Now, it's still a popular space for working artists, but they had better be amazingly successful working artists if they hope to buy a studio/living space in the neighborhood. The carriage house and studio of fine art and fashion photographer Lillian Bass, who died last February at age 94, has sold in less than a month for its full $14.9 million asking price.

It's a pity that the buyers of 117 East 83rd Street, developer David Edelstein and wife Sarah, won't be carrying on the artistic traditions of the charming carriage house, which has served as a studio for Bassman and her late documentary photographer husband Paul Himmel, since 1959. Painter Helen Frankenthaler also worked there for 15 years.

But, hey, Richard Prince, who is building a mini artistic empire on East 78th Street, can only buy so many houses each year. And the space, located between Park and Lexington, is hardly an example of another starving artist's aerie sold to a wealthy developer. Bassman still used the 5,ooo square foot space as a studio until she died, but she experienced considerable commercial success in her lifetime, a success reflected in several beautifully renovated rooms.

"Carriage houses are wonderful spaces. Unlike townhouses, the architectural possibilities are almost unlimited," said Stribling's Kirk Henckels, who shared the listing with Douglas Elliman broker Michael Kafka.

The carriage house is 25-feet wide, with 13-feet windows and an open facade on the West Side, allowing for that rarity in townhouses: windows on the side. But the Edelsteins didn't quibble with the asking price: the property went into contract almost immediately after hitting the market in early December. (It also spent a week on the market in September before it was pulled temporarily.)

The price, Mr. Henckels noted, at around $3,000 per square foot, is basically unheard of for an unrenovated townhouse. The new owners, he said, were planning to convert it to a single family home.  By comparison, the Avedon townhouse on East 75th Street is only asking $1,474 per square foot (the total price tag is $12.5 million). And it's had two renovations in the last decade!

Will the Edelsteins renovate and move on, as they've done before—their last flip of a townhouse on 122 East 70th Street was so impressive it could put Olympic gymnast Gabby Douglas to shame. After buying the townhouse for $12 million in 2010 (to the horror of the neighbors), they sold it for $21.45 million. Or could they finally be playing for keeps?

kvelsey@observer.com

122 East 70th Street: one of the last deals of 2012.

It's a happy New Year for developer David Edelstein and wife Sarah. The couple made a mint on the sale of their townhouse at 122 East 70th Street, nearly doubling their money in just two short years.

The Edelsteins, whose bargain basement buy of the house for $12 million in 2010 shocked the other residents on what some call the loveliest block in all of New York, have sold the five-story manse for $21.45 million, The New York Times reports. Prudential Douglas Elliman brokers Michael Kafka and Theresa Thompson deserve a hand.

Apparently, the 2010 sale did not, as the neighbors worried, lower real estate values. Someone, buying under the guise of an LLC, was willing to give the Edelsteins with a $9.45 million profit. The sale price is close to the $20.2 million that the previous owners had been trying to get a few years back, before they dropped the ask to absurdly low $14.9 million and agreed to take the Edelsteins' low ball offer.

But what a difference two years can make, especially when they span the depths of a recession to what may well be the heights of the trophy market. What else could account for the huge price increase? (It also helps that the Edelsteins got a ridiculously good deal when they bought the house.)

The Edelsteins do not appear to have done any significant work on the home since buying it. It does sound lovely, with four terraces and six fireplaces if the buyers feel like burning any more money.

It was a good year for the most beautiful block in all of New York, with two sales over $20 million. The copper-clad townhouse just down the street at 116 East 70th sold for $22.39 million. Could 120 East 70th be next? Maybe if it takes a hint from the sale next door and drops its asking price down to $25 million.

kvelsey@observer.com

David and Sarah Edelstein (alas, this is not film critic David Edelstein, although excuse us for a moment while we fantasize about journalists living in $20 million townhouses) are asking a rather brazen $24.2 million for their elevatored townhouse, which they bought for just $12 million in 2010.Where do they think they live? 15 CPW?

Who knows? With the way properties have been selling lately, the Edelsteins may just get it. Still, it's unclear what exactly justifies the big price jump. Maybe they Edelsteins are just trying to keep the neighbors happy? After all, the former owners outraged the block's snooty denizens in 2010 when they dropped the $20 million ask to $14.9 million before finally handing it off to the Edelsteins for a mere $12 million.

Apparently, the sale did nothing to drive down values in the area. And we can almost hear the neighbors collective sigh of relief at this audacious ask. The townhouse is, after all, on a block that is often considered the best in New York, as the Prudential Douglas Elliman listing, held by brokers Michael Kafka and Theresa Thompson boasts. The original builders of the block decided that all development on the north side would be set back 10 feet, leaving the extra space "forever free and unoccupied." And how could you let a house with that kind of advantage go for under $20 million? Especially one "wired for security and entertainment" as this one is? (As much as that sounds like a description from a dystopic future).

The buyer, if one ever emerges willing to pay $24 million, will have the privilege of enjoying six wood-burning fireplaces and a roof deck with a kitchenette. Drifting through the rooms of "gracious proportions," the buyer can gaze out one of the many windows, or lounge on one of the four terraces, trying to forget that the home might have been had for half the price just two years ago.

kvelsey@observer.com

Which Dan Abrams is this? (Getty Images)

“Dan Abrams and I emailed a bit about possibly trading our Twitter handles,” said Dan Abrams, a writer/producer in New York, of an exchange with the ABC News analyst three years ago. “I probably would have—he was like, I’ll take you out to dinner. I wasn’t at a point where my name was a brand.” The more famous Mr. Abrams, whose Twitter account is @danielabrams, let the matter drop, which the less famous Mr. Abrams estimates he regrets. He wouldn’t make the switch now, though: “I’m making that transition from being behind the scenes to being, like, a person.”

In the age of personal branding, sharing a name with a famous person can be a boon. (Witness the upcoming summer reality show Same Name, in which civilians meet their celebrity namesakes.) Mr. Abrams takes pride in his un-Google-ability: “People can’t come across some stupid show I did. If my name was Rizzo Gulati, they might see something I’d done and not want to hire me.” Mr. Abrams hasn’t reaped the social benefits of sharing an identity, but the New York film critic David Edelstein gets invitations directed to the real-estate developer David Edelstein: “Recently, I received at my home an embossed patron invitation to some BAM gathering at a fancy Upper East Side residence,” Mr. Edelstein said via email. “I called BAM and they were horrified that the likes of me could almost have shown up at some hedge fund manager’s townhouse.”

Of course, the truly powerful need not be aware of their shared-name cohort. Bill Keller of The New York Times shares an identity with an evangelist—the second result on a Google of “Bill Keller” is for “Bill Keller Ministries” at LivePrayer.com. “Amazingly, given my evangelical charisma and general piety, I’ve never gotten one of his messages,” said the Times Magazine columnist via email. Perhaps the best coping mechanism is to come up with a canny, repeatable line. Could the high-society DJ David Chang be the same guy who makes our ramen? No, he told The Observer: “I mix beats, not meats!”

ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_

After months of open warfare with 300 of its doctors, the hospital, known as Meeth, was ordered by a Federal judge on Sept. 30 to halt its $41 million going-out-of-business sale to the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. That means the hospital's board will likely have to seriously consider offers from three of Memorial's competitors to take over its coveted East 64th Street campus-and keep Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital alive. So much for a quick, painless mercy-killing.

Lenox Hill Hospital, Continuum Health Partners Inc. and Mount Sinai-New York University Health System are all actively competing for what is suddenly the hottest piece of hospital real estate in New York City. A fourth titan, New York-Presbyterian Hospital, is in talks with Meeth's board to take over its proposed clinics and its library.

"Overnight, this thing went from being a fait accompli to being a competitive situation," said an executive with one of the three hospitals bidding against Memorial Sloan-Kettering for control of the Meeth site. "We're alive."

Making things even messier, the State Attorney General's office-which monitors nonprofit hospitals and other charities-hasn't liked what it's been seeing. It's considering pulling the plug on Meeth's board of directors.

"The board's decision-making process and overall behavior have been unacceptable," State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer told The Observer . How unacceptable? "It's conceivable that at a certain point in time we might determine their behavior's been so bad that we'll seek their removal in court," Mr. Spitzer added. "We're not close to that point yet, but we'll be watching their behavior very closely. Very closely."

Mr. Spitzer's scrutiny comes as no surprise to Meeth's beleaguered board. The shocker for the would-be deal makers was that the Democratic Attorney General cleared his campaign against the Meeth sale with a cordial call to Gov. George Pataki, a Republican.

The doctors who have been vehemently fighting the Memorial Sloan-Kettering deal have been saying for months that the blueblood board, led by Lindsay (Dinny) Herkness III, a vice president at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Company, has a real talent for making enemies.

The Meeth-Memorial deal was supposed to be a neat cash-and-close-shop arrangement. Meeth administrators contend the hospital has been losing $2 million a month, and that they were compelled to act, stat, to end the hemorrhaging.

Under the agreement inked in July, Memorial would have built a brand-new breast cancer center on the site of Meeth's main building; two smaller parcels of land were to be sold to Downtown Development, a luxury housing developer. Meeth would walk away with $41 million. Gone would be its renowned East Side base, its 17 state-of-the-art operating rooms, its fabled residency programs.

But to fulfill the board's mandate to provide health care-and to sweeten the pot for state monitors-Meeth's board voted to use the proceeds to build a half-dozen clinics in poor neighborhoods like Harlem and downtown Brooklyn.

State monitors, however, aren't buying it. On Sept. 30, Mr. Spitzer scored a victory when State Supreme Court Justice Bernard Fried ordered Meeth to keep its doors open and commence "good-faith" talks with any suitor who might make a reasonable offer to keep it running at its current location. On Oct. 14, Meeth will have to defend the Memorial deal in a brief trial.

Meanwhile, the atmosphere at the East Side cosmetic surgery mecca will likely remain, in a word, ugly. "Starting in July, they hired security guards who have basically been frisking all of the patients and doctors," said Dr. David Edelstein, director of Meeth's respected ear, nose and throat program. "They've been checking everybody's bags, too. It's insulting. It's designed to make life as uncomfortable as possible for everybody so we'll just give up and leave. It won't work."

"We had no choice," responded Meeth spokesman Abigale Knapp. "We have had incidents where doctors were taking very expensive equipment."

Offers They Refused

Lots of people, it seems, want a piece of Meeth. According to Mr. Spitzer's office, no less than four medical institutions have made serious inquiries about buying the hospital, all with an eye toward keeping it running. In May, the Mount Sinai-New York University Health System offered $27.5 million to the board for the site.

Lenox Hill has cooked up three separate proposals, including a plan to keep the main Meeth building open while investing $3 million a year for 10 years to renovate the ailing hospital. The most recent Lenox Hill bid is a hybrid: They would sell the Meeth property to Memorial, and then use the proceeds to build a new ear, nose and throat hospital on Lenox Hill's East 77th Street campus. ("I don't know how the hell we'd do it," said a puzzled Lenox staff member. "We don't have enough space for ourselves as it is.")

The third, and most seriously discussed, proposal comes from Continuum Health Partners, the aggressive umbrella group that runs Beth Israel Hospital and St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital Center. Under their plan, Continuum would buy Meeth for an undisclosed amount and merge it with the recently purchased Manhattan Eye and Ear Infirmary, located at 14th Street and Second Avenue. Continuum would invest up to $10 million in Meeth while maintaining the hospital at the 64th Street site for at least five years. According to Mr. Spitzer, Continuum's chairman of the board, Morton Hyman, has pledged to take over Meeth on "24 hours' notice," if necessary.

The proposals, Meeth's directors say, are neither new nor particularly appetizing. "It appears to us that [the Attorney General's office] has a favored bidder-Continuum," said attorney John Aerni, a partner with LeBouef, Lamb, Greene & McRae, which represents Meeth's board. "I don't know why they are so hot on the Continuum thing. There have been many offers over many months, and we've considered them all seriously. Memorial's is the best."

The head of the State Attorney General's charities bureau, William Josephson, couldn't disagree more. In a scathing 43-page affidavit submitted to Justice Fried, Mr. Josephson blasted Meeth's single-minded pursuit of Memorial's money.

Throughout the summer, other suitors called, and Mr. Herkness and other board members slammed the door, according to Mr. Josephson. Continuum executives, when asked to see the hospital's financial records, were reportedly told No. Officials from New Jersey's Hackensack University Medical Center said they got the same response and decided not even to make a bid after Meeth refused to provide information. In mid-September, Mr. Josephson reported, Lenox Hill chief executive Gladys George had to cut off negotiations with the Meeth board after she was denied a copy of its feasibility study on the proposed neighborhood clinics.

Government fact-finders haven't fared much better. State Department of Health officials have repeatedly hectored Mr. Herkness and Meeth's executive director, George Sarkar, for key documents.

But apparently the board has been chatting it up with New York-Presbyterian Hospital in a bid to get the uptown giant to sponsor Meeth's proposed neighborhood clinics and to create a small Meeth division at its West 168th Street campus. In exchange, New York-Presbyterian would get $10 million in cash, $8 million in equipment and possession of Meeth's valuable medical library.

Condition Critical

Mr. Josephson said such news has trickled down to his office secondhand. "The Attorney General learned about the Memorial contract through a press release, even though the Meeth board had given us assurances of their willingness to keep the Attorney General apprised of major developments," wrote a piqued Mr. Josephson in his affidavit.

For their part, Meeth's defenders say they are simply trying to protect their plan to open clinics for the poor from attacks by politically motivated outsiders. Mr. Spitzer, they say, has been taken in by the hospital's 300 sacked doctors and their high-powered and politically connected attack dogs, lawyer Charles Stillman and public relations man Howard Rubenstein.

"It's sort of ironic that the charities bureau is spending all their time working with some wealthy plastic surgeons who are getting rich off Upper East Side patients," said Mr. Aerni, Meeth's lawyer.

"The Attorney General," added a source at Memorial, "is a brave man. He is making the world safe for cosmetic surgery."

But even Meeth's cherished clinic plan has come under attack as a rushed attempt at press-release altruism that is poorly planned and destined for failure. "They hatched this thing in a month," said Mr. Stillman, the doctors' attorney.

Meanwhile, day-to-day conditions at Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat could be labeled critical. Only nine of Meeth's 17 operating rooms are still operating, and the emergency room is barely running. There are chronic pharmacy shortages and new locks on many of the doors, and doctors are leaving in droves. To cut overhead, the hospital recently fired Dr. Iris Klatsky, director of the highly regarded Voice Restoration Program for throat-cancer patients. Meeth's 50 residents, who were given the sack in late June, are starting to be evicted from hospital-owned housing.

When Dr. Edelstein, Meeth's ear, nose and throat director, walked in the door a few weeks ago to read his charts, he said he was greeted by Mr. Sarkar, his boss, and ordered to leave.

"He told me I had no right to be there," Dr. Edelstein recalled. "I told him I did. There's the whole fight in a nutshell.

And so another battle for the soul of the Upper West Side is underway.

Madonna and other influential neighbors-including Gail Gregg, the wife of Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., publisher of The New York Times , CBS newsman Harry Smith, character actress Carol Kane and television executive Geraldine Laybourne-have thrown their support behind community groups fighting the proposal. They say the planned tower, which would be one of the tallest buildings overlooking Central Park from the west, is a serious threat to their quality of life. Residents of posh 1 Lincoln Plaza and a preservation group called Landmark West have teamed up with parents of students at the Ethical Culture School-the breeding ground of future Fieldston School students-to raise money to fight the development.

Moisha Blechman, one of Madonna's neighbors and president of the West 64th Street Block Association, explained that the star "needs to be able to get her car there. She'd like her little girl safe without the dust in the air." (A spokesman for Madonna relayed her only comment: that she indeed is on the side of the residents fighting the construction.) Mr. Smith, who has a 4-year-old at the Y's Co-op Nursery School and an 8-year-old at the Ethical Culture School, noted that "we're concerned about cranes hanging over the playground-real basic sort of stuff." He said he made a lot of calls at the beginning of the agitation, but he has decided that there's little that can be done. "It's very disheartening," he said. "I don't think there is anything anybody can do about it. It's got everyone stressed out. We're just stressed-out neighbors."

Such arguments may not impress Madonna's newfound foes, who are not without resources. The board of directors for the YMCA of Greater New York is laden with pillars of the financial world like Goldman, Sachs & Company managing director Robert F. Cummings Jr., Paine Webber Inc. president Joseph J. Grano Jr., Lazard Frères & Company managing director J. Robert Lovejoy and Richard A. Grasso, chairman of the New York Stock Exchange and newly elected chairman of the YMCA board; they voted to approve the deal last fall. The New Jersey-based real estate investment trust Vornado Realty Trust and developer David Edelstein, both known in Manhattan as aggressive developers, currently are negotiating to buy air rights from the West Side YMCA to build the tower above the YMCA's annex, which was once the McBurney School.

For the YMCA, the deal means an $18-million windfall: Vornado and Mr. Edelstein will pay the Y about $8 million in cash and provide $10 million in capital improvements, all when its traditional fund-raising campaigns bring in only about $130,000 a year. But opponents say the Y is either greedy or misguided. They fear the construction will endanger the architectural integrity of the landmarked area-not to mention the lives of their children, who attend two nearby schools. They hold out the specter of recent construction-related accidents as evidence that the project literally is life-threatening.

"In light of what's happened in the last year with bricks falling, people getting killed … we're very concerned about a project of this magnitude," said Lonnie Soury of Soury Communications Inc., the public relations firm hired by neighborhood residents. "There's zero room for error," said Sophia de Boer, treasurer of the West 64th Street Block Association. "Any mistakes at the construction site, and lives will be at risk."

Up on the Roof

Nina Gray, an architectural historian, has a big problem with the tower on artistic grounds (she described the project as "stuffing a skyscraper into an airshaft"), but as a parent of 6-year-old Alexander, a kindergartner at Ethical Culture, and 4-year-old Julia, who attends the Y preschool, the proposal hits closer to home.

"It would have a terrible impact on Ethical Culture-the children won't be allowed to play on the roof," she asserted. "The little children spend one and a half hours on the roof every day; it's a critical part of the curriculum. Not being able to do that is a drag."

The residents' battleground so far has been an administrative appeals process, starting with the city's Department of Buildings and moving then to the city's Board of Standards and Appeals. The standards board held a public hearing in early June and is expected to make a ruling July 14. If the panel decides in favor of the YMCA, attorneys for the opponents say they will go to court.

The legal issue is whether a special permit of development granted to the YMCA in 1989 remains valid. The real estate market tanked just after the permit was granted, so nothing came of plans to develop the site. In 1997, with a better market, the Y shopped around for a new developer and found the team of Vornado and Mr. Edelstein.

Because a new regulation passed in 1995 put a four-year life on permits, and because that limit was applied to other permits granted before 1995, community members insist that the Y's permit is no longer valid. And they say that under 1998 building standards, the permit would not be granted again.

But at least two city bureaucrats already have ruled otherwise, saying that the Y's construction plans were granted a permit without a lapsing provision. With the permit still valid and air rights under negotiation, nothing would stand in the developers' way.

Nothing except their opponents' ample resources. According to representatives for the various groups, most of the money has been funneled to Landmark West to pay the bills and lead the fight. Landmark West president Arlene Simon contends that the power players on her team shouldn't become the issue. When asked about how much the opposition team has raised or spent, Ms. Simon said: "The financial aspects of it are not something I'll discuss with you. We can pay our bills, that's really what it comes down to."

Indeed, Landmark West is footing the bill for two attorneys and one public relations firm. As for the number of prominent people backing up the fight, Ms. Simon said that shouldn't make a difference. "We're dealing with [issues], not with anybody's money or anybody's clout," she said.

And yet she claims that for the YMCA, money and clout are exactly the issues. "The money for them is the bottom line," Ms. Simon said. "Public be damned, it goes back to the whole thing of greed."

Rowena Daly, the West Side Y's director of community relations, said it's not a matter of greed but of being able to help the community. The West Side Y-already the largest YMCA in the world-serves about 60,000 adults and 7,000 children every year.

"This will greatly enable us to expand, to better serve the community," she said. "They are essentially providing us with a brand-new building." In addition to renovating existing space, the expansion would add six floors of new space: three floors for child care and three for adult programs. The existing facade of the former McBurney School would be kept intact, complying with the rules for historic landmarks.

Low-Income Housing

On another six floors would be 65 new housing units for low-income seniors and performing artists. These would be added to the Y's 359 existing apartments. The new apartments, while built by Vornado, will be separate from the luxury condos, with the entrance through the Y. While Mr. Soury called such an arrangement "economic Jim Crow," Ms. Daly said that it made sense because they will be part of the Y's housing, administered by Y staff. "They're our apartments-we would run them," she said.

Still, residents say the Y should be able to accomplish its goals without cutting a deal with developers. They suggested the Y look to its own board to raise the money.

That 35-member board, in addition to the financiers, includes Country Living publisher Peg Farrell; Unisys Corporation president Lawrence A. Weinbach; Shelly Lazarus, chief executive of the ad firm Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide; and Frank Moseley, a partner at the powerful law firm Davis, Polk & Wardell, among many others with similarly grandiose titles.

"If everyone gave $1 million, it's not going to affect their life style," Ms. Blechman said.

But Ms. Daly said fund-raising campaigns don't work that way. After a year of asking for and collecting money, the Y only came up with $130,000 for its capital campaign. She said some of the most wealthy people in the neighborhood gave as little as $1.

"People who make $10,000 tend to give more than people who make a lot of money," she said. "If people want to give to the Y, we welcome it, we appreciate it. But it's not anywhere near [enough], no way."

As for the resident's concerns about safety, Ms. Daly said the Y is working with Vornado to ensure all safety measures are taken. She said the Y has hired an outside site safety manager and precautions are being worked into the Y's contract with Vornado.

And for some, that's enough: The parents of the 180 children at the Y's Co-op Nursery School voted earlier this year not to move the school once construction begins. And administrators at Ethical Culture are cooperating with the Y.

But nothing the Y says satisfies the residents and parents of students at the Ethical Culture School. They simply don't want the project to happen.

"Why are they against the YMCA being able to serve 7,000 to 10,000 children? Why is it bad to provide affordable housing?" Ms. Daly said, her friendly P.R. demeanor cracking. "It makes me so mad when these people living in these incredibly expensive apartments are against this. It's not like we're Donald Trump."

With the two-bedroom luxury apartments estimated to sell for $1.2 million each, the Donald could only wish.