Upper West Side

March 22, 2016

Tribeca Film Festival Co-Founders List Massive Dakota Spread for $39M

Some big-time New Yorkers are selling their big-time pad at The Dakota, the most iconic cooperative in the Upper West Side. Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff, the couple that founded the Tribeca Film Festival with Robert De Niro, have just listed their sprawling five-bedroom apartment for no small sum—$39 million. The couple purchased the apartment more than 20 years ago, but announced their divorce in early 2014. Now, this very impressive home—actually an assemblage of four apartments covering over 7,500 square feet, with 165 feet of frontage along Central Park—is up for grabs.
Let the drooling begin
March 19, 2016

This Two-Bedroom Upper West Side Co-op Feels Like a Cozy Library

If you're the kind of person that could spend hours curled up on the couch with a book, this two-bedroom apartment is pretty much the perfect place to do that. It's located at the cooperative 242 West 104th Street, in the Riverside Drive area of the Upper West Side. The interior design resembles the best kind of library—warm colors, exposed brick, even a rolling ladder that runs the length of the main hallway. The only thing a buyer would need to add? Lots more bookshelves!
Take a look around
March 8, 2016

Gilded-Age Riverside Drive Mansion With Basement Pool Returns to the Market for $20M

The Philip and Maria Kleeberg House is a stunning, unique and impossibly grand 11,000-square-foot manse overlooking the Hudson River at 3 Riverside Drive. This 19th-century limestone landmark was designed by noted mansion architect C.P.H. Gilbert for the aforementioned wealthy pair. Young Mr. K was something of what today we’d call a serial tech entrepreneur, and the mansion sits on a stretch of the Hudson River that was being developed to rival the grandeur of Fifth Avenue. According to a New York Times article in 2012–when the 18-room home hit the market at $40 million–the home’s current owners, Regina Kislin, a real estate developer, and her husband, photographer Anatoly Siyagine, found it in 1995 in a state of disrepair, bought it for $10 million and embarked on a facelift of epic proportions based on the potential they saw in the regal wreck, which Ms. Kislin says "...reminded my husband of the mansions in St. Petersburg back in Russia.” According to the current listing, "It is as close as a Manhattanite can come to living in a European castle." Several price chops later at $20 million (h/t TRD), it remains a pretty incredible piece of real estate, albeit with a more realistic price tag. In addition to the restoration efforts, modern touches include an elevator and an indoor pool, sauna and gym in the cellar.
Must be seen to be believed, this way
March 7, 2016

Baxt/Ingui Architects Designed This $19M UWS Townhouse As an Energy-Efficient Passive Home

The listing calls the townhouse at 25 West 88th Street "beyond mint," and it's certainly green enough to qualify. This 8,000- square-foot Central Park West home has gotten its fair share of publicity recently. In addition to being a landmarked 1910 historic beauty and having undergone a stem-to-stern modern overhaul, the home's current owners, investment banker Kurt Roeloffs and his wife Shyanne, worked with the well-known Baxt/Ingui Architects to create an energy-efficient masterpiece that meets both LEED platinum and passive house standards. Even with all that efficiency, they didn't skimp on luxury. With six floors (and an elevator) and a finished cellar, six bedrooms plus rooms dedicated to yoga, meditation, exercise and crafts, this may, in fact, be "one of the finest contemporary townhomes on the Upper West Side."
Find out more about this amazing, energy-efficient home
February 29, 2016

Riverside Center’s One West End Avenue Tops Off, Cantilevering Pool and All

Propelled skyward by the still-sizzling Upper West Side residential market and its dearth of buildable sites, the final phase of the Riverside South master plan is coming together alas. After decades on the drawing board, this southern-most, eight-acre segment collectively known as Riverside Center/Waterline Center has already spawned a pair of residential buildings designed by SLCE Architects  and another by Pelli Clarke Pelli with Goldstein, Hill & West Architects (GHWA). Three other parcels to the west are now undergoing site preparation. Those lots will give rise to a trio condo and rental buildings whose developer, Boston-based General Investment and Development Companies (GID), has enlisted a trio of high caliber designers working with GHWA, the executive architect of record. Work has moved forward swiftly on the the plan's first two towers. The shorter of the pair, known as One West End , has just topped off its 491-foot concrete skeleton and is being developed through a partnership between the Elad Group and Silverstein Properties. The robust 41-story spire is the second tallest building on West End Avenue, only behind its more anonymous 521-foot-tall rental neighbor 21 West End.
Details, renderings, and construction photos this way
February 26, 2016

This $18M Prewar Co-op Is the Kind of Apartment That Invented Central Park Views

In addition to celebrity residents like Robert DeNiro, Paul Simon and, more recently, Annie Liebovitz, the 1928 co-op building at 88 Central Park West has bragging rights to the kind of views that were being enjoyed by the fortunate before trophy towers like 432 Park Avenue were even a glimmer in any developer’s eye. The classic Central Park West residence known as the Brentmore has only 12 floors, but it possesses a Gilded-Age cachet that’s lost very little of its appeal even in the 21st century. Residents add upper-floors and next-doors rather than move, and floor plans are generous and always include foyers and maids’ rooms (almost all units were built with seven rooms). And the location, of course, needs no introduction.
See more of this gracious West Side home
February 23, 2016

Rosario Candela-Designed Building at 915 West End Avenue Going Condo

West End Avenue is one of Manhattan's longest stretches of harmonious architecture. The nearly 50-block-long, better-looking half of Eleventh Avenue is the Upper West Side's answer to Park Avenue, without the median and with the community. The Avenue's rows of stately prewar buildings are raised to a mostly uniform height of 12 to 15 stories and appear as if some Haussmann-like visionary conceived their elegance and scale. Behind dignified masonry facades are wood-paneled lobbies and sprawling apartments that are stacked in classic sixes and sevens with staff quarters. Near the Avenue's starting point at Straus Park, at the northwest corner of 105th Street, 915 West End Avenue rises humbly without much fuss. The red-brick building, built in 1922, was designed by beloved architect Rosario Candela and is undergoing a conversion that would transform 43 of its 91 rental apartments into condominium residences, according to an offering plan submitted to the attorney general.
Find out more
February 12, 2016

Buyout Legends: Developers Paid 15 CPW Hermit Holdout $17M to Move Into a Free Apartment

What do you do when you're a developer who has a 52,000-square-foot property with one tenant...who won't leave? While we've all heard legends about holdouts in rent-controlled apartments getting big buyouts from deep-pocketed developers, none to date could beat the good fortune of Herbert J. Sukenik. The reclusive septuagenarian lived in his 350-square-foot apartment (which happened to have four exposures and Central Park and two river views) at the Mayflower Hotel for three decades. But he ended up walking away with $17 million, the most money ever paid to a tenant to leave a New York apartment, and walked into an almost-free, 2,200-square-foot, 16th-floor home in the venerable Essex House on Central Park South.
So what happened?
February 11, 2016

Penny Marshall Lists $5.5M UWS Penthouse With Terrace, Views and a Fireplace in the Bathroom

Director, actress, producer and “Laverne & Shirley” star Penny Marshall is parting ways with the Upper West Side penthouse at 470 West End Avenue that she purchased back in the early 1980s. Marshall just listed the 1,800-square-foot penthouse with a wrap-around terrace and Hudson River views for $5.5 million. The Bronx-born actress, who has been based on the left coast for some time, used the two-bedroom pad as a pied-a-terre, and it certainly makes an impressive one. Though the interiors don't appear to have been updated recently, dramatic pre-war details (11-foot-plus beamed ceilings, wood-burning fireplaces, paneled doors and original hardware) and 1,050 square feet of private outdoor space don’t ever go out of style; with some updating, this will definitely be a "Big" beautiful space.
Check out the rest of the penthouse
February 9, 2016

Actress and Comedian Ellie Kemper Buys $2.8M Classic Upper West Side Co-op

In her critically acclaimed Netflix show "The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt," her character, a former abductee who ends up in NYC, lives in an eclectic Brooklyn apartment. In real life, actress and comedian Ellie Kemper goes for a more traditional look, as is evidenced by her recent purchase -- a classic six co-op at 325 West End Avenue on the Upper West Side. According to city records released today, Kemper and her husband Michael Koman, a writer and producer, paid $2.8 million for the three-bedroom spread.
See the whole apartment
February 9, 2016

$19M Extravagant Riverside Drive Mansion Once Belonged to the ‘Father of the West Side’

There's something a little intimidating about an 8,000-square-foot, seven-bedroom single-family mansion that once belonged to "the father of the West Side" himself. The property in question is 327 West 76th Street, in the Riverside Drive area of the Upper West Side. The home was built in 1892 and quickly sold to Cyrus Clark, a businessman who retired from the silk business and went into real estate, making it his mission to campaign on behalf of developing Manhattan's West Side. The house wasn't distinct just for its owner, but because the exterior architecture stands out so distinctly in a row of more refined townhouses. For years the home was broken up into apartments, but developer Leonard Zelin converted it back to a single-family a few years back. Now he's hoping the investment will pay off: Zelin bought the townhouse for $8.8 million in 2010 and it's now asking an impressive $18.995 million.
Take a look around
February 2, 2016

$985K Renovated UWS Co-op Checks a Lot of Boxes; Just Hope You Don’t Have to Carry Them

When you’ve got a recently- and well-renovated three-bedroom co-op on the Upper West Side, a block from Central Park with low monthly fees, and it’s under $1 million, it’s pretty safe to say "this won’t last!" This fresh-faced, turn-key, pre-war home at 113 West 96th Street was just listed at $985,000, and while there are pros and cons, it looks like a super-comfortable place to live in a classic Manhattan neighborhood that gets an A-plus for convenience.
Take a look around
January 28, 2016

Affordable Housing Lottery Launched for Lincoln Center Tower, Units Start at $566/Month

Glenwood Management has just launched their affordable housing lottery for 52 below-market rate apartments within their soon-to-debut rental tower at 175 West 60th Street. Situated within the Lincoln Center area of the Upper West Side, 20 percent of the building's 257 units will be set aside for low-income residents and will range from $566/month studios to $931/month two-bedroom units.
Find out if you qualify
January 27, 2016

Harsenville to Carmansville: The Lost Villages of the Upper West Side

In the 18th century, Bloomingdale Road (today's Broadway) connected the Upper West Side with the rest of the city. Unlike lower Manhattan, this area was still natural, with fertile soil and rolling landscapes, and before long, countryside villages began sprouting along the Hudson River. They were a combination of farms and grand estates and each functioned independently with their own schools and roads. 6sqft has uncovered the history of the five most prominent of these villages–Harsenville, Strycker's Bay, Bloomingdale Village, Manhattanville, and Carmansville. Though markers of their names remain here and there, the original functions and settings of these quaint settlements have been long lost.
Find out the history of these lost villages
January 24, 2016

Friedland Properties Finally Settles on Design of 2230 Broadway

Foundation work continues apace on Friedland Properties' and Rose Associates' upcoming 72-unit apartment tower at the southeast corner of Broadway and West 80th Street. Tentatively addressed as 2230 Broadway, the building will rise 18 stories and 227 feet to its rooftop stair bulkhead. This stretch of Broadway on the Upper West Side enforces a 210-foot height cap (to its highest occupiable floor) to keep new developments in scale with their surrounding historic context. According to building permits, Stephen B. Jacobs Group are the architects. Evidently, the project has gone through several iterations of design, but it seems the team has settled on this recently posted conservative red brick building with a light stone base and cornice lines. The new rendering is also in line with DOB filings and an elevation posted at the construction site.
More on the building
January 20, 2016

The Best Address for Less: Live in the Dakota for $1.85M

While it’s not exactly what we’d call affordable housing, you don’t have to be as rich as Yoko Ono or as famous as Lauren Bacall (whose apartment recently sold for $21 million) to live in the iconic Dakota overlooking Central Park. This pint-sized top-floor aerie on the Upper West Side offers a seriously rare chance to rub elbows with venerable co-op’s celebrity residents–and the memories of notable residents past–for a relatively earthbound $1.85 million. Though there’s still the nearly $3,000 monthly co-op fee to contend with, it’s not often that a space here that isn’t a storage unit finds its way to the market for less than four or five million at the very least; there are currently three eight-figure units listed, including Roberta Flack's pad and Judy Garland's former home. And the one-bedroom apartment itself is just the bright and elegant pre-war gem you’d imagine it to be.
Have a look around this rare little gem
January 20, 2016

POLL: Do Lower Income Residents of Extell’s ‘Poor Door’ Building Have a Right to Complain?

Lower income residents of Extell’s notorious “poor door” building at 50 Riverside Boulevard are not happy with what they’re considering glaring disparities between those like themselves who live in the affordable units and those in the luxury section of the building. Aside from having to use a separate entrance, the lower income tenants don’t have […]

January 18, 2016

Judy Garland’s Former Dakota Apartment, Now a Designer Pad, Asks $16.7M

Just last week, 6sqft featured a "girly-modern Tribeca triplex" that's asking $3.75 million. It belongs to buzzed-about young designer Sasha Bikoff, who was also featured in a 2014 NY Times lifestyle piece about NYC’s young contemporary millionaires. And as it turns out, she also designed a colorful yet glam apartment in the famed Dakota, the same unit that reportedly once belonged to Judy Garland. According to the Observer, the Central Park West residence is asking $16.75 million. But before you get too blown away as to how this 27-year-old designer got such a high-profile commission, public record shows that it was owned by her mother Jacqueline Bikoff, an Iranian pianist and ballerina (and Studio 54 regular) who passed away last September. Sasha undertook the renovation two years ago, earning her spreads in design publications such as MyDomaine and the Times. The latter is where the Judy Garland claim surfaced, but Douglas Elliman listing agent Katherine Gauthier is skeptical as to its validity. No matter, the apartment is definitely legendary.
See all around, here
January 18, 2016

Lower Income Residents of Extell’s ‘Poor Door’ Building Find Glaring Disparities

After receiving 88,000 applications for 55 affordable apartments last February, the residents chosen from among them have been moving in to the rental side of the 33-story luxury building at Extell Development's 50 Riverside Boulevard in Lincoln Square. The lower-income/luxury split sparked the heated “poor door” controversy due to the significant amenity differences and efforts to physically separate the two parts of the building (the rental, low-income portion of the building actually has a separate address of 40 Riverside Boulevard). Now, according to the Post, low-income tenants have been discovering that the differences are indeed notable.
A lavish lobby and a forbidden courtyard
January 8, 2016

Man Overcharged by Landlord for 16 Years Awarded $900K and a $784/Month Apartment

Score one for the little guy! After having his rent-stabilized apartment illegally deregulated and his rent jacked up to more than five times what it should have been, an appellate court has awarded Upper West Side man Lane Altschuler $900,000 in damages, and they've re-stabilized his 1,500-square-foot pad to just $784 a month. According to the Daily News, Altschuler moved into the three-bedroom, two-bath unit at 478 Central Park West back in 2000, but his landlord, Mann Realty, illegally began raising the rent shortly after he got settled. The figure eventually ballooned to $3,750 a month in 2009, right after the building was converted into luxury condos.
more on what happened here
January 7, 2016

Tina Fey Buys the $9.5M Unit Above Her Current Upper West Side Co-op

Funnywoman Tiny Fey pissed off her Upper West Side neighbors recently when it came to light that she's on the board of the American Museum of Natural History, and therefore approved the institution's controversial expansion plan. Unfortunately, it looks like she might be digging herself further into a hole, as she's just bought the co-op above her current apartment at 300 West End Avenue, meaning she and hubby Jeff Richmond will likely be taking down some floors and walls to create one large duplex. According to the Observer, who broke the news, Fey paid $9.51 million for the new four-bedroom unit, much higher than the $7.5 million asking price.
Check out the new digs
January 5, 2016

Radio Rabble-Rouser Don Imus Lists CPW Pad With Terraces and Endless Views for $19.8M

A Central Park West penthouse belonging to controversial radio and TV jock Don Imus just hit the market for $19.8 million. The duplex co-op atop the 1928 Rosario Candela-designed 75 Central Park West, owned by Imus and his wife, Deirdre, for decades, is wrapped by gorgeous terraces and offers seriously breathtaking park and city views; for that seriously breathtaking price, you'll also get a good-sized two-plus-bedroom street-level maisonette to use as guest quarters or as an office.
Take a look
December 28, 2015

Horror Author Peter Straub Sells His Historic UWS Townhouse for $7M

When he put his Upper West Side townhouse on the market for $8.2 million in April, 6sqft wrote: "With accolades like the Bram Stoker Award, the World Fantasy Award, and the International Horror Guild Award to his name, one might proceed with caution when entering the home of American author and poet Peter Straub." But as we discovered, the Queen Anne-style home is anything but scary. Rather, it's a historically preserved masterpiece with rich colors, tasteful furnishings, and plenty of character. And now, according to city records, it's sold for $7,050,000, after Peter and his wife Susan called the residence at 53 West 85th Street home for 30 years.
Take a look around
December 28, 2015

Big Price Drop at This Renovated Five-Story, Upper West Side Townhouse

The pricing over the years at 33 West 71st Street, located on the Upper West Side near Central Park West, is like reading the dramatic play, The Crazy Price Tags of New York. The historic townhouse sold in 1996 for $770,000, although back then it looks like the residence was chopped up into rental units. At some point, it was renovated back into a single family and the price tag started to skyrocket. It was listed in 2008 for $5.3 million, then in 2012 for $7.5 million. It sold in 2013 for $6.225 million and then was quickly listed again in 2014 for $18.5 million after the latest renovation. That price was lowered to $16.495 million this summer, and then quickly lowered again to $14.995 million. Got all that? Because now it's on the market with a price cut to $12.995 million, or you can rent it for $40,000 a month.
See more
December 18, 2015

Historic UWS Townhouse Filled With Bold Modern Furniture Hits the Rental Market

Original mahogany and oak paneling, inlaid parquet floors, carved mantels and a grand staircase. That's the lowdown at 315 West 78th Street, an impressive townhouse in the Riverside Drive/West End Avenue area of the Upper West Side. It's a huge house, with 4,000 square feet, 11 rooms, five bedrooms and four-and-a-half bathrooms. It also has an impressive number of historic details intact. The home has been offered as a rental for a few years now, priced between $15,499 and $16,000 a month. It's back on the market asking $16,000 and is being offered furnished or not. It's also available short term, for a minimum of a six-month stay. This is a spot we definitely wouldn't mind hanging for six months.
See the interior
December 16, 2015

130-Year-Old Limestone Townhouse on the Upper West Side Asks $12.95 Million

It's hard not to be impressed by this 130-year-old limestone townhouse, built at 64 West 87th Street on the Upper West Side. The Jacobean Revival townhouse was designed by the 1890s architect Clarence Fagan True as a set of three—but this one is "the star of the show," according to Daytonian in Manhattan. There's an intricately carved facade with a four-story bay and an imposing stone porch with balustraded railings. It sold in 1895 to Lucius Nathan Littauer, a close friend of Theodore Roosevelt with his own political ambitions, and is known as the L. N. Littauer Mansion. Today, the facade is intact and the interior has been completely renovated by Zivkovic Connolly Architects to add some modern upgrades to the old world charm. Despite the modern upgrades, there are plenty of historic goodies left, including a truly impressive plaster ceiling that sits atop a ceramic-faced fireplace and parquet floors.
See more
December 13, 2015

Newly-Renovated Townhouse Duplex Asks $6,500 a Month on the Upper West Side

You'd be hard pressed to find an architecture-loving New Yorker who hasn't dreamt about living in one of the incredible townhouses that line Central Park, especially those on the side streets of Central Park West. Here's one to start drooling over if you can't afford the multi-million-dollar price tag and are looking to rent. 14 West 95th Street is an elegant, four-story limestone townhouse that has been broken down into rental units. As for the location, the listing calls it "perfectly situated" and we'd have to agree–right on 95th Street, directly off of Central Park West. The rental apartment that's now on the market has been renovated, so it looks more modern than old-world New York. For three bedrooms and two bathrooms over both floors, it's asking $6,500 a month.
Check it out