St. John the Divine Landmarking

While Morningside Heights preservationists and Community Board 9 continue to lobby against Columbia University's proposed development on the property of St. John the Divine, activists and board members have their immediate sights trained on an unlikely target: Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields.

Until late September, those who opposed the cathedral's plan to allow modern construction on its property-known as the Close-regarded Ms. Fields as an ally in the ongoing debate. But at a contentious Sept. 23 City Council committee hearing on the matter, many were shocked to learn that Ms. Fields had revised her position nearly 10 months earlier and now supported new development within certain areas of the Close.

Now, community activists and some Board 9 members want explanations from Ms. Fields about her change of heart, and also why they weren't told about it sooner.

In an interview with The Observer , Dan Willson, a spokesman for Ms. Fields, confirmed that the Manhattan borough president changed her position on development within the Close after a winter 2002 meeting with St. John's leadership. He rejected community accusations that the shift was clandestine, however, saying that Ms. Fields' revised statement was on record with the Landmarks Preservation Commission for all of 2003.

Carolyn Kent, a Board 9 member and a founding member of the Morningside Heights Historic District Committee, told The Observer that Ms. Fields should have come before the board and community activists months beforehand to discuss her new position. That the opponents of development found out about her change of heart in such a roundabout way marks a low point in the relations between Board 9 and the Manhattan borough president's office, whose interests, according to Ms. Kent, have always dovetailed on preservation issues.

"This goes to the heart of what is the relationship between a borough president and her community board," Ms. Kent said.

The landmarks commission and preservationists have long called for the landmarking of St. John's, the country's largest church, the world's largest cathedral and a tourist mecca in the city. Church leaders have consistently opposed the designation, arguing that the economic burdens would worsen the organization's tenuous financial standing. The leaders also said a landmark status would make it more difficult for the church to finish construction on its facilities, as only three-fifths of the buildings called for in its nineteenth-century plans were actually completed during a century's worth of intermittent construction.

When church leaders finally capitulated on the issue in 2002, they did so with the request that a landmarks designation allow them to complete existing structures and lease empty portions of the Close to an outside organization in a bid to improve the church's finances. The latter request infuriated local preservationists, who called it a crass economic move and insisted that the entire Close be landmarked, preventing any construction on the 11.3-acre tract aside from the incomplete structures called for in the original plans.

When Ms. Fields testified before the landmarks commission on Nov. 12, 2002, she said she supported the preservationists and the unanimous Board 9 resolution calling for the entire Close to be landmarked.

But after meeting with the church's leadership shortly afterward, Ms. Fields faxed a letter to landmarks chair Sherida Paulsen on Dec. 13, 2002, in which she wrote that St. John's "substantial financial duress" could only be relieved if the commission allowed for new leasable development on the site.

"I would like to modify my previous recommendation for landmarking of the development sites," Ms. Fields wrote. "It is clear that the Cathedral has embarked on this development endeavor with careful consideration and extensive planning. Therefore, if the Landmarks Preservation Commission concedes that the Cathedral's development volumes and restrictions are adequate, I am more than willing to support this decision."

On June 17, 2003, the Landmarks Preservation Commission voted to landmark only the main cathedral building and another structure on the site, not the entire Close. But development opponents didn't learn of Ms. Fields' letter until Sept. 23, 2003, during a City Council committee hearing to approve the commission's decision.

During the hearing, Councilman Bill Perkins, whose district includes St. John's, grilled Landmarks Preservation Commission representative Diane Jackier about the fact that she had cited Board 9, preservationists, Ms. Fields and others as supporters of the limited landmark designation. Ms. Jackier later conceded during testimony that many of those groups actually favored landmarking the entire Close, but produced Ms. Fields' letter supporting some development on the site.

"In general, the board is outraged by this whole business," board member Walter South told The Observer . "[Ms. Fields' new position] wouldn't have come out if it hadn't been for the hearing.

"We're talking about what to do next," Mr. South said. "Certainly [St. John's] has the right to do whatever they want. They may get a building, but they're certainly going to get a black eye."

Mr. Willson, Ms. Fields' spokesman, insisted that there was nothing underhanded about the revised recommendation.

"After meeting with the cathedral, they made a very powerful case on behalf of their fiscal needs and their ability to develop more of the site," Mr. Willson said. "There was no attempt to hide our position …. The essence of our position is that these two main buildings be preserved, and that has not changed."

Ms. Kent of Board 9 questioned, however, whether Ms. Fields' recommendation would hold any sway with Councilman Perkins and the other subcommittee members, given Councilman Perkins' attacks on the landmarks commission during the Sept. 23 hearing.

The Daily News reported on Sept. 24 that Councilman Perkins had suggested at the hearing that a "corrupt practice" was involved in the landmarks commission's decision on St. John's, and that committee chairman Simcha Felder tabled a vote on the matter until later this month.

"If [Ms. Fields] honestly believed … that the commission was right, that this was the great opportunity to improve a landmark, then for heaven's sakes, go and publicly campaign for it," Ms. Kent told The Observer. "But this was not a public position she took. It was providing a favor in a letter."

-Brandt Gassman

Oct. 8: Board 6, New York Medical Center, 550 First Avenue, Classroom A, 7 p.m., 212-319-3750.

Oct. 9: Board 5, Fashion Institute of Technology, 227 West 27th Street, Building A, eighth floor, 6 p.m., 212-465-0907.

Strings Are Attached The members of Community Board 3 have never been sympathetic toward lower Manhattan's largest nonprofits trolling for space in their neighborhood. Their opposition to such development runs so deep that when a major city nonprofit announced last month that it would put its Lower East Side facility on the block, the board moved to explicitly prevent the property from being swallowed up by a Cooper Union or an N.Y.U.-two of the neighborhood's most formidable nonprofit developers.

In early July, the Boys' Club of New York-a citywide nonprofit akin to the YMCA-sent a letter to parents stating that it planned to close its facility on Pitt Street in the Lower East Side because of lagging enrollment in its programs.

Bradley Zervas, the club's executive director, later told The Observer that the club also felt the Pitt Street building was redundant because a second Boys' Club facility is located on East 10th Street, about 12 blocks north.

But when Board 3 caught wind of the plan, its members unanimously passed a resolution at their July 29 meeting asking that the building only be sold to a neighborhood-based nonprofit in need of space. In addition, the resolution specifically asked the Boys' Club not to sell to a larger nonprofit or a commercial developer, even if it meant selling the building below market value.

"It's pretty straightforward," Board 3 chair Harvey Epstein told The Observer . "We're a gentrifying neighborhood that still has a number of low-income families and individuals. We want to make sure that whatever happens to the property, it maintains its community services."

The board and its allies (such as New York City Councilwoman Margarita Lopez), who hope to restrict the sale of the property, have some legal requirements working in their favor. But the complex nature of the land deal that originally made way for the facility has led to some disagreement between the board and the club about the club's specific obligations to the city.

In late 1984, the Boys' Club bought six adjacent lots at the corner of East Houston Street and Pitt Street and combined them into a single property in order to build its facility. While four of the six lots were bought privately on the open market, two lots were owned by the city and were sold to the club by the Department of Housing Preservation and Development. As a result, that section of the land has certain restrictions: According to H.P.D. documents, it must always be owned and operated by a nonprofit, and it cannot be sold without H.P.D.'s approval.

When Councilwoman Lopez and board members looked into the protections, however, they discovered some loopholes that, according to Barden Prisant, chair of Board 3's committee on housing and land use, the July 29 resolution attempts to close.

For one, no law or document specifies the kind of nonprofit that can buy the building, fueling concerns within the board that a Cooper Union or an N.Y.U. might vie for the space, Mr. Prisant said. And if the Boys' Club was in need of cash and couldn't earn enough from selling to a small nonprofit, H.P.D. could permit a sale to the highest bidder-even if that meant selling to a private developer.

While such scenarios are long shots-Mr. Zervas told Board 3 that enrollment and redundancy were the issues, not funding-the board wanted to cover all of its bases, Mr. Prisant said.

"Just about any nonprofit could come in and buy it, and there's not a lot of love lost between Board 2 and 3 and certain nonprofits in the area," Mr. Prisant told The Observer. "We had no inkling from H.P.D. … that they would consider that. We just see it as a possibility."

The Boys' Club must find a way to meet its obligations to H.P.D. while also reaping the largest possible profit from the land it privately purchased, Mr. Zervas said. The club intends to put the proceeds from the sale of the Pitt Street building toward one of the other three facilities it owns or, in the long term, to finance the construction of an entirely new facility in a neighborhood that lacks a club.

"There is still some work to do in terms of clarifying what we are going to do with the entire footprint," Mr. Zervas said of the sale. "But we want to do what's absolutely right by the City of New York."

Councilwoman Lopez and Board 3 members are arguing, however, that the entire Boys' Club property (not just the portion bought from the city) is subject to legal restrictions that would strictly limit a sale to a nonprofit. The footprint is located on a block that, in 1975, was designated by the city as the Pueblo Nuevo Urban Renewal Area, according to H.P.D. documentation. The Pueblo Nuevo restrictions, similar to the deed's restrictions, state that the land must be used for a community facility and cannot be sold without H.P.D.'s approval.

"It wasn't [sold] to the Boys' Club to do whatever they wanted," Board 3's Mr. Epstein said of the land. "It was [sold] to the Boys' Club to provide a community service."

Virginia Gliedman, an H.P.D. spokeswoman, told The Observer that there is no chance of a private developer purchasing the land because the urban-renewal restrictions are explicit and broader than those in the deed.

"The urban-renewal plan is the coin of the realm," she said. "It doesn't matter who owns the land."

Councilwoman Lopez, who backed the club's deal with H.P.D. in the 1980's when she was a member of Board 3, said that she will do everything in her power to get the property into the hands of a neighborhood organization like the Girls' Club of New York, which she would like to see buy the property.

She also countered the club's claim that there weren't enough children in the neighborhood to warrant its services, saying that the club failed to advertise itself and recruit. (According to 2000 census figures, children between 5 and 18 make up 16.23 percent of the population in the lower East Side's 10002 ZIP code.)

"Now that we need [the Boys' Club] the most, they are leaving? That is not right," Councilwoman Lopez told The Observer . "But that doesn't mean that we are going to agree to allow the building to be used for something that our community doesn't need."

-Brandt Gassman

Mr. Postman, a protégé of Marshall McLuhan and the author of such books as Amusing Ourselves to Death , is considered one of the country's foremost media educators and was a key architect of N.Y.U.'s communications department. He has spent 41 years at N.Y.U., the last 13 years as chairman of the department. He intends to remain as chair until a new department head is found-he'll be sharing the role with faculty member Deborah Borisoff-and will continue to teach afterward.

"I've been chair for 13 years, and I did what I was hoping to do, which was help make the department into what it has become," Mr. Postman said. "We've hired a lot of new people, and the department has grown tremendously. Now the idea is to get a chair with different energies and points of view who can take it in a new direction."

Mr. Postman's decision comes on the heels of Tom Goldstein's spring 2002 departure as the dean of Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism. Columbia recently-and controversially-suspended its search for a new J-school dean after Lee C. Bollinger, the new university president, decided the school should first re-evaluate its focus and priorities.

The twin departures of Mr. Goldstein and Mr. Postman mean that N.Y.U. and Columbia are likely to be in competition for talent. Though Columbia and N.Y.U. have different academic ideologies, both schools are considered among the country's finest for journalism and media education, respectively.

"I think it's quite likely that Columbia and N.Y.U. will end up tussling over certain people," said one N.Y.U. faculty member. "There aren't that many folks out there who fit the bill."

And the rivalry between Columbia and N.Y.U. may become more intense if the former school shifts-as has been speculated following Mr. Bollinger's announcement-to a more academically oriented journalism program. Already there have been defections: Recently Todd Gitlin, a well-known media-ecology, sociology and journalism professor, announced that he was leaving N.Y.U. for Columbia.

N.Y.U. has known about Mr. Postman's departure as chairman for some time. Two years ago, insiders at the communications department quietly began to discuss life after Mr. Postman, who had just started his 11th year as chair. The idea of a department leader other than Mr. Postman was hard for some of his colleagues to swallow, given his status and unusually long career at the school. Mr. Postman founded the department's media-ecology program in 1970 at the suggestion of McLuhan, his friend and mentor.

Under Mr. Postman's guidance, the program grew in size and prestige, catapulting Mr. Postman from obscure academic to prolific "technoprophet" by the time he took over as chair in 1989. The program Mr. Postman created as a tiny, family-like graduate collective had ballooned into a group of over 1,000 undergraduates and graduates by the year 2000.

But some faculty members said that the program had outgrown Mr. Postman's casual, paternal style of leadership. "It was like a small town that suddenly discovers it's a city," said Mr. Gitlin. "You can't run it out of the mayor's back room anymore."

To date, there has been no official announcement from N.Y.U. about Mr. Postman's decision. But in late July, an ad appeared in The New York Times announcing a search for a chair and senior faculty member for N.Y.U.'s Department of Culture and Communication. Though no front-runners have surfaced to date, faculty sources at N.Y.U. believe that Ann Marcus, the dean of the Steinhardt School of Education and the person who will oversee the search, would like to snare a well-known outsider for the job.

"She is quite sensitive to that fact, and would definitely like to get somebody very visible and assert the school's interest in keeping the department a high-profile department," one N.Y.U. professor said.

Ms. Marcus declined to specify potential candidates. But faculty members pointed to the scope of N.Y.U.'s advertised search as evidence that university officials aren't interested in picking from within. While N.Y.U. regularly places job ads in academic trade papers like The Chronicle of Higher Education as well as The Times , several professors said that chair searches rarely appear in these listings-and then only when a university wants to attract an elite candidate.

But not everyone thinks that a media mogul or star academic is ultimately going to get the N.Y.U. job. In an interview with The Observer , Mr. Postman said the department needed someone who could cope with the program's administrative burden rather than an intellectual icon.

"If you go back 15 years, when we were trying to establish what we stood for, it helped to have a chair who was well-known," Mr. Postman said. He added: "If you find someone who publishes a lot, is well-known and respected, and then also is a good manager … that's something special."

Mr. Postman acknowledged that a rivalry between the Department of Culture and Communication and the Graduate School of Journalism was not out of the question. Only a year ago, the idea of Columbia's journalism school and N.Y.U.'s communications department vying for star faculty would have seemed unlikely. Although both programs are well-known and well-respected, the former was largely a boot camp for young writers and editors, while the latter was a breeding ground for future academics.

It is a difference in purpose that some, including Ms. Marcus, maintain still exists.

"We're preparing thinkers and scholars. We really hope that our doctoral candidates will become faculty members," Ms. Marcus said. "We're not aspiring in the direction of preparing practitioners."

This is why Mr. Bollinger's July 23 announcement about suspending Columbia's search raised certain eyebrows at N.Y.U. Citing a "yawning gulf between the various visions of what a modern school of journalism ought to be," Mr. Bollinger said he would convene a task force to examine the school's academic mission.

Though Mr. Bollinger didn't get into specifics, those inside and outside Columbia have speculated that the new dean wants to move the school in a more academic direction. It also led faculty at N.Y.U. to think that their school may soon find itself in competition for talent with Columbia. "Before Bollinger made his position clear, I would have thought that the two places ran no risk of competing with each other," one N.Y.U. faculty member said.

Columbia officials insist that no conclusions have been made about the journalism school's direction. But in the wake of Mr. Bollinger's announcement, acting J-school dean David Klatell made a statement reassuring alumni and students that writing, reporting and editing would remain the foundation of the program.

Until Mr. Bollinger called off the search, Columbia officials were seriously considering two prominent journalists to head the journalism school: Alex S. Jones, from Harvard University's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, and James Fallows, The Atlantic Monthly 's national correspondent. Mr. Klatell told The Observer that Mr. Bollinger had dinner with both candidates and explained his decision to them, but that neither one was actually out of the running.

Could either Mr. Jones or Mr. Fallows surface at N.Y.U.? While Ms. Marcus said she hadn't spoken to Mr. Fallows or Mr. Jones, several N.Y.U. professors said that neither would have any trouble fitting in at the communications department. Mr. Jones has serious ties to academia, namely through Harvard (which N.Y.U. has increasingly competed with), while Mr. Fallows has a high-profile publishing track record. Mark Crispin Miller, a media-ecology professor at N.Y.U., said his students even discussed Mr. Fallows' recent book, Breaking the News .

Meanwhile, uptown, a group of professors in the Columbia journalism school now wonder if Mr. Bollinger's committee will propose changes to attract students who might otherwise enroll in communications schools.

"I can't really think of anyone in the school who would like us to be like N.Y.U., or for that matter any other communications program," one Columbia journalism professor said. "But some of us are resigned to the fact that any changes will have less to do with pure journalism, and more to do with very scholarly pursuits like those going on in media ecology. My guess is that they basically want us to churn out more academics."

Mr. Postman said he wouldn't mind such a change, even if his department has to work harder to snare students and faculty.

"I'm glad to see our friends at Columbia are starting to think that way," he said.

DavidGilmartin,thetownattorneyfor Southampton, which has jurisdiction in East Quogue, said that a group of 10 or 11 share houses along Jeffrey Place and Laura Court "are wreaking havoc in the neighborhood," and that the Town Board has authorized him to "commence enforcement action" against them.

"We're bringing a lawsuit against the owners and the people in the house to force them to come into compliance with the town code," Mr. Gilmartin told The Observer .

Town codes prevent the operation of share houses in the quiet hamlet on the western end of that trendy stretch of Long Island's south shore loosely known as "the Hamptons." But that didn't prevent Josh Sagman, a proprietor of one of the houses, from putting himself and his place at Jeffrey Lane front-and-center in Ms. Kopple's documentary.

According to lawyers for Mr. Sagman's neighbors, the house at 6 Jeffrey Lane is owned by a corporate entity called JBJ Enterprises. The three principals in the company-Josh Sagman, Brandon Estrin and Jason Kovar-are also the principals in another business venture called Perfect Oxygen, purveyors of shots of scented pure oxygen for consumption at bars and clubs.

Calls to Perfect Oxygen to reach Mr. Sagman were not immediately returned. Gary Henkus, who was listed as a contact for 6 Jeffrey Lane on the Web site, summershares.com, declined to comment on the status of the share house.

Last summer, Messrs. Sagman, Estrin and Kovar rented shares in the house and advertised a vigorous social schedule stretching from the May 27 "Color War" ice-breaker ("Included will be sports, drinking events, and maybe even a little nudity … hahaha-Hosted by Josh Sagman," the Web announcement reads) to the Labor Day "Jamaican Me Crazy" reggae party.

Rarely enforced town codes did not seem to put a damper on things, from the looks of Ms. Kopple's documentary.

"People always get taken to court for the parking, or if they're throwing a party late-night," said David Shapiro, a longtime Southampton resident. "They don't actually take people to court for overoccupancy. You have to really piss them off to get them to do that."

Consider it done. But just being pissed off won't be enough to enable the town to morph into a gentle gerontocracy. Part of the problem, according to Quogue mayor Thelma Georgeson, is that it's difficult to prove that something is a share house.

"We allow six unrelated persons to rent a house," Ms. Georgeson explained. So proving that there are more people renting than that can be difficult. "Every Memorial Day weekend, we do our patrol to see which houses are share houses," Ms. Georgeson explained. "You pretty soon know which ones they are. But the burden of proof is on us that this is a share house, and that's difficult to do."

That won't stop neighbors and town officials from trying.

Watching the matter closely are Mr. Sagman's Quogue neighbors, who have retained Southampton attorney Lisa Kombrink to represent them.

According to Ms. Kombrink, as of May 28 shares were still being offered in the Jeffrey Lane house for this summer through a Web site, 6jeffreylane.com. On that site, the ad explained that the house was being sponsored for the summer by Tanqueray and Moët & Chandon.

But that Web site has since been taken down, and according to Patti Schickram, a spokeswoman for both spirit manufacturers, the sponsorship was a hoax to begin with.

"Don't believe the hype," she said. "We were not in any way a sponsor of those houses. We had nothing to do with it."

Local brokers are even starting to think twice about facilitating share houses for rent or purchase. Frank Austria, an associate broker at JBG Realty in East Quogue, said they cause brokers too much of a headache to be worthwhile.

"Summer is a nuisance, really," he said. "With a sale, you do it once, you're done. With rentals, there's always someone complaining. There's always somebody getting drunk and making it miserable for everybody else."

If that sounds good to you, however, there are still shares in the house available on summersharehouse.com, which describes a nine-bedroom manse with six and a half bathrooms, a pool, a tennis court, a basketball court, a volleyball court, a pool table-and that famous 12-person Jacuzzi you saw in the documentary.

Your name on the town's suit is complimentary.

Still licking his wounds after his stunning K.O. at the hands of fellow heavyweight Lennox Lewis, Mike Tyson has retreated to his corner-and he's unlikely to find another roost soon.

Not long after The Observer reported that Mr. Tyson put in a bid on a $10.75 million canary-yellow townhouse on East 64th Street, figuring that if he emerged victorious in Memphis, the payday would cover both his myriad debts as well as his proffer for a little piece of the Upper East Side, other reports began to emerge. Mr. Tyson was said to be eyeing a spread in Denmark and, more recently, Crocodile Dundee star Paul Hogan's Cedar Springs estate in Byron Bay, Australia. Even that place, with its relatively modest price tag, however-for $4.5 million, you get a mansion on 325 acres of beachfront land, where Iron Mike could indulge his storied love of zoo animals with the freely roaming wallabies and black cockatoos-appears out of reach for Mr. Tyson, as press reports have indicated that the owner of that place also thought the purchase was dependent on Mr. Tyson knocking out Mr. Lewis.

As for the Upper East Side townhouse, Mr. Tyson's interest there seems to have evaporated faster than you can say "no rematch."

"I haven't heard from him," said Austrian developer Peter Cervinka, who received a bid from Mr. Tyson on the East 64th Street house last month. "But I guess since he lost, it's my assumption that we won't hear from him again."

At the end of two three-day shoppingsprees in Paris,NewYork investment banker Robert Novogratz and his wife Cortneyhadenough bootytofillsix storageunitsin Chel-sea. Their take included a huge 300-year-oldcircular windowfroma crumbling French cathedral; an enormous analog clock from a Parisian train station; and an antique set of stained-glass double doors.

The idea was to decorate their new Soho townhouse at 24 Thompson Street in a style as eclectic and funky as the neighborhood-a neighborhood in which there are only a handful of townhouses to begin with.

Thirty-five subcontractors later and their mission accomplished, Mr. Novogratz and his wife have put the place on the market for $8.9 million. They're hoping to repeat the process as soon as possible.

"It's both a business and it's become our passion," said Mr. Novogratz, who, in a partnership with his wife and a professional draftsman, designed this townhouse from the ground up, starting in November 2000. It had always been their plan to sell it off as soon as they'd had their fun decorating it.

"It's a ton of fun to go to Paris with a nice-sized check and buy what you want," Mr. Novogratz said.

That check was made possible by their past forays into real estate. Five years ago, they gut-renovated a place in Chelsea, and about two years ago they did the same to 22 Thompson Street, the house right next-door to this one. And as they renovate more and more places-the rent on the first two townhouses is enough to cover the mortgages on them "three times over"-their budget for new construction gets higher and higher.

"We just got a bigger budget and got more creative and funkier as we went," said Mr. Novogratz.

Now they're ready to sell this place-and parlay the profits into an even more ambitious project.

It all began as a hobby for the Novogratzes, but quickly turned into a 30-hour-a-week undertaking. During his lunch break, Mr. Novogratz would jog from Wall Street to Thompson Street to direct construction. On the weekends, he and his wife would scour the city for hidden or overlooked treasures. All this while the two were looking after their four children-including one set of twins.

The five-story townhouse-on Thompson Street right off Grand Street-has a gray cement façade, approximately 5,000 square feet of space indoors and a 1,000-square-foot roof terrace. None of the ceilings are lower than 15 feet, and the walls have been done in warm shades of yellow, salmon, pink and blue. The first floor feels the most cramped, as it shares space with a one-car garage and a small patio. But the second-floor kitchen and dining area sprawls luxuriously across an open-floor plan, an 18-foot-long bar accentuating the room's outsize length. Light pours in through that 300-year-old cathedral window on one side, and three arched window-doors span the width of the other. The Novogratzes salvaged upwards of 10,000 Minten tiles from a decaying old cancer hospital on West 94th Street and hired a mosaic specialist to re-plaster them on their kitchen floor.

The children's floor, two levels above, has a working pinball machine and an impressive phalanx of ceramic ball-players and action heroes with bouncing heads. There's more for the kids: The fifth floor has a children's playroom, nanny's quarters and laundry facilities, as well as another huge circular cathedral window. The terrace level has Moroccan-style light fixtures and offers 270-degree views of lower and upper Manhattan.

Does Mr. Novogratz feel any pang of regret now that he's selling the place that he and his wife worked so hard to perfect?

"You hate giving up a great place like this," he said. "But to be able to do that again is worth it."

Sara Gelbard, Meredith Hatfield and Joseph Dwyer of the Corcoran Group have the exclusive listing.

upper east side

51 East 78th Street

Two-bedroom, two-bathroom co-op.

Asking: $775,000. Selling: $785,000.

Maintenance: $895; 43 percent tax-deductible.

Time on the market: four weeks.

TROMPE L'OEIL TRADER This Wall Street trader spent his down time upgrading from armchair carpenter to woodworking craftsman, installing staircases, arched-barrel ceilings and hardwood floors-with his bare hands-in this turn-of-the-century first-floor duplex (with a patio garden) on 78th Street off Madison Avenue. "It wasn't an apartment," said Halstead senior vice president Louise Phillips, the exclusive agent on the deal, by way of complimenting the trader's handiwork. "You could tell it was somebody's home." Little grace notes weren't beyond his ken, either: To dress up the cabinet concealing a Murphy bed, he bought a load of vintage books at the Strand, sawed off the spine ends and glued them onto the wall to create a trompe l'oeil bookcase. When it came time for the seller to depart from the old clubhouse, finding the right person to appreciate his work turned out to be a matter of luck. The buyer, another Wall Street guy, hadn't even considered the East Side, but after he'd lost several bidding wars across the park, his fiancée (who saw an item about this apartment in The New York Times ) dragged him over to take a look. Her intended was surprised at what he saw there: It definitely wasn't the froufrou Mario Buatta feel he'd expected. "It was masculine," said Ms. Phillips of the dark, heavy woodwork. "But it was done with tender, loving care. You could soften it up easily." Which is why these two quickly placed a bid-and this time, won.

east village

14 East Fourth Street (the Silk Building)

One-bedroom, two-bathroom condo.

Asking: $899,000. Selling: $899,000.

Charges: $705. Taxes: $570.

Time on the market: four months.

THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT When the buyers of this East Village apartment fled their old place near Ground Zero, they were forced to abandon most of their prized orchid collection, but were hoping to find a place that would allow them to start growing again. Anna Hetzel, a sales agent with William B. May, immediately thought of a 1,250-square-foot triplex condo at the Silk Building (where Britney Spears lives) whose top floor had a greenhouse. "It was really important for them to have this outdoor space," said Ms. Hetzel. The apartment has an odd configuration: The master bedroom is on the first floor, the living room and kitchen are on the second. A winding staircase from that floor leads to the garden level above. The buyers-they're in their late 20's; he's an investment banker, she's a freelance multimedia consultant-aren't feeling the apartment's prewar frills. So they plan to do away with the wood paneling and delicate moldings, and bring in a little bare, sheer, stainless-steel modernity. Edward Ferris of William B. May worked with Ms. Hetzel on the deal.

brooklyn heights

28 Old Fulton Street (the Eagle Warehouse)

Two-bedroom, two-bathroom co-op.

Asking: $619,000. Selling: $601,500.

Maintenance: $916; 50 percent tax-deductible.

Time on the market: two months.

HEARTHLESS Before a developer carved apartment units out of this Brooklyn Heights warehouse in 1980, the building served as a storage facility for The Brooklyn Eagle , which was published daily for 114 years, until 1955. Writing about the building for The New York Times in 1995, Christopher Gray said, "This medieval brick fortress recalls the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, with a massive entry arch, barred windows and a machicolated cornice." Apartments in the seven-story building have high ceilings, exposed wooden beams and gorgeous views of the river and the Manhattan skyline beyond-and electric stoves. The couple in their early 30's who bought the place "loved it so much, but when they saw it didn't have gas stoves, they almost didn't buy it," said Jim Rigney, a vice president with the Corcoran Group. Desperate to resolve their dilemma, the couple found an electric contraption that mimics the heating action of a gas stove. "If you can get to the moon, I guess you can get an electric stove that heats up similar to gas," said a puzzled Mr. Rigney.