The 20-story office tower, designed by Buchman and Fox Architects, rose in 1909, when America's railroad network was still growing and the auto industry was booming (and airplanes were a mere curiosity). One of the founders of the Denver and the Rio Grande Railway, English physician William A. Bell, came to acquire 303 Fifth Avenue five years later.

He got it in exchange for a Westchester suburb.

In 1899, shortly after selling his shares in the Rio Grande company, Bell was approached by John Brisbane Walker, an American investor who owned a steam engine factory on a 165-acre site in Northern Tarrytown, Westchester, and was looking for a partner. Between October 1899 and June 1901, Bell invested $100,000 in the Mobile Company of America and the Philipse Manor Company, named for an estate on the property, according to historian Bernard J. Lillis.

The popularity of the "gasoline carriage" would completely overshadow the steam engine in the next couple of years, forcing the Mobile Company of America to halt production and sell the 10-acre factory site to the Maxwell Briscoe Motor Company in 1903. A year later, Bell paid Walker $200,000 for his stake in the Philipse Manor Company and set out to turn the property into one of New York City's first true suburbs.

In the spring of 1903, the Philipse Manor Company released its first promotional booklet for potential investors. "The whole tendency of modern life is to acquire a home where all the attractive features of country life may be obtainable with quick transit to the city office," the 30-page pamphlet read.

Bell assembled a group of British investors, bought some surrounding parcels of land and began work on infrastructure in 1905, building 3.5 miles of roads and five miles of sidewalks and installing sewage, water and electricity systems. Construction of the 26 prebuilt homes in Philipse Manor began in 1909. But, like the steam engine plant, Bell's investment was not successful, according to his great-grandson, Nicholas Bell, 303 Fifth Avenue's current owner.

Still, he appeared to be ahead of a trend, not behind it.

"He was trying to make an attractive suburban community for people who wanted to move out of New York, but it was really the early days of commuting," Mr. Bell said in a phone interview last week. "He was struggling to sell the properties because they were larger than people wanted. Now Philipse Manor is much like my grandfather envisioned it."

By 1913, the Philipse Manor Company had sold only six homes and several undeveloped parcels. "It appears that the company misread the market," Mr. Lillis wrote in an article that originally appeared in the Westchester Historian, "building houses that were too large and too expensive. By the time this had been recognized, it was too late, and the increasing financial difficulties meant Dr. Bell was looking for a way out."

That way out was 303 Fifth Avenue. The story goes that Bell met a man named Campbell Carrington on the train and agreed to swap the would-be Westchester suburb for the newish Manhattan building. The two men had never met before, and only about $50,000 in cash changed hands.

Carrington and a group of bondholders bought 303 Fifth Avenue out of auction for $2.1 million in June 1913, The New York Times reported, after the original developer Henry Corn defaulted on it, as well as several other properties, in 1912. Its largest tenant at the time was the Schwarz Company.

Corn had taken a $1.3 million mortgage with the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company to purchase two plots on the northeast corner of 31st and Fifth in January 1909 (just as construction at Philipse Manor began). He paid $1.25 million for the land at 303 and 305 Fifth Avenue, where he planned to build a 20-story building. The project would cost a total of $2.5 million.

In January 1914, The Times reported that Mr. Carrington and the bondholders had reached a deal to sell the property to an unknown buyer for $2.2 million in January 1914. "In part payment," Bell transferred ownership of Philipse Manor to Carrington and his associates. (Carrington did not hold on to all of Philipse Manor for long. The Times reported in May 1915 that the 303 Fifth Avenue Corporation sold a 17-acre plot overlooking the Hudson River to the Chevrolet Motor Company.)

THE BELL FAMILY HAS owned the 100-year-old 303 Fifth Avenue for all but five years of its history. "It was difficult in the 1930s," Nicholas Bell said. "We were having trouble paying the mortgage. It's been up and down since then."

Mr. Bell, who like his great-grandfather is based in England, flirted with the idea of working with a local partner to renovate the building in 2000, but ultimately chose not to. "If we'd gone with a developer, he might have wanted to increase borrowing and do the construction very quickly," he said. "A lot of local investors wanted to be incentived and wanted an equity interest. We had had two other equity investors in the past, and, in one case, it had led to litigation."

The case ultimately settled and the Bell family bought out its former partners.

The slump in the early 1990s also took its toll as well, and, since January, the property has suffered from the latest downturn.

Occupancy at 303 Fifth has dropped 12 percent from last year, when the building was 100 percent leased, according to leasing manager Richard Chieffo. The building has always catered to smaller tenants, in the 400- to 700-square-foot range, though the initial popularity with fashion and design companies that earned it the nickname the Jewelry Building has lately given way to a more buttoned-up roster of law and accounting firms.

The 200 current tenants pay an average of $38 a square foot, Mr. Chieffo said, and leasing activity has started to pick up in the past few weeks. "I know there are a lot of buildings in the city that are sitting on 25- to 30-percent-vacant units, but we're holding up at 12 percent."

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Together, the bills will end what has essentially been a three-year, amicable custody battle between the Times Square Alliance and the Bryant Park Management Corporation for management of the Durst Organization's midtown gem, the Bank of America tower at One Bryant Park.

It took Durst more than 40 years to cobble together the 32 different parcels on 42nd Street between Avenue of the Americas and Seventh Avenue. When the lots were combined in 2004, the new site included ground located in both BIDs, though certain lots did not fall into either.

"We knew it would be split between two bids, but we didn't know how that would work," Douglas Durst, co-president of the Durst Organization, told The Commercial Observer. "It was a very torturous process to get it all worked out. It should have been simple."

Durst agreed to pay half of its annual $300,000 assessment to Bryant Park and half to the Times Square Alliance. In 2007, One Bryant Park became the 25th property under the management of the Bryant Park BID, and generates $150,000 of the BID's gross annual revenue. The City Council is currently reviewing the Times Square Alliance's amended district plans and will vote on them in the next few weeks. Once the plans are approved, the BID will also earn an additional $150,000 annually.

"It's unusual because most buildings are not split between two BIDs, but it was agreed that the building decided to support both the Bryant Park Management Corporation and Times Square Alliance," Dan Biederman, the president of the Bryant Park Management Corp., said. "Bryant Park's paperwork and approvals went through one and a half years ago, but Times Square's is just going through now. So [Durst] has already been supporting Bryant Park for the last year or two, to the tune of about $150,000."

The agreement is the best of both worlds for the landlord. "There are benefits to being in both BIDs," said Durst spokesman Jordan Barowitz. "The Times Square Alliance has security patrollers within their BID and Bryant Park does not. So by being partially within Times Square, we get the benefit of their security."

THE BATTLE OF THE BIDs could be the last chapter of the Dursts' development within the Times Square area. The organization, then led by the late Seymour Durst and his brothers, first shifted its attention west in the 1960s after helping pioneer development along Third Avenue. "We felt that while the East Side remains prestigious, it will do no more than get older," Seymour Durst told The New York Times in a 1969 profile. "There are only about 10 or a dozen office building sites left from the East River to Sixth Avenue. When those are filled, new building will be very spasmodic. So we've exchanged our sites, mostly on Third Avenue, for West Side sites. I used to say Fifth Avenue is too far west. Now I say Fifth Avenue is too far east."

But the West Side area around Times Square, envisioned for a sort of "Rockefeller Center South," was not the most desirable spot in Gotham. "The area was very rough then," Douglas Durst, Seymour's son, said. "It used to have all sorts of unsavory massage parlors with men handing out fliers, saying, ‘Check it out, check it out.'"

His father set out to build 10 office buildings on Sixth Avenue from 42nd to 47th streets on the Avenue of the Americas in the mid-1960s. Seymour Durst told The Times in 1969 that he had just finished the four-year job of assembling a 160,000-square-foot block-front on 42nd between Ninth and 10th avenues and was preparing to move the company's headquarters from the Lorillard Building at 42nd and Third to the new 49-story tower under construction at 1133 Avenue of the Americas. Also in the late 1960s, Durst paid $10 million for a site on Broadway between 44th and 45th streets; earlier, it had bought the first two plots for the future One Bryant Park, White's Seafood Restaurant and the Hotel Diplomat.

Though Seymour Durst told The Times he had no immediate plans to develop the companies' West Side properties then-the 160,000-square-foot site would take between 15 and 20 years alone to develop, he estimated-the younger Durst said the firm had almost completed a deal on the site of what would become One Bryant Park when the economy crashed.

"We put most of it together by 1970 or 1971," Mr. Durst said. "But then we had to give up a number of the properties in 1970s because of the recession. We finally put it together again in 2004."

One Bryant Park was not the only one of Durst's projects that was scuttled-all that remains of the vision for Rockefeller Center South is a copy of the plan at Durst's office-but it was by far the most difficult to get back on track. Between 1973 and 2003, Durst slowly bought back some of the parcels the company lost in the early 1970s. Along the way, countless deals with holdouts have fallen through; the city flirted with the idea of condemning parts of 42nd Street; and prices skyrocketed.

"One of the pieces that we gave up in the 1970s we paid $650,000 for," Mr. Durst recalled. "When we bought it again in the 1990s, it was $6 million."

BY 1999, DURST HAD regained control of 85 percent of the block from 42nd Street between Sixth and Seventh avenues, according to The Times' Charles Bagli, who exhaustively chronicled the negotiations surrounding One Bryant Park. In 2003, Durst and Bank of America finally wrested control of the last two parcels of property from Rafi Albert Nasser, Rafi Morris Nasser and Joseph Bernstein, a former ally who had been fighting the company ever since a deal for another parcel of land fell through in 1986, according to The Times. In the end, Durst paid $46 million, or about $384 a square foot, for the two properties, more than twice the price of the most expensive deal on record at the time.

Construction of the 52-story, $1.1 billion building, designed by Cook and Fox Architects, started in 2004. Bank of America occupies about half of the tower. At his wife's suggestion, Mr. Durst opted for the address One Bryant Park over 1111 Sixth Avenue.

The building has had a few hitches-most notably debris falling from the construction site-but they pale beside the process of assembling the site.

"We were very fortunate in getting an incredible market that lasted about a year," Mr. Durst explained of how the recession has impacted leasing at the tower. "When we were building, I said our rents would start with a ‘1' in front of them, and everyone thought that was not possible. We had that when we started leasing. We even had some leases in the $200 range at the end," he said. "That lasted about three weeks, though. Then, as you know, the market disappeared."

Nonetheless, One Bryant Park is 98 percent occupied, Mr. Durst said, and rents are still in the $100s a square foot-"the low $100s," he added. Some of One Bryant Park's tenants have subleased space in the past year, and Durst is building out the 40,000 square feet of vacant space.

Otherwise, the recession has taken little serious toll on the gem. Last May, Durst was even able to refinance the $650 million construction loan it took out in 2004, for $1.27 billion. So far, the deal has been one of the biggest the credit markets have seen since mid-2007, though like everything else at the building, it was the result of a long, drawn-out negotiation, this one involving Durst's five different lenders.

It will likely be one of Douglas Durst's last as co-president of the company his grandfather Joseph started in 1927. After spending more than three decades carefully cobbling his father's vision of Times Square back together, Mr. Durst said he plans to step down when construction of One Bryant Park is finished.

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One of the wisest, most recession-proof acquisitions Van Alen made might be the four plots of land on the southeast corner of Lexington Avenue and 41st Street, now occupied by a 27-story office building designed by Moore and Landsiedel.

Artbilt Realty Corp., the real estate company Van Alen shared with Charles L. Frasier, leased a pair of three-story residential buildings at 370 and 372 Lexington Avenue for $25,000, The New York Times reported on Feb. 26, 1925. Maurice Wertheim, who brokered at least five deals for Van Alen between 1924 and 1927, according to The Times, announced that Artbilt planned to combine the two new lots with two adjacent parcels it already owned and build an office building.

While the 301,000-square-foot building was under construction, Wertheim brokered several other transactions for Van Alen in midtown. Meanwhile, his nearly 20-year marriage to the daughter of Henry Morgenthau, the former Turkish ambassador and later Franklin Roosevelt’s Treasury secretary, was unraveling. Alma Wertheim filed for divorce in Reno, Nev., on Dec. 22, 1929, on the grounds that her “artistic temperament” and her husband’s financial desires were “incompatible,” according to dozens of stories published in newspapers then. “Mrs. Wertheim charged her husband with mental cruelty,” the Associated Press reported on Dec. 26. “She said he showed no appreciation of her feelings but was absorbed entirely in his business. … He sought to dominate her, she said, and at times gave way to outbursts of temper.”

The Wertheims finalized their divorce just over two months after the stock market crash that triggered the Great Depression. The following spring, in 1930, 370 Lexington opened for occupancy.

Within one month, Cushman & Wakefield announced that the building was 66 percent occupied, according to the May 10, 1930, Wall Street Journal. The Delano and Aldrich architecture firm leased 4,500 square feet on the 11th floor, joining tenants like the Blaker Advertising Agency and the Department of Justice, which left its federal office building in Lower Manhattan.

THE ECONOMY IN 1930 was not so different than the climate in September 2008, when Sherwood Equities took over management and leasing of 370 Lexington. 

Sherwood and the SBC Master Pension Trust managed by JP Morgan bought 370 Lexington from Broad Street Development for $155 million and refinanced seven different loans dating back to 1996, with an $80 million mortgage from the Connecticut General Life Insurance Corp.

A joint venture between Broad Street Development and the Dallas-based private-equity fund Crow Holdings Realty bought the building from Jones LaSalle in April 2006 for $97.2 million, in what was its fifth acquisition in less than two years.

Though Sherwood Equities was not impervious to the slump, CEO Jeffrey Katz believes that 370 Lexington is more resistant to economic fluctuations because it caters to an underserved market of tenants.

“Whether you were renting 5,000 square feet or 500 square feet, even if people needed to move, they were waiting for the market to hit bottom,” he told The Commercial Observer. “But we found that the demand for high-quality small space in the Grand Central district is stronger than what you’re hearing about for the rest of the market … When you are looking for a [220- to 300-square-foot] space, you’re really relegated to what’s left over.

“One reason we’ve bought it,” Mr. Katz added, “is because it is impossible to make more buildings like this. The break-even number [to build a new office building in midtown] is $100 per square foot. We are dealing with a commodity, the supply of which cannot be increased at that price.” 

Under Broad Street’s management, occupancy rose from 75 percent to 92 percent. In 2007, rental income was $10,760,648, according to PropertyShark. Despite the stagnant leasing market, Sherwood invested $24 million in capital improvements to woo new tenants in the underserved 3,000- to 1,000-square-foot market. Sherwood upgraded the building’s retail signage; polished the limestone facade; installed a new ventilation system on the ground floor to eradicate the smell of baking bread that wafted from Zaro’s Breadbasket and Subway into the lobby; and successfully campaigned to have an unsightly pay phone outside the main entrance moved around the block.

THE CHANGES HAVE ALREADY paid dividends.

“I think because we cater to the smaller user, we’re actually benefiting from all the downsizing that’s occurring out there in the marketplace,” said Jill Burrowes, 370 Lexington’s on-site broker. She was sitting in the conference room of a 1,600-square-foot unit that was recently vacated, ahead of schedule, by a defunct advertising agency. “All these large firms that are downsizing or are paying $90-per-square-foot rent with views overlooking Central Park and are now more concentrated on self-preservation, when they see a quality building and we’re charging $45 or $50, it’s just a more logical process.” 

Sherwood has leased a total of 46,000 square feet, the majority of which are new leases, since buying the property in September 2008. The asking rents are in the mid-$50s, but Ms. Burrowes said deals are closing in the mid-$40s.

On Sept. 28, they closed their 22nd lease of the past 12 months. The Zacchia Law Group P.C. will in December relocate from 441 Lexington Avenue to a 1,327-square-foot unit on, oddly enough, the 22nd floor. Other new leases signed since last September include the legal department of Napster—yes, that one—for 1,800 square feet on the 19th floor in December; Heineken Americas on the 24th floor; and the hedge fund service provider Meridian Fund Services, which renewed and nearly doubled its size by expanding into an additional 1,542 square feet of prebuilt space, for a total of 4,890 square feet.

The occupancy rate is currently 93 percent, but Mr. Katz, Sherwood’s CEO, has noticed that tenants who waited on the sidelines for the leasing market to bottom out last year have become increasingly anxious to close long-term deals before prices rebound.

“Brokers are telling their clients we’ve hit bottom and now there is a sense that you’ve got to move now because things might be much more expensive a year from now,” he said. “The way that deals are happening now are a little more favorable to the landlord. I hate to get ahead of things and say it’s a landlord’s market, but things are shifting that way.” 

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“Manhattan Island is in the process of remaking,” Smith told an audience of almost 2,000 people. “It has been, in a sense, sent to the laundry for cleansing and for patching up, but all this is with a view to a better Manhattan than ever. … This is the new midtown section, stabilized as such because it is between two important, immovable things, the Pennsylvania and Grand Central Railroad stations. … I believe this section is firmly fixed as the great business centre.”

The Great Depression was nearing its second year by the time construction at 350 Fifth Avenue began in 1930, but John Jakob Raskob was still intent on surpassing the building Walter Chrysler was erecting down the street.

Incidentally, plans for what would become Rockefeller Center were made public later that winter: “The development … has been called the greatest private building enterprise ever undertaken,” The Times reported on March 15, 1931. “Its central sixty-eight-story office building will have 150,000 more square feet of office space than the Empire State Building.”

Not even finished—completion of its 102 floors would come in May 1931, after only one year and 45 days of construction—the Empire State Building was already the benchmark for Manhattan’s commercial towers. 

By the time, 75 years later, that Anthony Malkin finally wrested control of it from Helmsley-Spear and took over management, it had plunged off the radar, eclipsed by the generally younger, glossier, more modernly apportioned towers several blocks north in midtown proper.

Only 14 percent of the Empire State Building could accommodate full-floor tenants. The rest was divided into 800 separate office units averaging 1,600 square feet apiece, said the building’s leasing manager, Stephen Eynon of CB Richard Ellis. The average rent paid by the 550 tenants was in the mid-$20’s per square foot, below average for midtown south. Workers had to share the fluorescent-lighted lobby with throngs of tourists visiting the observation deck; and the Art Deco murals were concealed under white plastic panels.

“Truth be told, it was not a building that a major corporate tenant would lease,” Grubb & Ellis broker Joel Wexler recalled. “There was a travel agency here, sportswear manufacturer there. In my opinion, there was deferred maintenance, so it wasn’t up to standard. The floors were very old world. Now it’s contemporary. … From my perspective, the Empire State Building has been restored to its original grandeur.”

SINCE TAKING OVER IN 2006, Mr. Malkin, president of Malkin Holdings (he could not be reached for comment), has invested $550 million in upgrades, with new windows, electricity distribution, elevators, bathrooms and hallways. He also hired CBRE to reposition the building to attract blue-chip clients.

The number of tenants has dropped to 298; the average size of a unit has increased to 7,000 square feet; and rents have risen by an average of $15 per square foot, Mr. Eynon said. The consolidation plan is still under way, but by 2011, he expects 35 percent of the building will be full-floor tenancies. The other two-thirds of the building will be divided into 2,500- to 6,000-square-foot units geared to “accounting firms and attorneys from Long Island and New Jersey,” Mr. Eynon said.

Meanwhile, the world’s most famous office building has started to attract some brand-name tenants. In 2008, the Swedish construction company Skanska leased the entire 32nd floor; Brennan Beer Gorman, the architectural firm, moved to the 25th floor in 2007 from 515 Madison Avenue; and the Italian accounting firm Funaro leased the 20,000-square-foot 41st floor.

Cushman & Wakefield broker Michael Burgio, who negotiated the lease on behalf of Funaro, said the choice boiled down to “the location, great views and world-class address.”

Though none of these have changed since Mr. Malkin took over, Mr. Burgio said he would never have considered the Empire State Building for a client five years ago. “The building has transformed,” he said, echoing the assessments of many in commercial real estate. “It’s changed its tenant roster. There are multiple corporate, full-floor tenants. The building did a major renovation, which was a big draw for Funaro.” 
Coty Inc., the international fragrance manufacturer, moved into 90,000 square feet on the 14th and 15th floors that had been occupied by 42 separate tenants, according to Mr. Eynon, in what was then the biggest lease at the Empire State Building since 1961.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation followed last spring, leasing 103,000 square feet on the 12th and 13th floors. The agency sent out 31 requests for proposals for new office space, and, according to public affairs officer Andrew Grey, the Empire State Building was “the best value.”

The F.D.I.C. will move from its Financial District offices to midtown in January. Mr. Grey would not specify the terms of the F.D.I.C.’s lease, but Mr. Eynon said asking rents range anywhere from the high-$40’s to mid-$50’s per foot for high floors.

“What is most satisfying about [the F.D.I.C. lease] is that we are starting to get these sorts of deals on qualitative-type issues,” Mr. Eynon said. “We weren’t just lucky. I mean, they vetted 31 buildings and ended up here. That bodes well for where the building was and where it is now.” 

IT IS STILL 22 percent vacancy, but about 45 percent of that space falls within a defined consolidation program.

No major new leases have been signed since the F.D.I.C.’s in May, but the building has been in talks with a large publishing house, which Mr. Eynon described as a “household name,” since August over a space between 50,000 and 60,000 square feet, and an apparel company has since July shown interest in a 40,000-square-foot space. 

At least three full-floor spaces will come onto the market over the next year, Mr. Eynon said, including the 70th floor, the highest and largest full-floor space in the building.

On Sept. 23, the building hosted a party for 400 brokers to launch the marketing of the 61st floor. One broker who attended the event in the recently demolished space was amazed at the Empire State Building’s turnaround, but was surprised to learn that the asking rent was $60 per square foot. “Anthony Malkin did an incredible job of updating the property,” the broker said. “There needs to be flexibility on the $60 per square foot.”

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The violation was a minor incident compared to the problems that 100 Church has encountered since the autumn of 2001. But it was a fitting end to a particularly bleak week for a building that has been plagued with bad luck.

The day before the DOB’s ill-timed citation, The Observer broke the news that the Sapir Organization had handed over to one of its creditors, SL Green, the management and leasing duties of the 21-story office tower.

Later that afternoon, Crain’s reported that SL Green was foreclosing on 100 Church and had scheduled a private auction for Oct. 15. In 2009, SL Green and Gramercy Capital purchased the bulk of the building’s $85 million mezzanine debt from Sapir’s primary lender, Wachovia. (The Sapir Organization declined to comment for this article and SL Green declined to answer questions about the auction.)

Sapir is not the first developer to default on its loan payments this year, nor is 100 Church the only building to be put on the auction block. But few other commercial properties have such a fraught history.

A BIG, BOXY, glassy structure that occupies one square block of the Financial District, 100 Church was designed by the prestigious firm Emery, Roth & Sons and finished in 1959. Sapir, led by father and son Tamir and Alex Sapir, bought the 1 million–square–foot building in 1997 for $55 million, according to CoStar. Its previous owner, the Church Madison Corporation, filed for bankruptcy in 1994, according to city records.

Since the tower fetched nearly twice that in 1984, it looked like a good deal for the Sapirs. The New York Times reported in August 1984 that Larry Silverstein’s former brother-in-law and partner, Bernard H. Mendik, paid $116.5 million for 100 Church in a joint venture with the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States and the investment banking firm of Allen & Company. Mr. Mendik told The Times that he’d be able to spruce up the shabby tower in three months. “If I have the opportunity to convince tenants that a used Rolls is better than a new Cadillac, I’ll get them,” he said.

At first it looked like the Sapirs’ gamble might pay off. In 1998, Bank of America signed a $65 million lease for six floors.

Then came Sept. 11, 2001. The building was only a few blocks north of the World Trade Center, and the attacks triggered an exodus from 100 Church.

Only three tenants returned after 9/11—one of these, the Jewish Émigré Association, is rumored to be occupying the 16th floor “by the grace of Tamir Sapir himself,” according to an Observer story from March 2009—and the building has remained about 50 percent vacant.

Along the way, brokers have come and gone and prospective tenants have balked. In 2005, a group of toy companies walked, followed by the Omnicom Group in 2007, and Newsweek in 2008.

In 2006, the Sapirs flirted with the idea of a residential conversion, but opted to remodel the interior instead in the hopes that their prospects would rise along with the then-booming commercial market. They hired Cushman & Wakefield to re-market the building in 2006, and dropped them for CB Richard Ellis a year later.

Neither a new broker nor crystal chandeliers and fountains in the lobby have attracted new tenants. Lawsuits filed by CBRE and Newmark Knight Frank brokers over lost compensation have also done little to enhance the building’s reputation.

In the spring of 2008, the Sapir Organization announced a major facade makeover that would replace the building’s dated blue brick exterior with black granite, as well as update its 50-year-old window panes. It proclaimed the face-lift part of “the re-birth of Downtown New York.”

Of course, Sapir’s financial troubles go back further than 2001. Sapir took out a $24.175 million mortgage with Fleet in December 2000, and was released from the agreement less than three years later after failing to make scheduled payments, according to the termination document filed with the city registrar in March 2003. Salomon Brothers Realty released Sapir from a $10.5 million mortgage in 2001, after it failed to make scheduled payments. In October 2007, the Sapirs refinanced their $145 million mortgage with Wachovia with a $255 million loan.

This winter it looked like the Sapirs’ luck might be turning when the Claremont Preparatory School and a data management company announced two new leases at 100 Church. Claremont’s parent, MetSchools Inc., however, refused Sapir’s request for an extension in April and forfeited more than $150,000 in lawyers and architects’ fees related to the 255,000 square feet it had planned to take, according to a source with knowledge of the negotiations. In August, Sapir filed a suit against SL Green and Gramercy Capital for allegedly delaying their approval of Claremont’s lease to prevent Sapir from qualifying for a loan extension.

The suit was dropped in mid-August. “I’m not sure what the sticking point was with the lender,” the source said. “I’m not pointing fingers, but their side couldn’t deliver on the lease agreement they signed. It’s unfortunate that [Alex Sapir] really didn’t own the building, the bank owned the building.”

S.L. GREEN’S EXECUTIVE vice president and leasing director, Steve Durels, told The Observer in the last week of August that the firm was hunting for a broker to market the building’s 12 unoccupied floors. “We’ve got about 650,000 square feet to lease up,” he said, though adding that SL Green is not marketing just yet. “Right now we’re getting our arms around the details of the building … and interviewing respective agents in the brokerage community.”

Despite the changing of the guard, Tungsten Properties is still advertising 150- to 3,000-square-foot, “fully-furnished” office suites for $500 a month at 100 Church on its Web site. The listing promises “no credit check.” The broker confirmed that the space was still on the market, though the asking rent has recently risen to $1,000.

Huge “For Rent” banners still hang in the window of the vacant ground-floor retail space on Barclay Street, too. The Winick Realty broker marketing the listing declined to comment on anything related to 100 Church.

The building’s current tenants appeared oblivious to the trouble. One employee who has worked at 100 Church since 2001 said she has never noticed a management transition. “Aside from the crystal balls, it’s actually a really nice building,” she said, during a smoke break in late August in front of the non-regulation signage.

“Seriously?,” her companion said. “Have you seen the lobby? They are Swarovski crystal.”

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Operators have a standard answer from the Department of Consumer Affairs: "Due to budget constraints, the rebate checks will not be issued this year." If more information is needed, calls are then forwarded to the department itself.

A 311 operator last Thursday had just gotten off the phone with a woman whose landlord and his attorney were in her apartment threatening to evict her that night. The call was patched through to 911. Nearby, another operator was talking to a caller about readjusting a mortgage.

Since 311 was established in March 2003, the call center has become both a repository for citizen complaints and a window into New Yorkers' most pressing concerns. So it is not surprising that the recession has reached the cubicles at 59 Maiden Lane, which the Municipal Art Society arranged a tour of last week.

Mr. Morrisroe, the executive director, said that the call center has started looking at some shared services agreements with state agencies like the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Though 311 already handles a lot of these calls, the city's widening budget deficit has made finding alternative revenue sources imperative.

"The idea is that we've got the economies of scale built and in the past it wasn't necessary because times were plush," he said. "But now were looking at every way to do it."

MAYOR BLOOMBERG CAME UP with the idea for 311 on the campaign trail in 2001, when he came across a pile of uncollected trash next to a leaky fire hydrant. As the foundational myth goes, neither Mr. Bloomberg nor his staffers knew which government agency to call to fix the problem. Eventually, someone on the campaign figured out that such a complaint, rather counterintuitively, should be lodged with the agency that controls the city's water supply, the Department of Environmental Protection.

"The mayor's point was if I'm running for mayor and I don't know that, how is a regular citizen going to know that," Mr. Morrisroe said.

The number of annual callers has grown from 4.5 million in 2003 to 15.3 million in 2007. To date, 311 has received 73 million calls and gets an average of 42,500 daily. Regardless of whether the numbers are evidence of 311's effectiveness or New Yorkers' penchant for grumbling, the complaints mirror the issues on the minds of city residents.

"People might call to report a noisy neighbor, or a noisy neighbor's dog, which gets routed to a different city agency," Mr. Morrisroe said. "They call to report a dead animal—dead bird; a dead bird on the street; a dead bird on the highway; a dead bird on the harbor. They probably all get routed to a different agency."

Some callers just want to talk, but most often they want their neighbors to shut up: Noise, even in these more difficult financial times, remains, by far, the most common complaint. Between July 1 and Nov. 20, operators logged 135,589 noise complaints—2,058 of those came from Flatbush, which edged out Williamsburg by just three calls. One of the 450 operators at 311 determines which of the 23 categories a noise complaint falls into and then forwards it to the relevant agency depending on its source—the Department of Environmental Protection is responsible for silencing a barking dog, for instance, while the police would deal with music from a bar or restaurant.

About 45 percent of the calls are resolved by consulting a database of answers to 3,400 frequently asked questions as random as where to find a park in Manhattan that has a barbecue pit and a public restroom. Or, if a caller wanted to know how to get a tree in front of his window pruned, Mr. Morrisroe said by way of example, a 311 representative would be able say that the cycle for tree pruning last seven years, and, depending what stage of the process the tree's in, might file a service request with the Parks Department.

When a little boy called on Wednesday asking to speak to Santa Claus, an attendant consulted responses in the U.S. Postal Service category and was able to give him an address to mail a letter to.

About 30 percent of calls are transferred to other agencies. Service requests are filed in 10 percent of the complaints received daily; and the remaining calls are hang-ups, 911 transfers or questions outside the city's jurisdiction.

Even in those cases, 311 often has answers. The first day of the New York City Transit Strike on Jan. 17, 2006, remains the busiest day in 311's history, though most of the 241,000 callers had questions like "the TV said the strike was on. Is it?"

Questions about voter registration pushed call volumes to their second-highest peak ever in October, Mr. Morrisroe said. On Election Day and its eve, 125,000 people called to locate polling stations. Though this falls under the domain of the New York State Election Board, operators had answers on hand.

Some of the stranger requests that 311 operators have received over the years are outside the purview of any agency. "People have called wanting to know the lottery number. 'Can I write off my pets as dependents on my taxes?' How to boil a chicken."

One buyer who agreed to pay $5.75 million for an Upper East Side penthouse last year is now trying to break the contract because, among other reasons, the rooftop fitness center with a full-time attendant that he was promised was scrapped for a basement gym, according to the buyer’s lawyer currently negotiating a settlement.

Others suffering from condo-buyers’ remorse have launched similar escrow disputes this year because developers failed to deliver amenities like Bosch kitchen appliances or a common room with a high-definition television.

Real estate lawyers have been inundated with clients looking to break or renegotiate the condo contracts signed before the recession reached Manhattan, according to seven local attorneys. Some buyers are trying to get out of deals altogether without forfeiting the deposits they made on apartments they can no longer afford. Others are looking for partial refunds, price-reductions or concessions from developers based on material differences between a finished unit and the one described in initial offering plans.

“In a good market, it was not always in the buyers’ interest to exercise their rights under a contract,” said attorney David C. Wrobel. “If the apartment was a little smaller, it was a defect that was overlooked. Now people are being more aggressive with pursuing their rights. When you are talking about $2 million down, that’s real money, it damn well should be what was promised.”

Most of these disputes have been settled before they are filed with the state attorney general’s office, which under state law determines which party to award the deposit to if a sale falls through; still, the attorney general’s office has had a surge in the number of escrow disputes filed this year. Of the 133 logged in New York State in 2008 as of Dec. 5, 31 of them were logged in November alone, more than in any other month (the majority of the 133 were in New York City). The statewide number for 2008 was also been significantly higher than in 2007, according to attorneys familiar with the filings.

Attorney Sandor D. Krauss said he has never been more ambushed with condo rescission cases. He has settled three in the past six months—he said he was able to recover the full deposit in two of them—and is about to file three more suits with the attorney general in which clients are asking for at least a 10 percent reduction in the contract price.

“In disposition filings,” Mr. Krauss said, “we made claims that range from clients losing their jobs and not being able to afford it, to structural changes to changes in the financing provision.”

Attorney Adam Leitman Bailey said he recently got a client out of a contract for a condo in Brooklyn based on a material deviation from the offering plan.

“[The purchaser] signed a contract for a certain unit and then they amended the offering plan and now she has a big pole in the middle of her living room,” he said. “I called up [the developer] and told them and they cursed. They said ‘f-u' when we first spoke to them and then we wrote them a letter listing 20 reasons why they breached the terms of the contract of sale, the offering plan and New York law. They called us back and said, 'We got your letter and looked you up, so we’ll let you out.'”

Mr. Bailey refused to discuss specifics about any of the cases he’s currently mediating, but said his firm has at least 17 or 18 suits on behalf of individuals or homeowners associations pending at the attorney general’s office and many others that never made it that far. Last week, for instance, he negotiated a deal for a group of Russian investors who had agreed to pay $1.15 million for a unit in a new Manhattan condo development. Mr. Bailey said he expected the case to go through litigation, but at the last minute the developers agreed to knock off 40 percent from the contract price. The Russian investors closed on Thursday, he said.

MANY OF THE NEW York buyers trying to break their contracts are not institutional investors or small-time speculators, though, and, for them, sweeteners are often not enough, said Tony Abraham, an attorney who has negotiated deposit-refund disputes for condo buyers in Brooklyn and Manhattan.

One of his clients just forfeited the deposit on a $700,000 condo in Battery Park City that had depreciated since he signed the contract in 2007. “We got the developer to agree to pay the real property transfer tax, but then the buyer did not want to go forward anyway because he got cold feet,” Mr. Abraham said. “He lost $70,000.”

Buyers started contacting Mr. Abraham in 2007 to recover their deposits, he said. Many were middle-class people who had put down $60,000 to $80,000 for Brooklyn condos. “The buyer says, ‘I want my deposit back’,” Mr. Abraham said of a typical negotiation. “The developer says, ‘No, this is Stalingrad, we will stand and die.’ The buyer says, ‘We will run away.’”

Usually, they reach a compromise. Though Mr. Abraham has managed to recover as much as 50 percent of the deposit for buyers in some cases, the goal is to shift as much of the closing costs to the developer as possible. He has two proposals on the desks of New York developers right now asking them to pay the real estate property transfer tax to induce the buyer to go forward with the sale.

MORE STRINGENT LENDING REQUIREMENTS are driving contract breaches on both sides as developers fail to finish building within the specified construction window—usually two years—and buyers find themselves unable to secure mortgages they expected.

An artist and a photographer who put down a $180,000 deposit on a $1.8 million Manhattan condo remain in an escrow dispute with their sponsor over construction delays, said the lawyer representing them. He declined to be named in this story since negotiations are ongoing. The scheduled March closing was held up until November, but by then the couple’s bank could no longer give them a mortgage. They have yet to reach a settlement, but the attorney said the developer has agreed to come down $400,000 from the contract price.

Even in cases where buyers can still receive a mortgage, delaying the closing six months can mean hundreds of dollars more in out-of-pocket expenses, according to attorney Jonathan Davidoff.

“The problem on the buyer side is, if they were supposed to close six months ago, they could put 10 percent down on a unit; now you have to put 20 or 25 percent,” he said. Meanwhile, most banks will only lend buyers 70 or 80 percent of a condo’s assessed value, and Mr. Davidoff says his clients’ properties are worth about 10 to 25 percent less then the appraisals in the contract.

He has usually been able to get the developer to come down 20 to 25 percent from the closing price in the contract when the purchaser has been able to get a mortgage, and in some circumstances the sponsor has agreed to a 50 percent reduction. He expects property values to fall as much as 30 to 35 percent in the near future, making developers even more pliant.

“We suspect that this is going to blossom,” Mr. Davidoff said. “This is basically the perfect storm, what’s happening on Wall Street, the layoffs, and the residential condo boom… Without Wall Street bonuses, the market is going to soften.”

The neighborhood that was once the hub of the American music-publishing industry in the early 20th century has undergone many transformations since it became known as Tin Pan Alley. Between 1893 and 1910, nearly 20 music-publishing companies moved to West 28th Street, according to the Historic Districts Council. Over the years, they have been replaced by furriers, florists and, lately, mass-market wholesalers, but the five-story, 1852 rowhouses at 49-51 still exist in much the same condition today as when the first songwriters, M. Whitmark and Sons, first moved there.

In October, however, it looked like the last remnants of Tin Pan Alley could be demolished to make way for a condo, when the Lost City blog broke the news that all five buildings were on the market for $44 million.

As public opinion moves further against the plan and the economy plunges deeper into recession, a deal is looking increasingly unlikely. The five, mixed-use contiguous properties would yield over 111,000-square feet of “prime Chelsea Property” after demolition, according to the listing that first appeared on the real estate Web site LoopNet in the early fall, along with renderings of a 16-story residential building with 24 retail spaces proposed for the site. Though it remains up, the site says the “property is no longer available.”

Whether the buildings' owner Jo-Fra Properties bowed to public pressure or to the limitations of the credit markets is unclear, but the buildings no longer seem to be on the market, at least officially. As of Sunday, the HDC had amassed 414 signatures on its petition to the Landmarks Preservation Commission to put the Tin Pan Alley buildings on track for landmark status and, earlier this month, a LPC spokeswoman said the commission was “researching the history of the buildings and reviewing whether they'd be eligible for landmark designation.”

The Coldwell Banker agent marketing the buildings did not respond to a request for comment, and Jo-Fra Properties could not be reached.

Simeon Bankoff, director of the HDC, was unsure whether the buildings were still for sale. Regardless, he said they are still “very much under threat."

“When we last had contact with [brokers at] Coldwell Banker and Helmsley-Spear in mid-October, we got contradictory information,” Mr. Bankoff said. “The buildings still need work and we would feel much more comfortable with the LPC overseeing that work.”

Most Tin Pan Alley tenants and neighboring business owners on 28th Street have heard rumors about the sale, but they believe that a low appetite for real estate should keep developers at bay for the time being. One ground-floor retail tenant of one of the buildings said existing apartment tenants are one of the biggest obstacles for potential investors.

“The problem is whoever is going to buy it has to deal with the rent-stabilized tenants," he said, but did not want to risk his relationship with his landlord by having his name published. “If you want them out to raze the building and put up a luxury apartment you have to buy them out and they all want a lot of money. It’s time-consuming. That’s a trial, that’s long litigation. So whoever buys the building buys it with that in mind.”

Meanwhile, Jo-Fra has to meet its obligations to the tenants of 51, 53 and 55 West 28th Street who won a suit to get their homes zoned for residential usage in August 2007, according to one of the tenants involved in the case, Leland Bobbe. Though he had not been surprised to learn the buildings were up for sale, he expected it to be a “long process.”

Mr. Bobbe pays less than $1,000 per month for the 1,000-square-foot apartment he has lived in since 1975—when he first arrived his rent was just $160. The landlords have begun work to bring 55 West 28th Street up to code, Mr. Bobbe said, but plans have yet to be approved for the six other units slated for renovations under the case. Before a potential buyer can even submit a demolition application, all the apartments need to be brought up to code and then the tenants need to be offered new two-year leases. “So it’s going to be a while, at least five or six years [until the demolition becomes a possibility]. Plus, now the buildings come with tenants,” Mr. Bobbe said. “So the value of the buildings is lower ‘cause they would have to buy us out. I don’t think it’s imminent.

“It kind of got people going because of the history, but they are asking $44 million in a lousy economy. I can’t imagine anyone outside a Shah from the Middle East or some Japanese businessman would buy the building for that.”

“Every time you come here you have to,” she said, while browsing the handbag section of Bergdorf Goodman on Saturday with her husband in tow. “You can’t help yourself.”

The Limas and another couple got “the best deal ever” on a weekend at the Embassy Suites Hotel in Battery Park City, she said: $250 a night on a deluxe suite overlooking the park, with a cook-to-order breakfast and free drinks during cocktail hour included in the rate. “Can you stand it?” Ms. Lima asked in a hushed, conspiratorial tone.

Though she said she is a bargain-hunter by nature—Ms. Lima bought the black cashmere, fur-collared coat she wore Saturday, for instance, for $75—this year one does not need to be a particularly discerning shopper to find deals. Ironically, she purchased a vintage leather clutch-sized wallet “with the cutest snaps you’ve ever seen” from Delfino for $100.

“You just have a budget,” Ms. Lima said of how the economic downturn has influenced her shopping habits. “You stick to your budget and have a good time within the budget.”

Other consumers appear to be abiding by similar recession-spending rules as the biggest shopping day of the year, Black Friday, approaches.

“Things are a little slow,” said wardrobe consultant Julie Biandi while hunting for clients at Barneys with a friend. “A lot of them are relying on me to shop more methodically. Before, people would call me to shop for them at stores, but now they are doing more shopping in their closet.”

Rather then buy a new party dress this season, she is helping clients scour their wardrobes for a great black dress and accessorizing it with costume jewelry, like a Vera Wang bangle.

Though the current fourth quarter of 2008 is supposedly one of the worst in retail since the Great Depression, elite Manhattan department stores were packed with shoppers over the weekend; Fifth Avenue was aglow with holiday lights; and the city issued its first gridlock alert of the season.

“I’ve never seen it like this with so many sales and the department stores are in shambles,” said Betsy Reynolds, a visitor from Alabama who strolled through Barneys with the air of a native New Yorker. Ms. Reynolds, 57, makes two trips a year to Manhattan with her 19-year-old daughter, Lauren.

Both mother and daughter agreed that this has been their most “frustrating” retail expedition yet and they prefer to shop when “everything in the world is [not] on sale.” “Going to Bergdorf, which to me is the classic department store that there ever was, you know we went up there and the whole store was in shambles like a low-class department store.”

“I would rather buy at regular price than to go through all this,” her daughter chimed in.

LUXURY BRANDS THAT A year ago would never deign to put “Sale” signs in their windows before the New Year are now in “survival mode,” according to Renee Kopel, the marketing director for the 122-year-old William Barthman Jewelers in the Financial District. Walk-in traffic has plummeted since September and, for the second year in a row, their corporate gift gallery is competing against an iconic blue box: Tiffany’s opened an 11,000-square-foot Wall Street branch in October 2007.

Ms. Kopel began circulating an e-mail urging longtime clients—many of them from the shrinking financial services sector—to buy gifts from William Barthman during what will likely be the most ascetic winter in years and advertising 20 to 40 percent off most merchandise. “We are extremely mindful of the state of the economy and we want to try and help,” Ms. Kopel wrote in the e-mail. “Gift giving will be inevitable regardless of the state of the economy, so it might as well be as affordable and as painless as possible.”

Last Wednesday, Ms. Kopel had successfully wooed back the head of a Lower Manhattan dental practice who defected to Tiffany’s last year, and was busy preparing the order. “I called him and said, ‘[Tiffany’s] is a big chain and they don’t need your help. I do,’” she said. “And he came back.”

For good measure, Ms. Kopel also offered to cut the price of 18 Orrefor crystal ornaments from $40 to $15 each. She will have to keep up the pace through the New Year if William Barthman is to avoid laying off employees or further cutting back their hours.

A corporate employee at Gucci, who was shopping at their Fifth Avenue branch, said bargains were drawing customers to department stores in droves. “I was just at Saks the other day and it was incredible,” she said. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s a madhouse, because you know their sales haven’t been doing that well so there is that extra 50 percent off.”

She insisted that though people are being a little bit more cautious this year, they are still willing to pay for that “little bit of Gucci.” “Everyone’s still buying,” she said, but when pressed for details about the merchandise being sold she slashed her finger across her throat to get me to turn off the recorder.

THERE ARE A FEW stalwarts in the luxury sector who refuse to cut prices. Eugene Venanzi, a bespoke tailor who owns the eponymous boutique on West 56th Street, believes in “holding true to your standard” whatever the climate.

“We never do a sale,” Mr. Venanzi said from what he called the Swedish, neo-classical boutique he opened three years ago. “You have to look at things from your focus. If you open a shop like this, you’re saying your long range is based on quality and exclusivity and the classicism of exclusivity. Our approach is classic. We’re not a Prada. We’re not coming out with a new design every four to six months. … For me to take a navy pinstripe suit that, let’s say, is $4,000 and make it available for $2,500, then replace it two months later and put it out for $4,500, doesn’t prove anything.”

So far, the “buy less, buy better” philosophy has “not been too bad,” he said. Venanzi’s ready-to-wear suits start at $2,700 and a custom-made one can run from $15,000 to $20,000. “It sounds vulgar,” Mr. Venanzi said, “but it’s true.”

Though their midrange clients who earn between $250,000 to $500,000 per year are being more cautious lately, plenty of longtime customers are still willing to splurge on a suit. About three weeks ago, for instance, an American who lives outside the city placed an $80,000 order that included a $45,000 topcoat made of the highest classification of refined wool, Vecunia.