Manhattan Transfers

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The Whitman

Inside The Whitman, Madison Square Park’s Newest Ultra-Luxury Condo Confection

To say that one lived on the Park once meant something very specific in New York. There were other parks, of course, and very posh residences surrounding some of them—to wit, Gramercy—but none could compare to Central, whose vast expanse of green may as well have been made of gold.

Oh, how times have changed. At least, real estate developers are doing their damndest to see that they do. This fall, the $42 million penthouse of 18 Gramercy Park went into contract—a downtown record. And now, an ultra-luxe condo development at 21 East 26th Street is looking to draw the Louboutin-heeled to Gramercy’s northern neighbor.

The Whitman, as the handsome brick and limestone manse is to be known, will have three full-floor residences, priced at $10 million, $10.25 million and $10.5 million (the cost increases incrementally as the floors go up), and a 6,540-square-foot duplex penthouse. The penthouse comes with three terraces (totaling 3,000 square feet),  a $22.5 million price tag and the ultimate luxury—27,500-square-feet of air rights.  Enough to build another mansion on top, or to sell to Madison Square Park’s next luxury-minded condo developer. Read More

movies

Jim Broadbent and Hanks in Cloud Atlas. (Warner Bros. Pictures)

Atlas, Drugged: This Colossal Misuse of Cast, Crew and Cash Unceremoniously Collapses in on Itself

Almost three hours long, a lugubrious sludge of mud soup called Cloud Atlas deserves a limp nod for pure guts, I suppose, but what I’d really like to do is burn it. Based on a genre-switching, era-hopping, style-abusing, tempo-thumping novel by David Mitchell that everyone has always labeled “unfilmable,” the labyrinthine, ridiculously bloated—$100-million, anybody?—head-scratcher of a movie is the mess that proves it.

Coming at us in sections like an exploding garbage truck, this adaptation is a single film that weaves an incomprehensible literary gumbo of unrelated stories in multiple time frames over a span of 500 years. Whew! Read More

What We’re Reading: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

The Gist: A trip to 18th century Japan which is more Lord Jim than Shogun, the new novel from the author of Cloud Atlas navigates the narrow channel between filthy capitalism and delicate love. Although he’s ostensibly on a five-year mission to rid the Dutch East India Company’s Nagasaki outpost of corruption, the title character is really just there to impress Read More

Turning His Back on the Exotic, A Novelist Explores Home Turf

Black Swan Green is exactly what one wanted from David Mitchell, whose first three novels have been clever, intricate and exotic. This new one sticks close to home and seems simple and direct—it has the naked emotional appeal of a well-wrought first novel distilled from the author’s own intimate experience. But of course it’s not Read More

Weather, War and Ms. Flanagan- Fresh Word of American Disasters

First, the bad news: Two new books are going to forcefully remind us of the long-term disaster we’re busy ushering in. Tim Flannery’s The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth (Grove/Atlantic) is endorsed with a blurb from Tony Blair; and Elizabeth Kolbert’s sober and scary Read More

Brilliant Stutter-Step Novel Cuts Smoothly Through History

Cloud Atlas , by David Mitchell. Random House, 509 pages, $14.95.

Hugely entertaining and vastly ambitious, David Mitchell’s third novel, Cloud Atlas , is tailor-made for a reader with eclectic tastes. “Tailor-made” is meant to evoke the image of a meticulous craftsman hand-fashioning something rare and beautiful out of boldly patterned material-imagine big shears Read More

New Novelist Circles Globe, Constructs a Dazzling Puzzle

Ghostwritten , by David Mitchell. Random House, 426 pages, $24.95.

Rereading a novel that gets better the second time is a rare pleasure topped with the promise of more pleasure to come. With reprise reading, you’re looking for confirmation, not discovery: the satisfaction of recognizing that intricate workmanship is actually functional–once again the key turns Read More