Beverly Hills for $165 million (Yahoo!)

Of course the people we really want to leave just won't

From the Times today: "New York City lost less population to other states in the 12 months ending July 1, 2008, than during any year in decades, according to census figures released Thursday. If that trend continues, the city’s population will top 8.4 million in 2010."

However, these figures don't represent all the job losses that hit in the latter stages of last year. Still, we can make it a trends piece!

“This is new, a real deviation from the average,” said New York City’s chief demographer, Joseph J. Salvo. “Whether it’s a trend is another thing.”

The latest census estimate did not reflect the decline in private-sector jobs in the city late last year.

Dr. Salvo, the director of the Department of City Planning’s population division, said, “When you take a look at the conditions in the rest of the country and what has happened to the housing and economic market in a lot of places our migrants have gone to, it’s very tempting to conclude that perhaps people are staying put more because the opportunities that were afforded there are not there any longer or are no longer attractive.”

In any event! Shall we start a list of people we wish would leave the city? I'll start with the guy on the bus talking on his cellphone about the lack of good golf courses in the city.

The future of the middle class in NYC (Hope you like Philadelphia!)

Big new report out now by the Center for an Urban Future titled "Reviving the City of Aspiration: A Study of the Challenges Facing New York City's Middle Class."

An excerpt:

“The perception of New York among young people is so phenomenal,” says Alan Bell, a partner with the Hudson Companies, a real estate development company that has built housing from the East Village to the Rockaways. “It used to be that automatically you’d get married and had kids and you were out to Montclair, New Jersey or Westchester. Now they want to stay. The question is how they stay since it’s so expensive.”

Set against this picture of progress, however, are some alarming trends. Most of the people interviewed for this report told us of middle class friends, relatives or colleagues who had recently given up on the city. “I work with a lot of people who moved to Philadelphia and commute each day,” says Chris Daly, a media director at Macy’s who now lives with his wife and three kids in Tottenville, Staten Island but plans to move to New Jersey. “It’s the cost of living. You’re going to see more people moving to Philadelphia, the Poconos and commuting.”

Unless we find ways to reverse some of the trends detailed in this report, the New York of the 21st century will continue to develop into a city that is made up increasingly of the rich, the poor, immigrant newcomers and a largely nomadic population of younger people who exit once they enter their 30s and begin establishing families.

It's not your imagination

From the Times.

At the Holland Bar yesterday afternoon

Uh, still not open yet. And the gate was down.

On Tuesday, the Times ran a feature saying the Ninth Avenue dive might be open as soon as the next day! Seemed awfully optimistic, especially given the state of the place that I saw the previous week. At that time, two weeks even seemed like a stretch to for the bar to reopen.

In any event, the place will be open again...just don't know when for sure.

T-shirt for tourists proof that bad old days are back?

And are they the bad old days of the 1970s or the 1980s? On Fulton Street near the South Street Seaport.

The Holland Bar may be open as soon as tomorrow! (Though you may not recognize much)

As we reported last week, the Holland Bar is set to reopen...very soon. The Times follows up today with confirmation the old joint on Ninth Avenue may be up and running by tomorrow. Golly. The Times talks with the bar's owner, Gary Kelly:

[L]ast summer the Holland became one of those typical New York institutions: the beloved local haunt forced to shut down. According to Mr. Kelly, who has owned the bar since 1998, the landlord refused to renew the lease in the hopes that he could make more money converting the building for residential use or selling it off. But such plans apparently did not work out, and the landlord offered Mr. Kelly his old space back starting Jan. 1, albeit at a 20 percent increase in the rent. Now the Holland is scheduled to reopen its taps as soon as Wednesday.

But will we recognize the place?

Although the location will be familiar to patrons, Mr. Kelly still had to start practically from scratch in recreating the place. Since the Holland closed its doors, the bar had been destroyed, the plumbing had been removed, the floor had been ripped out.

And much of the physical record of the bar’s history that had been pasted to its walls — the photographs of customers who had died years before, the posters for shows at the dear, departed CBGB — is gone, too.

Hmm, still, I'll take it. So the Holiday is back...The Emerald Inn won't have to close...and Frankie and Johnnie's will live...

For further reading:
Holland Bar (Jeremiah's Vanishing NY)
Brightening Light at the End of the Holland Tunnel (Lost City)

Sex and the recession

So, apparently, New York City is still being marketed in the Sex and the City manner in which this ad suggests:



Hot pink! A martini glass! Good times! All is well! Spend money!

Anyway, I'm glad a little reality worked its way into the top left-hand corner of the Cemusa ad on Second Avenue near St. Mark's....

Credible-enough sources: The Holland Bar is reopening (soon, probably, too)

Walked by the now-closed Holland Bar on Ninth Avenue yesterday. Where did we leave off? Quick back-story: Jeremiah reported in November (on Election Day!) that the Holland was closing, possibly for good. Then came some follow-up news from Brooks at Lost City that the place was just getting a facelift...I happened by the place myself Nov. 14 and found the place suspiciously gutted.

So! Yesterday!



There is some activity going on inside...Not much to see. Some sawhorses. A few ladders. Power tools. A space heater. No furniture. No bar. Nothing. But!



The sign is still on the wall. And! The fellow at East West Grocery right next door emphatically told me the Hollard was reopening -- "in two weeks." Really? "Yes, it is reopening." After that, I stood out front and waited for the lone construction worker inside to emerge from behind the half-closed gate. The conversation went something like this:

Is the bar reopening?

"Yes."

Do you know when it will reopen?

"No."

Maybe in two weeks?

[Nervous laughter] "I don't know."

Looks like you still have a lot of work to do.

[Nervous laughter]

In any event, seems like a good sign that the, uh, Bar sign is still outside...and the neon Holland is still inside. Shall we all go back in two weeks?

Here's a little taste of the old Holland and Ernie the bartender from the Times, circa August 1987:

[I]nside the Holland Bar, they find small legends hanging like the smoke in the stale blue air.

Ronnie loved his unattainable Laura so much that he played "Tell Laura I Love Her" time after time after time -- $15 worth a night -- until, by resounding vote of the paying customers, the tune was banned from the jukebox forever.

Big Pete, 6 foot 6 inches and 400 pounds, downed 72 White Castles, on Aug. 24, 1983, according to a faded sign on the wall.

Larry the meatman used to set up shop and sell steaks at the bar until he forgot to tip Ernie once too often.

Ernie once talked a drag queen into dressing up as a clown and dancing on the street. It's not clear whether it was to attract business or drive it away.

Assembled on the bar stools the other day were a loquacious blond hooker; a cadre of postal workers from the post office across the street, a radio executive in a conservative suit; a Panamanian immigrant nursing his 15th cerveza, and Mario celebrating his release from jail with crisp white wine.

There was also a 53-year-old man who shoplifts to order -- just tell him what you need and get a 50 percent discount, "Bras, panties, whatever you want."

A few stools down, a tourist from Honolulu was back for his third day. "I just sort of stumbled in," he said.

[Holland Bar sign photo via Shanna Ravindra, New York magazine]

Important research of the day

From the Post:

Life in New York really is a rat race.

Rodents thrive in a Manhattan-style street-grid system, but tend to become disoriented in the more winding, random layouts of cities such as New Orleans and Jerusalem, according to new research at the University of Tel Aviv that could prove useful to urban planners.

A pessimistic economic forecast gets more pessimistic (aka, Holy Fucking Shit — We're Screwed!)

Gothamist has the not-so-chipper economic news for the city:

New York City's budget gap will be as much as $1.9 billion in fiscal 2009 and could possibly balloon to as much as $5 billion by 2011, according to a wholly depressing new report from City Comptroller (and mayoral hopeful) William Thompson Jr. ... The recession could cost the city some $935 million in tax revenues next year, a figure that includes a $525 million shortfall in real estate-related taxes, a $345 million reduction in personal income and business taxes, and a $65 million loss in property taxes.

The annual report, titled The State of the City’s Economy and Finances (Or, Time To Move Back In With Your Parents), paints an even bleaker picture than Mayor Bloomberg's November budget proposal. In it, Thompson writes, "Waves of negative economic developments during 2008 have given way to a tsunami of financial anxiety and caused us to issue a more pessimistic forecast than was put forth by the mayor. As the economy erodes, the outlook for New York City’s fiscal future will continue to change."

Noted

The city’s unemployment rate rose to 5.8 percent from 5 percent in July — the largest monthly increase in more than 30 years — as about 5,200 private-sector jobs were eliminated . . . Many of the layoffs came in the tumbling financial sector, which is one of the city’s biggest employers and the provider of nearly one-fourth of its annual wages and salaries. (New York Times)

One iconic NYC concert venue that is getting renovated instead of torn down or turned into a condo or...

The Times on the renovation of the Beacon:

It almost became a grocery store in the 1970s. In the 1980s, it was nearly jackhammered into a cavernous disco with a triple-tiered restaurant. Somehow it escaped becoming a multiplex. And through 78 years, the neglect of the Beacon Theater in Manhattan — aside from occasional spasms of partial renovation — has often been profound.

The Beacon, at 2124 Broadway, at West 74th Street, is familiar to generations of New Yorkers living on the West Side who grew up there when it was a movie house, performance space and, in recent decades, what some have called the Carnegie Hall of rock rooms.

The Beacon went dark last month for a six-month, $15-million restoration by Madison Square Garden Entertainment, a division of Cablevision Systems Corporation, which announced in 2006 that it was leasing the theater for 20 years. The interior face-lift is to be completed by Jan. 31, in time for a February opening.

Fair warning

Going away this weekend...

...or are you having, in the words of the Times, a "staycation?" As the paper notes:

It is a ridiculous word, but that hasn’t stopped the sprouting of so many Web sites with perky “I ♥ N.Y.” staycation ideas — Circle Line, a museum visit, a tenement tour and bialy on the Lower East Side.

And, admittedly, it’s a very fun word to say. Staycation. How was your staycation? My parents went on staycation, and all I got was this lousy T-shirt. Our son-in-law threw his back out on staycation.

As is so often the case, this new thing is nothing new in many parts of New York City. It’s just that it was never named by those level-headed working men and women who do not need a tarted-up pseudoword to enjoy a nice week without work.

Report: State housing official nabbed in rent scam

From today's Post:

A state housing official from Brooklyn was busted for selling lists of rent-regulated tenants to builders so they could target properties for redevelopment, The Post has learned.

Keith James, 53, of Brownsville, a rent program specialist at the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal, took the bribes from January 2001 to September 2005, authorities said.

A source close to the investigation told The Post that the rolls - which are not public - "are valuable because it gives developers and potential purchasers insight into the long-term revenue of a building that has rent-stabilized and rent-controlled apartments," allowing them to target buildings with fewer or older rent-regulated tenants.

Newsflash: New York is expensive (aka, we're No. 1!)

According to Forbes:

New York City's got fashionable Fifth Avenue, trendy Tribeca and an oasis in Central Park. To enjoy those perks, residents pay up.
The Big Apple topped a new list of America's most expensive cities, with a measured cost of living surpassing that of Houston, Boston and Washington, D.C. The culprit? High rent: $4,500 a month on average for a two-bedroom, unfurnished luxury apartment.
Los Angeles comes in second place. Its residents can partly blame a long, expensive commute. The average driver there spends 72 hours a year stuck in traffic delays, and, as of July 21, the cost of a gallon of regular gas was $4.46.

To determine the U.S. cities where the cost of living is highest, the London office of Mercer, an American human resources consulting company, measured the prices of the same basket of goods in 253 of the world's cities. The basket is composed of over 200 products, representative of executive spending patterns and including everything from rent for a luxury apartment to the cost of a fast-food hamburger.
Location has a lot to do with why New York and Los Angeles top the list.
In New York, the need for more homes has been increasing since the mid-1970s, says Edward Glaeser, an economist at Harvard University.
"Before 1970," he says, "workers in some sense were paid a premium to live in New York." This, says Glaeser, was due to its reputation for crime and dirtiness. "Now, people pay a premium to live there."
The change happened when the city began to experience robust economic growth that's still occurring, despite some hiccups along the way. Even though business is increasingly global, New York is a center for industries that produce ideas, like finance and publishing, notes Glaeser.
"You don't see anyone relocating to South Dakota," he says. "The idea now is that you become smart by hanging around other smart people, which New York has in abundance. That's why it's been able to thrive."

Related:

Actually, New York is cheap (Curbed)

[Image via New York]

Good news!: New York is not one of Relocate-America's top 100 cities to live in the United States

How embarrassing would that have been?

Here's the whole list.

Curious, at least, about the top 10?

1. Charlotte, N.C.

2. San Antonio, Texas

3. Chattanooga, Tenn.

4. Greenville, S.C.

5. Tulsa, Okla.

6. Stevens Point, Wis.

7. Asheville, N.C.

8. Albuquerque, N.M.

9. Huntsville, Ala.

10. Seattle, Wash.