By Stephen Jacob Smith 5/08 4:57pm

Disappointments

We love you, No. 54, but you're bringing us down.

The Nay-Sayers Were Right: Observer Manse Sells at a Loss

Last week, when we wrote up the contract signing on The Observer’s old Upper East Side home, the brokers we spoke with were skeptical that the house would fetch its ambitious $28 million ask.

“I have a feeling it’s going to be low,” one veteran townhouse broker of 54 East 64th Street told us. Another concurred, throwing in a dig at Douglas Elliman super broker Dolly Lenz, whom the source claimed “tends to kind of dump her stuff.” Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 4/29 4:16pm

Manhattan Transfers

The hallowed halls in which The Observer was born.

Salmon Sells: New York Observer’s Old Upper East Side Home Finds a Buyer

The most expensive home in the five boroughs to go into contract last week (according to the Olshan report), is an address quite familiar to The Observer: 54 East 64th Street, this salmon-colored paper’s Upper East Side home before Arthur Carter sold the paper to Jared Kushner.

“Four floors, a giant alimentary center-hall staircase, caked moldings, brass chandeliers, glass-fronted oak cupboards, The New York Observer sometimes felt like a Henry James society home or a 70′s swinger pad, with reporters stacked and stuffed in its confines like Hong Kong tailors,” longtime editor Peter Kaplan described the mansion. “Our legal reporter set up his computer in the fourth-floor closet, near the tuxedo that was used by whomever had to go out to a formal evening.” Read More