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Cover Story: Riverside South
Looking for a luxury condo with breathtaking views of the Hudson River? Want to buy a home loaded with amenities that's within walking distance of Lincoln Center and other Upper West Side hot spots? You're in luck. In October, the 15th floor sales office of 200 Riverside Boulevard, the first condo in Donald Trump's ambitious new Riverside South development, opened its doors. Finishing touches are now being put on the 46-story, 377-unit building located between 69th and 70th Streets, and a March occupancy is estimated by The Marketing Directors, Inc., the exclusive marketing and sales agent for the luxury property. Read More
Operation: DUMBO
Literally a pebble’s throw from Lower Manhattan, Brooklyn’s DUMBO is one of the most exciting and happening growth areas in the city. An acronym for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass, it is an area roughly bounded by the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges, taking in Empire State Park, a little known, jewel-like pocket park on the banks of the East River connecting Old Fulton Street and the historic Fulton Ferry. Adjacent to the park, DUMBO also includes the Empire Stores–a building which served as civil war era warehouses for armaments. This historic warehouse district is quickly turning into the city’s new hot spot. Read More
Ferry Tales
If you've ever had the dubious pleasure of trying to get onto or off of Manhattan Island from New Jersey, Queens, or Brooklyn during rush hour, you know the daily drill: traffic stopped for miles, honking horns, delays, and pot holes. Read More
The Expanding Skyline
The breakneck pace and cutthroat economics of residential real estate in New York City are legendary. For every new building that goes up, it seems like there's a battle to be fought, either with city agencies, community groups, preservation and historical societies, and anyone else with an opinion; which is to say, everyone else in the city. Read More
The Green Guerillas
Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "The earth laughs in flowers." If that's the case, then the Green Guerillas are grinning from ear to ear. While some outreach programs spend a lot of their time working phones and crunching numbers to get work done, this New York-based organization has been brightening neighborhoods and spirits by getting their hands dirty - literally - for 30 years. The Green Guerillas, made up of over 800 volunteers, dozens of employees and generous donors, both corporate and private, have been changing the face of New York for decades using a different set of tools - vegetable seeds, flower pots, topsoil and mural paintings, just to name a few. Read More
Rising to the Occasion
As part of a New York City Housing Development Corporation (HDC) project, Maple Plaza in East Harlem was constructed in the late 1990s in hopes that the building would help anchor redevelopment efforts in the neighborhood. The eight-story, 155-unit U-shaped building went up on 123rd Street between Madison and Park Avenues, and contained a state-of-the-art laundry room, a community room, and 87 parking spaces. There was also a corporate tenant--the Ralph Lauren Cancer Center--on the building's lower level. The Mortgage Insurance Fund was providing 100 percent insurance on a loan of $17 million, and all seemed to be a go for the much-publicized--and much-needed--co-op. Read More
Alwyn Court
If you want to tour some of Manhattan’s most impressive apartment house architechture, a trip to the Upper West side is a no-brainer. There, you can view such buildings as The Osborne, the Beresford and the Van Corlear, all known for their mammoth scale and often imposing reputations. Read More
A Successful Experiment in Living
Nearly 150 years ago, the grounds of Parkchester in the Bronx served as a shelter for New York City’s homeless children. It was a place where kids could learn a trade and get a second chance. Today, Parkchester is enjoying its own second chance, a revitalization befitting of a place that once served as a model of planned community living. Read More
Urban Mass
Located in the Northeast corner of the Bronx, in the area known as Baychester, sits the largest housing cooperative in the world. Co-op City is home to about 50,000 people; if it suddenly decided to secede from Bronx County, it would be one of the 15 largest cities in the state. Read More
Glen Oaks Village
Like so many other neighborhoods and areas of the city, the Glen Oaks Village cooperative in Queens has seen its share of good times and not-so-good times. But from the bleak days of the 1970s and ‘80s, thanks to a conversion, a committed, self-managing board, and involved shareholders, the picture at Glen Oaks Village today is very different from what it was a couple of decades ago. Read More
Darkness Comes to Life
In 1932, when Josephine Baldizzi was six, her mother Rosaria, used to bathe her in the kitchen’s slop sink in their five-story walkup tenement building at 97 Orchard Street. On her walk to school, she wore her father Adolfo’s size 9 shoes and hand-me down clothes. Rosaria tended to the household, and for a time worked long hours in the nearby garment factory. Adolfo was a cabinetmaker, who carried around a toolbox, and did odd jobs to support his family. Read More
Long Live the Queens
Of the over 2 million people who inhabit the borough of Queens, there are probably at least one or two members of actual royalty. Read More
That's Hot
If New York City is a melting pot, then Hell’s
Kitchen is the part of the cauldron that is closest to the fire. At least,
it used to be. This section of Manhattan stretching from West 34th Street
to 57th Street and westward from Eighth Avenue to the Hudson River is in
the process of a dramatic transformation. Historically a haven for gangs,
violence, and some seriously unsavory social elements, the new face of this
neighborhood is the sleek, sexy, expensive high-rise condo building.
Read More
Forest Hills
Some call it the Garden City. Others call it the heart and soul of Queens. About 4,500 people call it home, but one thing’s for sure—just about everyone who has seen Forest Hills calls it beautiful. Read More
Suburban Brawl
There are myriad of ways to get back and forth from Manhattan to Nassau County. Whether you’re driving, taking a train, or bussing it, there’s no shortage of access to what has become an exurban retreat for many commuters and families priced out of Manhattan For these folks, Nassau County seems like a logical place to start looking for an alternative to big city living. Read More
Long Island Retreat
Paleolithic whale-hunters, American revolutionaries, an adored president, French castles, and bathtub gin all combine to paint a portrait of one of New York’s richest historical landscapes—and one that perhaps few people fully appreciate. Nassau County, home to one of the first English settlements in New York State and an estimated 1,333,137 modern residents, is the first county one reaches after leaving Queens and New York City behind, and is a complex mix of urban and suburban values and lifestyles. Read More
From Farmland to High Rises
Taking its name from one of the most photographed buildings in New York City, the Flatiron district is named for the iconic Flatiron building, which sits on the wedge-shaped intersection of Fifth Avenue and Broadway. In the last two decades or so, the neighborhood has turned itself inside out. Once a renowned center of commerce and fashion, the area is thriving again—but in a new way. Read More
A Diamond in the Rough
Often given short-shrift in media coverage of the New York City real estate game, Staten Island is a historically rich borough which—contrary to what your Manhattan-centric friends may try to tell you—is not a four hour trek away. The fifth borough’s character-filled neighborhoods can be a welcome contrast to the constant activity—and expense—of Manhattan. Read More
There's Something About Great Neck
The nine villages and several unincorporated communities that make up the city of Great Neck are steeped in history. F. Scott Fitzgerald chose Great Neck as the setting for his famous novel, The Great Gatsby, and even though the area has gone through many changes since Fitzgerald’s time, one trip to Great Neck makes it clear why the community is one of Long Island’s gems. Read More
Jackson Heights
Historical district. Garden sanctuary. Street food paradise. Jackson Heights Queens is all of these things. From its humble beginnings as dirt-paved farmland to its construction renaissance in the 1940s and 50’s, Jackson Heights is re-emerging as one of New York City’s most diverse and livable communities. Read More
Harlem on the Rise
What do Alexander Hamilton, Billie Holliday, Bill
Clinton, Langston Hughes, and WEB Dubois all have in common? They have all
had a presence in Harlem.
Read More
Back to Brooklyn
It’s an oft-repeated fact that if the borough of Brooklyn were still independent, it would be one of the biggest cities in the nation. According to the Brooklyn Economic Development Corporation, in 2000, the U.S. decennial census counted Brooklyn’s population at 2,465,326, making it New York City’s most populous borough. If considered an independent city, the borough would rank as the fourth largest in the United States after the rest of New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Read More
Where City and Community Meet
You know you’re living in a hot neighborhood when people from Manhattan visit the area to sample the restaurants and shopping. That’s exactly the status enjoyed by Park Slope, Brooklyn, the area under the south side of Prospect Park that is home to a varied and vibrant population that includes students, young married couples, new parents, wealthy professionals—and some longtime residents who stuck with the area through some rough times and are now enjoying the social and financial fruits of the neighborhood’s revitalization. It’s hard to find someone who lives in “The Slope” who doesn’t love it. Read More
SoHo Style
Like most of Manhattan's neighborhoods, SoHo has gone through multiple incarnations to become the part of town we know today. Long, long before Prada and Bloomingdale's staked their claim along Broadway and exclusive hotels sprang up on the neighborhood's side streets, the area known as SoHo (so named to refer to the area "SOuth of HOuston" Street and above Canal Street, between Lafayette Street and the Hudson River) was a marshy meadow, and the future of New York City was only a far-off dream. Read More
A Loisada Love Story
The area of New York City that makes up the Lower East Side comprises only four square miles, but is one of the city's most densely historical spots. Bounded by 14th Street on the north, Catherine Street on the south, Broadway on the west and the East River making up the eastern border, one doesn't have to walk far to get a feel of the neighborhood. From turn-of-the-last-century tenement buildings to the rapidly expanding condominium market today, on the Lower East Side, only one thing remains the same: the neighborhood is always changing. Read More
Queens Gets the Royal Treatment
While Manhattan and Brooklyn are usually the darlings of real estate brokers' end-of-the-year reviews and forecasts, there's a lot more to New York City than just those two boroughs. Things are percolating nicely across the East River in Queens, where developers are working on new residential projects to satisfy the demand for housing being voiced by young professionals and their growing families, new arrivals to this country, and businesses looking to spread out without breaking the bank. Read More
Building Boom in Brooklyn
For a long time, Brooklyn, the fourth largest city in the U.S. with 2.5 million people, has labored in the shadow of Manhattan; often seen as the "other borough," far away from the hustle and bustle of Midtown. Read More
The City By the Bay
The neighborhood of Bay Ridge, located in southwest Brooklyn, is known for its 100-year-old houses, off-street parking and sunlight reaching between the buildings. It's also the place where Saturday Night Fever was filmed back in the late 1970's. The big city with a small-time feel has quite a colorful history that goes back more than three hundred years. Read More
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Park Slope has long been one of Brooklyn's most desirable residential neighborhoods. Windsor Terrace, south of the Slope, and Prospect Park South are also much in demand, and the part of Eastern Parkway near Grand Army Plaza has also been attracting positive attention for several years now. But would any of these areas be as sought-after if they weren't near Prospect Park? Read More
Way Uptown
They say you can have it all in New York City, but sometimes that's a tough proposition: You want to live in Manhattan, but you want your home to be an idyllic retreat. You're looking for an affordable co-op, but you think it should be spacious. You want to live minutes from downtown, but you want to have woods nearby! Most New Yorkers would laugh you out of the room if you voiced this wish list out loud. But they obviously don't know about Manhattan's best kept secret"ŠInwood. Read More
Affordable Living in Chelsea
A casual passer-by on Eighth Avenue in Chelsea could easily pass a particular cluster of high-rises on the west side of the street and think they're just a group of typical Manhattan residential buildings. Read More
Manhattan's Gated Community
When describing Gramercy Park to someone who's never been there, certain words immediately spring to mind. Historic, posh, and elegant would be good words to start with. "Star-studded" and "exclusive" might be useful, too. Read More
Mermaids in Dreamland
Arline Zatz grew up in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, just a short distance away from Coney Island. She recalls that every summer she and her friends would take a short jaunt to the popular beach and amusement parks to lie on the sand and enjoy the day until the crowds dwindled. Read More
The Hook Up
If you take a look at a map of Brooklyn, you'll see that nestled between the Buttermilk Channel and Gowanus Bay, there's a funny kind of hook-shaped spur of land that protrudes off the mainland and encloses the Erie Basin. That's Red Hook, and it's a part of the city that even long-time New Yorkers may not be too familiar with, even though it offers the stunning views of Lady Liberty, and it's where Al Capone earned his famous "Scarface" moniker back in the "20s. Read More
