Adam Horovitz, a.k.a. Ad-Rock.

Last Friday, one year to the day after the death of the Beastie Boys’ Adam “MCA” Yauch, the Transom stood at the far west end of Atlantic Avenue, in a small but familiar neighborhood park in the shadow of the BQE, for a dedication ceremony in which Palmetto Playground would be renamed Adam Yauch Park.

This was where the Brooklyn-born rapper/director/humanitarian, who grew up blocks away on State Street, learned to ride a bike, and where he played hoops—on the very same court where the Transom plays pickup every Saturday with guys like Jim Strouse. Mr. Strouse, an independent filmmaker, also in attendance, may well spend more time at this little slice of asphalt than anyone else in the borough.

The crowd of about 250 fidgeted in the midday sun. Gen Xers climbed aboard a nearby jungle gym—for the first time in decades, one imagines—to secure a better view as the guests of honor, fellow Beastie Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz and Mr. Yauch’s parents, Noel and Frances Yauch, took their seats.

Arthur Dobelis, the founder and CEO of tech startup Evivio and another pickup regular, turned to Mr. Strouse. “It is kind of your park,” he said.

“Who just said that?” asked Adrian Sas, a local TV producer who works for a show called It’s My Park, which airs on channel 25.

“It’s not really my park,” Mr. Strouse said. And the Transom agreed, since we defeat him so regularly at one-on-one.

“I wish I were filming this,” Ms. Sas said.

Flashbulbs popped and recorders rolled moments later as Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, Ad-Rock and Frances Yauch, among others, gave remarks. Mr. Markowitz ended on a purposefully goofy reappropriation of a Beastie Boys lyric. Ms. Yauch remembered how much noise the fledgling rap trio would make rehearsing on the top floor of their home. “God bless our neighbors who never complained,” she recalled.

Longtime Beastie Boys manager John Silva, who also spoke at the ceremony, told the Transom later about the group’s forthcoming memoir, which will reportedly hit bookshelves in 2015. “It’s so early on,” he said, standing alongside his wife. “My help so far has been to gather my ridiculously extensive archives and have all that available to Sacha [Jenkins],” who will edit the book.

Mr. Silva’s wife sighed, “The good news and the bad news is he’s a pack rat.”

“And the band never really threw anything away,” he added. “It’s going to be great.”

Which is when Moneyball producer Rachael Horovitz, Ad-Rock’s sister and a driving force behind the park dedication, burst into the conversation. “Everyone keeps saying that it’s going to be the most stolen park sign,” she said, sounding both amused and concerned.

Mr. Silva considered this. “The money you and I will have to raise every year just to buy new signs,” he said.

On the other side of the park, a scrum had formed around Mr. Horovitz, who hid behind a pair of black wayfarers with pink temples, and Mr. Yauch’s family members. Mr. Horovitz admitted that he had been hoping to shoot some hoops today—that his brother had even brought a basketball—but there were too many people here for that to happen.

As Mr. Horovitz moved toward the exit, the Transom caught his attention and told him that we play here every weekend and would, in fact, be playing the next day.

“Oh, yeah?” he said, stopping to talk, peering over the top of his sunglasses. “What time?”

And we told him.

But not before Ms. Sas forced her way to the front of the scrum and demanded to know: “Whose park is this?”

Ad-Rock’s response—the only adequate response: “This is Adam Yauch’s park.”

They're gonna let this book ... ... drop. (Getty)

The Beastie Boys are back—with a book deal.

Mike D (Michael Diamond, IRL) and Ad-Rock (Adam Horovitz, IRL) have signed a deal with an imprint of Random House, Spiegel & Grau, to release a book in 2015. The third Beastie, MCA (Adam Yauch, IRL), passed away last year after suffering from cancer, but will undoubtedly live on in narrative medium.

As per the eclectic nature of the rice-white rap group, the book promises to be a vibrant blend of visuals, humor, pop-culture and contributions from other writers. Spiegel & Grau publisher Julie Grau described it to The New York Times as a “multidimensional experience.”

“There is a kaleidoscopic frame of reference, and it asks a reader to keep up,” she said.

Sacha Jenkins, who you may or may not remember from VH1’s (White) Rapper Show, has been tapped to edit the memoir—appropriate choice, maybe, for a book set to deviate from the bland traditions of black and white type.

This news may be irrelevant for anyone born after 2000, but will the baby-boomer generation be jonesin’ for some prose-in’?

During the 1970s and early 1980s, the Soho rowhouse sheltered a number of prominent gay rights activists, among them Bruce Voeller (who was a leader in the fight against AIDS), Arnie Kantrowitz and Jim Owles, who was the president of the Gay Activists Alliance at the time he lived there, an influential organization that emerged in the aftermath of the Stonewall Riots. Until the spring, it belonged to another notable New Yorker, Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz.

But on a rainy morning last week, the building was surrounded by neither city officials nor map-clutching tourists, but by a demolition crew tasked with tearing it down to make way for a seven-story luxury condo.

The crew started its work a few weeks after the Landmarks Commission denied preservationists' most recent plea to landmark and thereby save the building, its eligibility for the National and State historic registers notwithstanding. A banner fastened to the fresh plywood of the construction site announced the new loft-style residences from Canadian developer Nordica Soho, to be wedged into a double lot on the corners of Spring and Thompson streets, a part of the city that is defined as much today by the vast quantities of cash flowing into its real estate as it is by its historic architecture and cobblestones.

"What they did was homophobic, and as Jim Owles was my partner for many years, not only do I consider it an act against the movement, but I take it personally," Allen Roskoff, the president of the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club, told The Observer.

While Mr. Roskoff admitted that it never would have occurred to him to seek landmark designation for the building—"I'm not a preservation person"—he argued the commission should look for opportunities to landmark the community's history. "I think if you had a landmarks commission that is sympathetic to the gay community, they would have supported it," said Mr. Roskoff.

For gay rights activists and preservationists who view 186 Spring Street's historic significance as indisputable, the city's failure to designate it, or any other building, a landmark based solely on its place in the LGBT rights struggle is at best an oversight and at worst a slight. The landmarks commission counters that it already has preserved many important gay rights landmarks, albeit as part of a larger historic districts.

Elisabeth de Bourbon, the commission’s spokeswoman, pointed to the Stonewall Inn, which is located within the boundaries of the Greenwich Village Historic District as a good example of gay rights history being preserved through other means. In fact, the district predates Stonewall. "With Stonewall, we decided that it was already protected," said Ms. de Bourbon. "The primary goal of designation is to protect the bricks and mortar that embody the cultural significance. For us designation is not an honorific, it's a regulatory mechanism that allows the city to protect its historic resources."

Nor has the commission ever approved any applications to landmark individual buildings within existing historic districts.

In rejecting 186 Spring, the commission asserts  that the real monument to the Gay Activist Alliance has already been preserved and that 186 Spring Street's role in the movement was peripheral rather than central. In its letter outlining its reasons for rejecting the house's application for landmark status, the commission notes that its research indicated that Jim Owles and Arnie Kantrowitz lived in the house for only about a year in the early 1970s, when the Gay Activist Alliance was headquarted in The Firehouse at 99 Wooster Street (which is located within the Soho Cast Iron Historic District, and thus protected).

And although Bruce Voeller lived in the home for a decade, the commission contests that his role in the movement's history is not influential enough to warrant landmarking his onetime house: "a review of histories suggests that Dr. Voeller was a later and more of a 'transitional figure'... between the radical post-Stonewall period and a more mainstream professional activism."

Not that such explanations pass muster with all leaders of the gay community, particularly in light of the fact that the city has yet to landmark a building because of its role in gay and lesbian history. The commission also rejected an application to landmark the Pyramid Club at 101 Avenue A, which played a central role in 1980s drag culture, although the building will be included in the soon-to-be created East Village Historic District, giving it a protected status.

Is this a matter of the city practicing ignorance or preservationists and activists ignoring all that has already been saved?

"I think the recognition is important," said Andrew Berman, the executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. "I think it’s important for the commission to say this is an important part of our city’s history, this is an important part of our city’s culture."

The LGBT community has not, however, taken up the cause as vigorously as the preservationists.

Andy Humm, a journalist, activist and the co-host of Gay USA said that while the demolition of 186 Spring Street is a shame, the gay community has been focused on bigger, more important battles than protecting historic sites.

"You can give us some of the blame in the community I suppose,” he said. “Have we been focused on this? I don’t think we have. But look, we’re a movement that has been more about the future... and frankly, we have this huge homeless LGBT community that doesn’t even have basic housing."

kvelsey@observer.com

--a portion of Allen Roskoff's quote has been altered for clarity. "I consider it an act against me personally" has been changed to "I take it personally."

Steve Ashkinazy of the Stonewall Democratic Club of New York City discusses the house's history at a press conference today. (Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation)

It turns out that the federal-style rowhouse at 186 Spring Street has lots of friends in high places. Unfortunately, it may not have made them soon enough.

Today, in the latest bid to save the Soho townhouse from demolition, gay rights activists and local politicians rallied in front 186 Spring Street, highlighting the building's role in gay rights and AIDS activism. The house served as a kind of gay commune for activists and organizations in the 1970s and early 1980s.

Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz sold the house earlier this year to Canadian developer Stephane Boivin, who claimed he wanted it for "personal use," then hastily submitted an application to the Landmarks Preservation Commission asking to demolish the property. The $5.5 million property is in fine condition, but it seemed that Mr. Boivin never had any plans to live there. It was, after all, right next door to the seven-story, mixed-use property that he was already planning.

The house may be historic, but it's not yet landmarked, and the LPC promptly approved Mr. Boivin's application.

But now gay activists have emerged to urge the house's preservation on grounds of not only architectural history (built in 1824, it’s the last structure of its kind that has remained more or less intact in the also-nonlandmarked South Village area), but social history. Because the building housed both gay rights heavyweights Bruce Voeller and Jim Owles, activists claim that it played a key role in the post-Stonewall gay rights movement and the early days of the fight against AIDS.

“It is deeply disappointing to me that the Landmarks Preservation Commission has deemed 186 Spring Street unworthy of landmarking,” wrote New York State Senator Tom Duane in a statement.  “As the first openly gay and openly HIV-positive elected official in the New York City Council and the New York State Senate, I stand on the shoulders of legendary activists who called this 1824 federal-style row house home. I would not have not been able to accomplish all that I have—and the LGBT rights movement and fight against HIV/AIDS would not have come as far as they have—were it not for the incredible work done at 186 Spring Street by Jim Owles, Arnie Kantrowitz, Bruce Voeller and others who lived here.”

The LPC cited the building's highly-altered state and lack of architectural integrity in declining to landmark it, shortcomings that the house's supporters deny are significant enough to stop the landmarking process.

"The contributions this house and its residents made to shaping our culture and making our society fairer and more just are almost impossible to measure," said Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation director Andrew Berman in a statement.

kvelsey@observer.com

The buyer of Horovitz's old house is seeking a license to tear down. (Kevin Mazur/WireImage)

Seller beware! In April, Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz sold his SoHo townhouse to a Canadian developer, who claimed he wanted it for "personal use."

Now The Village Voice is reporting that the new owner, Stephane Boivin, is seeking permission to demolish the property.Which doesn't come as a huge surprise given that Mr. Boivin is planning a seven-story, mixed-use property adjacent to the Beastie abode, plus he already owns several other properties in the city.Mr. Boivin apparently construes "personal use" rather broadly, as in "I will personally be using this federal-era row house as a teardown," Mr. Horovitz's best intentions for the building be damned. The Corcoran listing had hoped for better too: "This home is for someone who appreciates unique period details and exceptional charm," it suggested optimistically.

Mr. Boivin purchased the house at 186 Spring Street for $5.5 million, according to city records, buying under a limited liability company Nordica Soho LLC.

Andrew Berman of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation tells The Village Voice that Mr. Boivin is now seeking permission from the Landmarks Preservation Commission to demolish the property, which has the Greenwich Village Society all up in arms.

Built in 1824, it's the last structure of its kind that has remained more or less intact in the South Village area, which is one of the many districts in the city that has been trying to get the LPC's sought-after historical designation.

"For 10 years we've been trying to get the South Village marked as a historic district," Mr. Berman tells The Village Voice. "The city has stalled out and not kept their word despite this area being declared as one in seven of the most important and threatened historic sites by the Preservation League of New York."

The Greenwich Village Society could, of course, try to score a designation for the building itself in the meantime, but they'd have to get in line: the LPC is considering applications for nearly 3,400 buildings spread across all five boroughs.

kvelsey@observer.com

The driveway to Mr. Schjeldahl’s home for the party this year. (Photo courtesy Deborah Solomon)

The crowd at New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl’s Fourth of July fireworks display tends to be a little bohemian for the region. Dewy-eyed attendees from the art world who have trekked up to his 120-acre home in the Catskills describe the fireworks as “a volcano,” “elaborate choreography,” “magic,” “like watching a battle in the woods during the Revolutionary War,” “sublime,” “really dramatic,” “a rainstorm in reverse,” “like that scene in Apocalypse Now where they visit the U.S.O. show with the Playboy bunnies” and “spermlike.” (One year. Had to be there, apparently.)

“It’s basically like if you’re riding the Cyclone with somebody shooting fireworks at you,” Adam Horovitz told The Observer. “It’s just wild.”

Earlier this year, Mr. Horovitz, known to most as Ad-Rock of the Beastie Boys, began work on a documentary about the fireworks and plans to have a cut of the film ready in time for next year’s Fourth, with an eye toward an eventual wide release in theaters. The documentary marks his first foray into film and chronicles the fireworks show itself, as well as the mythos surrounding it.

The 22-year-old party in Bovina, N.Y., has attracted between 600 and 1,000 people in recent years, depending on the weather forecast. (Mr. Schjeldahl has never been deterred by rain.) Mr. Horovitz learned about the event from the writer Ada Calhoun, Mr. Schjeldahl’s daughter and a friend who plays on Mr. Horovitz’s softball team.

“It’s not a movie about fireworks because how much fireworks can you really watch, you know?” Mr. Horovitz said. “It’s about obsession, in a way.”

Though his own father, the playwright Israel Horovitz, ran in the same circles as Mr. Schjeldahl in the Greenwich Village of the 1970s, they apparently didn’t cross paths often. Still, Horovitz père would fit right in at the fireworks. The open invitation attracts the kind of crowd you might find at any downtown gallery opening, plus, in recent years, a slightly glitzier element. Artists like Yoko Ono, Brice Marden, Jim Torok and John Currin and his wife, Rachel Feinstein, have all been spotted there, as has Heather Hubbs, director of the New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA) and curator Ann Temkin of MoMA. There are always plenty of journalists—Roger Angell is a longtime attendee—and even celebrities, including Alan Cumming, Steve Martin and Ben Stiller.

“There were many faces that I recognized and many that I didn’t,” said Gary Tinterow, Nineteenth Century, Modern and Contemporary Curator at the Met, who attended the event for the first time this year. “Clearly there were people from the local community and that was marvelous, from fire captains to local residents to farmers and people engaged in regular country life, and the New York art-world-types, curators, critics, dealers and lots of young artists I presumed to be from Brooklyn because they had facial hair. It was great to see all these different aspects of Peter’s life represented in human form at his party.”

The carefully choreographed display begins with Mr. Schjeldahl only barely visible in the darkness at the front of the woods, as his basso friend Tom Groves leads the crowd in “The Star-Spangled Banner." Then, a handful of giant globular lanterns ignite and float into the sky, off into the Catskill Mountains. The show proper then erupts with three planes of fireworks, the first hand-fired by a group of volunteers stationed on one side of a stream. Beyond them, in a meadow on the other side of the stream, are clustered “cakes” of fireworks, now electronically wired and, just beyond that, bigger rockets launching from within the woods and from inside individual trees. It makes for an intense field of light and sound, exploding just above attendees’ heads.

“I think the first principal that I had very early on was to set off everything you’ve got as fast as you can,” Mr. Schjeldahl said on the phone from Bovina. “You cannot possibly go wrong if you do that.”

If pressed, Mr. Schjeldahl will describe his plane system as sculptural, a way to solve what he describes as the problem of the middle-ground, a difficulty in any landscape painting. But it’s not the first place he goes in a conversation about the fireworks. “I sort of purposely slap myself whenever I start thinking about it as an art,” Mr. Schjeldahl said. “I remember one very prominent art critic friend who first came out and afterwards was bubbling to me about Chinese scroll painting and various historical parallels and I had this flash of how artists feel when I talk to them about their work. I had two thoughts—one was I’m really glad she likes it, and the other was I don’t know what the fuck she’s talking about.”

“I’ve discovered that there is no fuck-up that someone won’t regard as a stroke of genius,” he added. “‘That great pause in there!’ Well, I was up in the woods madly flipping a switch and nothing was happening.”

Mr. Schjeldahl’s fireworks are near and loud—very much in opposition to the manicured ones of Long Island’s Grucci company, known for putting on the Macy’s show—and there have been casualties. This year a tree was ignited, though there had been rain earlier so that didn’t become a problem. His first year attending the show, Neal Medlyn, Mr. Schjeldahl’s son-in-law, caught some sparks from a low-flier, and art critic Jerry Saltz is said to have lost what was described as his “only sweater from Barneys” to a stray rocket.

“In my plans, there is no chaos,” Mr. Schjeldahl said. “But as they say in war, no plan survives the first shot. No battle plan survives the first encounter with the enemy. A certain impression of chaos is part of the show that’s part of your responsibility as a performer.”

And in this sense of immediacy, the show has always stayed true to its origins. “What makes it a really non-Grucci, more intimate, if elaborate, show is that it has that kind of lo-fi quality,” said New York Times editor Gerald Marzorati. “You’re actually watching people light the stuff off, so I think that’s part of the charm”

Mr. Marzorati is one of the pyrotechnicians at the banks of the stream and has been spending his Fourths on the property from the early days in the 1980s. He met Mr. Schjeldahl when he was writing about art for The SoHo News, and Mr. Schjeldahl was at The Village Voice. When Mr. Marzorati began attending the annual show, there was no house on the property, just a trailer for Mr. Schjeldahl, his wife, Brooke Alderson, an actress who appeared in Urban Cowboy, and Ms. Calhoun. The party consisted of no more than a handful of friends drinking beers and firing bottle rockets.

Through the years, Mr. Marzorati has been a sounding board for Mr. Schjeldahl’s ideas during the planning stage, which begins in the winter. Some innovations work better than others.

“We’ve tried to float fireworks in the stream and also on the pond—he has a pond on his property,” Mr. Marzorati said. “That didn’t actually seem to work.”

Mr. Schjeldahl’s art world friends and colleagues have their theories about why he and his wife go through all the trouble every year.

“I think it must be a release,” said Martha Wilson, the artist and founder of Franklin Furnace, who’s attended the past few years. She’s known Mr. Schjeldahl for years but hadn’t heard of the show until recently visiting friends in the area. “In the same way that being an artist allows me to run an institution because I have that outlet of being an artist so I can sit at my desk and be an administrator. It’s like his Batman persona.”

Naturally, Mr. Horovitz also has some ideas. “I feel like in Peter’s writing the words and the certain phrases that he uses are little explosions,” said Mr. Horovitz. “They take you back for a second. They send you ducking for cover or going to a dictionary to figure out what the fuck he’s talking about. The parallel is Peter does these fireworks, and he’s crouched in the woods ducking for cover, it’s not like he’s standing on a platform, shouting at everybody. Writers are just kind of in a dark room. It’s an interesting parallel, in a way, that he’s secretly dropping these bombs, and that’s kind of what he’s doing with his writing.”

With the fireworks keeping Mr. Schjeldahl busy (“He’s very busy, very busy,” said the writer Deborah Solomon, who has an outstanding reservation “for the rest of [her] life,” at the nearby Mountainbrook Inn for the Fourth; “I never say anything to him in the course of the weekend. It’s kind of like the mother of the bride at the wedding—you hope for a hello and a goodbye”), his wife, Ms. Alderson, is the party’s actual host. Two years ago, for reasons unknown, attendance doubled in size. This was great for the food tables—everyone has to bring one dish, locals bring venison and bear meat, Manhattanites usually try to outdo each other with culinary flare—but was a logistical nightmare for Ms. Alderson. There are now 15-minute cleanup shifts.

“I’ve always just regarded it as a privilege,” said Ms. Alderson, who used to have a general store called Brooke’s Variety in a nearby village, where she’d often extend fireworks invitations to strangers. “It’s a wonderful community thing, everybody gets to see each other, and one day a year at least we’re all in agreement that we really are happy to be Americans.”

“It concludes with a big bonfire and one year we had an artist friend paint a huge Union Jack, which we put on top of the bonfire,” Mr. Schjeldahl said. “There were some English guests at the party who got squirmy about it and I tried to explain that there were no hard feelings.”

Whatever keeps the party growing year after year, either the fireworks themselves or the social event, the patriotism on display from those who show up from the city, and who might be presumed to be too aloof for such an outpouring, is always mentioned as a sight to behold.

“What impressed me so much is that all these downtown avant-garde people are standing there lustily singing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ and cheering, really cheering, for the values that the country was built on,” said Ms. Wilson.

dduray@observer.com

Update 9/8: Amended to give proper credit for the National Anthem's bass.

(Even calling her Madge is like an acknowledgement of her non-New Yorkiness!) So we remember that she got her start at the Mudd Club and broke out of the crazy early-80's dance scene, but does anyone else?

The Beastie Boys, meanwhile!

Good luck, kids.

Perhaps the well-heeled board members are occupied at their Hamptons estates. Among them are Morton Hyman, the board president, who runs a company called Overseas Shipholding Group and who is also chairman of the board of trustees of Beth Israel Medical Center; socialite Ann Slater; Peter Kimmelman, a private investor; and Linda Lindenbaum, wife of Samuel Lindenbaum, a zoning attorney.

Or maybe they're just especially cautious about handing over the keys to Mr. Cox's pad. The apartment's history of rich residents started in 1912, when Jack Astor moved in. Astor survived the Titanic –in utero–but his father, Colonel Jack Astor, a.k.a. John Jacob IV, died when he wasn't allowed to accompany his pregnant wife on a lifeboat. Mr. Cox bought it from attorney and two-time Kentucky Derby winner (Strike the Gold and Go for Gin) William Condren in August 1993 for $5.4 million.

On the other hand, the last applicant for a co-op at 998 was approved: Steven Rattner, managing director of fixed income in Europe at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, purchased the 19-room, ninth-floor apartment in 1994 for $6.5 million.

The Mossavar-Rahmanis are playing it cool and have not put their current residence at 953 Fifth Avenue on the market yet. (But the triplex penthouse apartment in their building just went on the market for $25 million.) The couple and their broker, Sassy Johnson of Stribling & Associates, didn't return calls. Mr. Cox, the chairman of WarpSpeed Communications, a broadband service, also didn't return calls.

"It's a beautiful apartment," said one broker. "The walls are two feet thick–it's like a fortress. You feel like you're living in a European castle." The 5,000-square-foot place has four bedrooms, four bathrooms, a huge gallery, a corner master bedroom and a library facing Central Park. (Maintenance is $6,600.)

An Italian Renaissance-style palazzo structure at the northeast corner of 81st Street, 998 Fifth Avenue was designed by McKim, Mead & White and opened as a rental in 1912; its residents have included Murray Guggenheim, former U.S. Vice President Levi P. Morton and a granddaughter of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, as well as Sylvia Green Wilks, the daughter of Hettie Green and the widow of Matthew Astor Wilks. The building boasts jewelry safes built into the walls of each apartment, refrigerated wine cellars, 10 1/2-foot-high ceilings and a lobby lined in Italian marble. It became a co-op in 1953.

The ninth- and 10th-floor units occupy the entire floor; the other floors are a mix of flats and duplex apartments, including the penthouse duplex, which is owned by Joseph Perella, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter's managing director and worldwide head of investment banking.

Vacant apartments in the building are a rare commodity, but a 14-room apartment on the fourth floor went on the market in early July for $16.5 million. It was represented by Gumley, Haft, Kleier Realty, and Stribling & Associates.

SOHO

NO SLEEP TILL SOHO: WITH BEASTIES' TOUR POSTPONED, KING ADROCK PLAYS HOUSE Maybe Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz, better known as King Adrock, is lonely. In late May, the 33-year-old rapper splurged on a $2.3 million townhouse at 186 Spring Street between Thompson and Sullivan streets–a block so crowded most weekends that it makes New Yorkers wish they lived in Iowa. And he'll have lots of time for tourist- dodging, since his band's late-summer concert tour was indefinitely postponed after fellow white-boy rapper Michael Diamond (Mike D) took a nasty spill on his bike.

Mr. Horovitz, who was briefly married to actress Ione Skye, got a terrific address but not much of a house. What there is of it is less "ill" than "adorable," said broker Sarah Bond, who sold the house with Meris Blumstein; both brokers work at the Corcoran Group. The "cottage," as Ms. Bond described it, has just eight rooms–two of them bedrooms–and two and a half baths. The first floor is occupied by the Spring Street Garden flower shop. There are 12-foot ceilings in the living room and fireplaces everywhere.

The house was on the market for over two years at $2.5 million because "the seller just wanted her price," said Ms. Bond. (Real estate taxes are $9,200).

The seller, Georgette Sloane, who moved to an apartment on 10th Street and Fifth Avenue and also has a home in Amagansett, said, "I'm pleased that he got the house

because I like him very much." Mr. Horovitz signed a contract on April 26.

His publicist, Steve Martin of Nasty Little Man Public Relations, said Mr. Horovitz, who grew up in New York City, has lived "in a couple of different neighborhoods … all over downtown Manhattan" but would not comment on this deal.

UPPER EAST SIDE

PASSING ON THE PIED-À-TERRE : DAVID FROST UNLOADS ESSEX HOUSE CONDO In the 1970's, when Sir David Frost, the television interviewer, hosted two news programs–one in the U.S., the other in his native England–he crossed the Atlantic twice a week. But his U.S. show ended in 1972, and in a recent interview he told a reporter that he now crosses the Atlantic only twice a month. On July 18, Mr. Frost sold the 1,150-square-foot pied-à-terre he had kept at the Essex Hotel on Central Park South for 20 years. The price was $1.6 million.

According to Mr. Frost's broker, Diane Dickinson of the Fox Residential Group, "he just wasn't using the apartment much." And he does not plan to purchase another apartment in New York.

Mr. Frost, who has interviewed everyone from Lauren Bacall to Mikhail Gorbachev in his 40-year career, is perhaps best known for his sit-down with former President Richard Nixon in 1977. It was the first time that Nixon had spoken publicly about Watergate after leaving office, and it attracted a record audience–45 million viewers tuned in from the U.S. alone. Mr. Frost is currently the host of Sundays With Frost , a political interview program that airs in Britain.

His former building, at 160 Central Park South, is primarily a hotel, though condominium apartments make up 30 percent of the building. Condo owners get the same services as hotel guests, including access to a concierge and the hotel's health club; maid service is additional. Mr. Frost's former two-bedroom apartment has a 1,250-square-foot terrace that overlooks the park. Ms. Dickenson said the apartment will continue to be used as a pied-à-terre by the new owner, a businessman who lives out of town.

1080 Fifth Avenue

Two-bed, two-bath, 1,400-square-foot co-op.

Asking: $1.85 million. Selling: $1.6 million.

Charges: $1,800; 44 percent tax-deductible.

Time on the market: one month.

WHERE LIFE IS AN ART Back in 1994, residents of this 22-story, full-service building, flanked by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum to the south and the National Academy Museum to the north, received a letter from the U.S. Postal Service saying that to ensure timely delivery of their mail, the address should read "1080 Museum Mile." The residents were not pleased. "I mean, can you imagine asking your cabdriver to take you to 1080 Museum Mile?" one resident said at the time. The Postal Service took it all back. (That's the last time they mess with rich people and their fancy addresses.) According to the broker on this deal, Marcy Sigler of Stribling and Associates, the buyers of this two-bedroom corner apartment were lucky to get into the building at all. "There used to be 71 units in this building; now there are 57," said Ms. Sigler. "Everybody wants more space, but nobody wants to leave the building."

TRIBECA

165 Duane Street

One-bed, two-bath, 1,800-square-foot co-op.

Asking: $1.5 million. Selling: $1.48 million.

Charges: $1,800; 60 percent tax-deductible.

Time on the market: three months.

ROOF RITES The renovation of this penthouse loft in the building which once housed Bouley was a joint effort between the owner and a college buddy. Said his broker, Julie Rupprecht of the Halstead Property Company, the two installed cherrywood cabinets in the kitchen, a steam shower in the bathroom, high-speed computer wiring and a three-zone sound system. But their tour de force was finishing off 1,000 square feet of roof space and making it accessible from the penthouse. Now that the place is retrofitted for the year 2000 bachelor, why is the owner taking off? Cash . Pity the poor best friend, salivating for that first rooftop summer bash.

90 Franklin Street

Three-bed, three-bath, 2,633-square-foot condo.

Asking: $1.315 million. Selling: $1.315 million.

Charges: $1,507. Taxes: $924.

Time on the market: one and a half weeks.

A DUPONT BELOW CANAL STREET! Tribeca is officially expensive enough for bluebloods. In May, Richard duPont, an artist and distant relation to the founder of E.I. DuPont de Nemours and Company, and his wife, Lauren duPont, a fashion editor at Style.com and daughter of the chief executive of Sears, Roebuck & Company, bought a condo in Franklin Tower, a former bank being converted into "luxury lofts" and intended for new money (see: Mariah Carey). Though it doesn't have a catchy name referring to its gritty former life, the building has the standard exercise room (on the roof), doorman and concierge service. The duPonts were married three years ago and had been living in an apartment in the West Village. Ms. duPont formerly worked as a senior fashion editor at Vogue ; Mr. duPont, a Princeton graduate, is a painter and sculptor. Their new apartment has three bedrooms and three baths. The large living room-dining room has seven windows. The apartment has no maid's room (see: Fifth Avenue), but it does come with a laundry room. Bruce Ehrmann and Confidence Stimpson of Stribling and Associates are the exclusive selling agents for the building.