Yeah, Gray has favorites. (NYT)

Apparently, we aren't the only ones who have wondered what Christopher Gray's favorite buildings are. In this week's Streetscapes column, Mr. Gray admits that he's frequently asked to name them. After all, an architectural historian who spends so much time not only staring at edifices, but researching their histories must have developed some strong preferences. Like a good parent, he's always begged off selecting stand-outs, giving a stock answer: whatever one he's currently researching. The thrill of discovery and all that.

Until now.

This week, Mr. Gray confesses that he does, in fact, have favorites. Among them the dominating, domineering, Darth Vader of skyscrapers, the Time Warner Center.

Really?!

True, we should have expected that Mr. Gray, despite being an architectural historian, would have some more modern preferences. But what does he like about it? Besides the fact that in terms of streetscapes, few buildings have proven more transformative.

"From Hell’s Kitchen, from Central Park, from Lincoln Center, from the Plaza, from all directions the varying angles of the curved towers catch and bounce both daylight and moonlight in the most uncanny way, like the eyes of the Mona Lisa following you around the room," Mr. Gray writes. Also, it disrupts his "traditionalist inclinations."

Kind of like feeling weirdly attracted to an ugly, totally not-you sweater at the store?

As far as residential building's go, Mr. Gray's decidedly less shocking choice is 1 Sutton Place. The grand old dames of the East River definitely deserve a shout out and Mr. Gray's explanation for picking 1 Sutton above all the others is reasonable: its graciousness, its elegant simplicity and the light flooding in from multiple exposures—a great luxury in a city with so many shadows. Mr. Gray notes that it comes off as both generous and patrician, not all haughty like 740 Park Avenue, that Upper East Side fortress of money and power with wary gate-keepers stationed several deep at every entrance.

What are some of Mr. Gray's other top picks? The Church of Heavenly Rest on Fifth Avenue, the Cities Service Building at 70 Pine Street, the 1927 loft building built by Electus T. Backus at 419 Park Avenue South and 29th Street and the Great Lawn of Central Park.

kvelsey@observer.com

"Steer clear, all ye plebeians of the Upper East." (photo courtesy of clpgh.org)

Andrew Carnegie's legacy is known for its generous philanthropic donations to universities and libraries (like, two thousand libraries). But in a bizarre twist, some of his private decisions have continued to shape the Upper East Side decades after his death.

Streetscapes' Christopher Gray dug up the history of Carnegie's land ownership that show a side of Carnegie that is a tad more reserved. While he held a simple four-point "Carnegie Formula" for building a library (the need for a public library, a location, ten percent to support operation, and providing a free service to all), the stipulations for his neighbors were far more selective:

Fortunately, Carnegie, the Scottish-born partner of Henry Frick, bought plenty of property in the neighborhood, including most of 91st between Fifth and Madison, and up to the south corner of Fifth and 92nd.

Much of this he sold to congenial people he knew would build mansions like his. Otto Kahn, for instance, put up what is now the Convent of the Sacred Heart at the north corner of Fifth and 91st. Kahn’s house, as well as those of the Burden, Hammond and Trevor families, created a magnificent sweep, New York’s best mansion block, kept agreeable by the relative lack of traffic.

Carnegie skipped a piece of land, but it was quickly snagged when the owner threw it on the market for any use:

One parcel he did not immediately acquire was the southeast corner of Fifth and 90th. But in 1917 a sign appeared: “for sale — without restrictions.” This was an invitation to a developer to snap it up for a luxury apartment house — or to scare Carnegie into buying.

Scared or not, he did buy, paying $1.7 million. He did not have a specific plan, but he did not like the idea of any old Tom-Dick-or-Harry millionaire blocking his southern light.

Even after his death, his wife, Louise, continued the tradition of restriction on neighbors:

[...] sold the land for $1 million to another acceptable neighbor, the Episcopal Church of the Heavenly Rest. She placed restrictions effective for 50 years on the property: only a Christian church, no more than 75 feet high, could be built. She exempted steeples, but the 1928 church didn’t bother with a tower of any kind.

It is disheartening to hear that one family has had a chokehold on a neighborhood for nearly a century. But the byproducts of these decisions have constructed some of the finest architecture and buildings on the Upper East Side such as the Horace Mann Nursery Division and the formal Georgian-style Spence School.

The graybeard of old buildings. (Landmarks! West)

Everyone has their favorite section of The Times. For some, it is Business Day, Dining or the Op-Ed page. Who doesn't love to hate the Styles section (or is it hate to love?) or gaze longingly at the properties in the "What You Get For..." real estate column, constantly reminding us of the price we foolhardily pay to be New Yorkers.

For a certain subset of readers, nothing delights more than Christopher Gray and his Streetscapes column, a remarkable tour of the city's ephemeral architectural history. Today, in a very personal column, Mr. Gray describes how he first fell in love with old buildings—four in particular, in fact.

But I know that from my midteens I liked old things, the heft of them, the burnished quality, the evident history of an artifact — perhaps I should have grown up to be Ralph Lauren’s window dresser. I am not sure what really tipped me toward architecture instead of vintage polo mallets, but I do remember a sense of indignation maturing during the demolition of four buildings around 1970.

From high-minded graffiti to a nearly "ganged" wheelchair, one with Bakelite arms, in a grand old old folks home, it is the kind of story that will hopefully give readers new insight into Mr. Gray's writing and the city.

(For those dying to know, it is probably a combination of LEGO castles and a college course, Architecture and Postmodern Culture, that set this writer on his present course.)

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

The Times described upper Broadway as “a regular race track” for speeding cyclists, one of them, operating without bell or whistle, killed 7-year-old Katie McGlynn just as she was exiting a streetcar at Broadway and 67th. “They make no noise and go by you with a rush,” said Police Capt. Elbert Smith. “You shout at them to slow down, but they are off before you know it.” But the fashion for bicycles soon waned.

No sooner did Michael Kimmelman declare the city safe for bikes than his colleague Christopher Gray, the Strestscapist, has besmirched them again.

So what does this have to do with the New York streetscape? The retreat to what is left of the sidewalks changes the very essence of the common public realm, just as certainly as if, say, tourists had to stay within the arcades surrounding St. Mark’s Square in Venice, or look out on Red Square from the porch on St. Basil’s. New York’s gridiron allows precious few vistas or plazas, but a citizen could at one time have viewed each block as an entirety, with walls and a floor. Now everyone must hug the baseboards.

The thing is, by most accounts, the bike lanes have decreased, not increased, the number of people using sidewalks because streets are now safer for cycling. One study found that lanes reduced on-sidewalk biking five-fold.

And Mr. Gray contends that "as the domain of the pedestrian—the everyman of the city—is gradually curtailed, so too is the sense of the city as a democracy of public space, open to all." But as Streetsblog-founder Aaron Naparstek points out, this is not true, either. Not only has the current regime at DOT decreased the number of bikers on sidewalks, they have also increased the space on the streets for perambulating, as Mr. Gray indeed celebrates. Whoa be to the horse and buggy.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Before darting off to speak at a fifth-grade graduation in the Bronx, Mr. Bloomberg pitched a strangely dissonant case for a third term in an elegant restaurant packed with about 70 Upper West Side real estate brokers, landlords and business owners. White-clad waiters served omelets, fruits, and sweet potato fries.

Mr. Bloomberg pointed to a lower crime rate (“The national wisdom is that the economy goes down, crime goes up. It turns out the bad guys don’t read the Wall Street Journal,” Mr. Bloomberg quipped, apparently ignoring the Madoffs and Dreiers of the world); a higher graduation rate (a whopping 56 percent which was announced Monday, trailing the state average of 71 percent); and a higher life expectancy (or, in Mr. Bloomberg’s terminology, 1 1/3 more “man-years”).

He did acknowledge that the city’s problems are not over: “There’s still plenty of real estate empty and stores ready to sell, but there is some evidence that people are starting to rent.”

But he pointed to an art gallery opening next to a café on Madison Avenue where he had breakfast this morning as a sign that the economy is getting back in shape.

Mr. Bloomberg also did his share of statistic-dropping, even if said stats seem to belie the reality New Yorkers see on the street every day: Mr. Bloomberg claims that there are only 2,500 homeless people in all of New York City—a ratio of roughly 1 in 4,000—compared to 1 in 96 in Los Angeles.

Agency 21 managing partner Brett Friedman said that he found the statistic, if true, to be “staggering.” But Mr. Friedman added that since Mr. Bloomberg is campaigning for re-election, he had to spin the economy “as a rosier story.”

“[The economy is] basically just kind of holding steady at the moment with no signs of major improvements in the foreseeable future,” Mr. Friedman said. “So, [he gave] a little bit of propaganda because he’s an elected official, but he gave a sense that he has things under line.”

Indeed, most of the attendees interviewed by The Observer held a markedly more negative view of the economy. “The first quarter was successful, but the second quarter, it dived—March, April, through June,” spa manager Ana Crespo said of the beauty industry.

And this was in New York’s success story. While the vacancy rate along the Columbus Avenue BID (between 67^th and 82^nd Street) was bordering on 50 percent 10 years ago, when the BID was formed, the occupancy rate has now jumped to 98 percent. The reason, said BID executive director Barbara Adler, was a combination of beautifying the area and advertising it as a desirable location—for example, in a jingle that was played both at the beginning and end of Tuesday’s breakfast.

The New York Times’ architectural historian Christopher Gray gave the other keynote speech, highlighting the historic beauty of the area—though he admitted there is one building that stands out (in a bad way). “I regret to report that in the southwest corner of 73^rd Street, there’s a perfectly nice old building, but it’s slathered in—cover your ears—it’s slathered in purple paint.”

Mr. Gray said that he’d like to report “the offense to the aesthetics of the Upper West Side” to the deputy inspector, but then realized that the building belongs to someone already in the room: a certain George Bean.

bkavoussi@observer.com