Mr. Grubman said it was purely a coincidence, and then accused Mr. Huckman of harassing him when the reporter pressed for more details.

But Mr. Grubman, The Observer has learned, doesn't actually own the place anymore. Four days after his confrontation with Mr. Huckman-amid a swirl of accusations and investigations of Mr. Grubman's behavior at Salomon Smith Barney-he transferred the deed to the house into his wife's name.

City records show that Mr. Grubman and his wife, Luann, had jointly held title to the townhouse on East 81st Street since March 1999, when they bought the building for $6.2 million in a reportedly all-cash transaction.

Mr. Grubman signed over the deed to his wife exclusively with no money changing hands, city records show.

About a month before the transfer, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer subpoenaed Salomon Smith Barney to obtain documents relating to research by Mr. Grubman, in an investigation that is still underway. Mr. Grubman had also been named as a defendant in two different lawsuits filed by investors in WorldCom and Global Crossing.

Last week, investigators released e-mails that suggest Mr. Grubman upgraded his rating on AT&T stock in order to help his twin daughters gain admission into the elite preschool at the 92nd Street Y.

Mr. Grubman could not be reached for comment, and his lawyer, Lee Richards, did not return repeated calls for comment.

Husbands and wives frequently transfer property titles to one another, most often to lower tax burdens in estate-planning arrangements or in cases of divorce.

But several lawyers for disgruntled customers who have filed suit against the former telecom analyst said they're worried Mr. Grubman is attempting to unload assets that could be recoverable as part of a civil award.

"If he's trying to remove assets off his docket [to guard against] people trying to go after him personally, this is definitely a concern," said Eric J. Belfi, an associate at the firm Rabin & Peckel, which has filed several class-action lawsuits against Mr. Grubman, Salomon Smith Barney and other related parties.

Mr. Spitzer's office declined to comment on the transaction, as did the National Association of Securities Dealers, the industry regulator that is suing Mr. Grubman, charging he misled investors in Winstar Communications, a now-bankrupt telecom.

Whittle Slashes Georgica Price by $6 M.; Hilfiger in the Hamptons? 'Never.'

Chris Whittle, founder and chief executive of the controversial and cash-starved charter-school company Edison Schools, slashed $6 million from the asking price of his 11-acre Georgica Pond estate. The property, which had been on the market for $45 million, was reported sold to fashion mogul Tommy Hilfiger-but local brokers are telling The Observer that that's not the case.

"Tommy Hilfiger has never, ever seen the property," said the property's exclusive listing agent, Peter Turino, co-owner of Dunemere Associates. "It's still available, and we welcome serious interest."

Of course, many brokers would say that right up to the moment the deed changes hands, but a spokesperson for Mr. Hilfiger concurred, saying: "He hasn't seen the property; he's not in the market to buy; it's not true.

"[Mr. Hilfiger] made one phone call to inquire about a summer-rental property in general, and somehow it turned into this," the spokesperson continued. "He hasn't been out to the Hamptons in a couple of years, and he wasn't calling about any particular property."

Mr. Hilfiger is better known in resort spots like Nantucket and Mustique, and owns a house in Greenwich, Conn.

Mr. Whittle put his property on the market in early September-less than a week after Nasdaq threatened to delist Edison School's stock. One of the East End's top brokers said that there have been a fair number of showings since the property came on the market, but few experts deem it worthy of the record-high price tag.

"A lot of people have turned it down because they don't think it's worth anywhere near $45 million," the broker said. Whether $39 million is still too high remains to be seen.

Mr. Turino, the property's listing agent, defended the high price. "[It's] the finest property listed out here in many years," Mr. Turino said. "The house is a masterpiece, and it's completely renovated."

upper west side

253 West 73rd Street (the Level Club)

Two-bedroom, two-bathroom condo.

Asking: $899,000.

Selling: $865,000.

Charges: $550. Taxes: $320.

Time on the market: two weeks.

MAMA KNOWS BEST If your lawyer's mother has to undergo heart-transplant surgery on the closing day of your condo sale, you might expect to postpone the paperwork. So when the seller of this condo-working in London as an executive at a Europe-based U.S. TV station-heard about his lawyer's predicament, he naturally inquired as to when they should reschedule the closing. "No," his lawyer's assistant told him, "they did closing this morning." Apparently the lawyer's mother told him to go ahead with the closing; he kept his cell phone turned off the entire time so as not to get any bad news in the middle of it. Only on the way back home, after having dropped off all the checks at Citibank, did he get the call from his wife and learn that the operation had gone smoothly. "I told his assistant that he was absolutely insane and out of his mind," said the Londoner. "And I sort of felt bad, because had I been in New York, I'm sure he would have postponed it." The new owners already lived in the building-the Level Club, a former Masonic temple-and had been waiting for a unit with outdoor space for years. The Level Club's in-house broker, Corcoran vice president Lawrence Schier, said he took his hat off to the lawyer. "Some brokers fear bad attorneys, because they break up deals," he said. "This one was a deal-maker."

sutton place

419 East 57th Street

One-bedroom, two-bathroom co-op.

Asking: $895,000. Selling: $875,000.

Maintenance: $1,160; 55 percent tax-deductible.

Time on the market: seven months.

fourth time's a charm The fabric importer who sold this eagle's-nest apartment has bought and moved into three different apartments in the last five years, and he's currently buying his fourth. It started humbly enough with a $180,000, 680-square-foot starter apartment; now he's in a $1.3 million, 2,300-square-foot Prince Street loft. "It's not that I'm willfully relocating him," said the importer's longtime broker, Michel Madie, president of Michel Madie Real Estate Services. "It's just that new stuff comes up, and every time I knock on his door, he ends up buying a place." The fabric importer bought this 980-square-foot Sutton Place tower co-op two years ago. The apartment's bones were great: 20-foot-high ceiling, fireplace, wrought-iron gates outside. But soon after the purchase, he hired architects at Mr. Madie's firm to perform a $110,000 renovation. Since then, he's held two banging Fourth of July parties on the 300-square-foot private roof deck. A banker with a big trust fund is the new owner.

fort greene

107 Greene Avenue

Two-family townhouse.

Asking: $959,000. Selling: $942,000.

Taxes: $2,803.

Time on the market: three-and-a-half weeks.

IF I HAD A MILLION DOLLARS The seller of this Brooklyn brownstone used to work for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and his office was on a high floor of the World Trade Center. A few weeks before Sept. 11, however, he gave notice at work and moved with his family down to Florida to realize his long-held dream of becoming a commercial-airline pilot. Training began, ironically enough, at Vero Beach-the same place where many of the Sept. 11 hijackers learned to fly. "He cheated death by becoming a pilot," said his broker, Jerry Minsky, a senior vice president at the Corcoran Group. "And a year later, he became a millionaire because he sold his brownstone." The building he sold was originally a rectory up until the 1950's. "The old-timers tell me it's where you hung out when you got punished by Mom and Dad," said Mr. Minsky. "The balconies on the upper levels are where the nuns hung out." By the late 1980's, it had been converted into a two-family house, and the Port Authority employee picked it up for about a quarter of a million dollars. The 20-foot-wide, 3,600-square-foot Gothic-revival building has 12-foot-high ceilings, five bedrooms, two bathrooms and two half-bathrooms in total. It's right down the street from the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The new owners, a gay couple-one's an actuary at a law firm, the other is a nurse studying anesthesiology-are renting out half of the space, but have plans to eventually convert it into a single-family residence.

UPPER EAST SIDE

Cantor Chief Howard Lutnick Rents Yellow Townhouse Eyed by Mike Tyson

Cantor Fitzgerald's chairman, Howard Lutnick, has signed a year-long lease on the lavishly decorated East 64th Street townhouse that ex–heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson once tried to buy.

Mr. Lutnick and his family have taken occupation of the four-story, canary-and-cream-colored townhouse while they wait out the renovations on their East 71st Street house. Mr. Lutnick purchased that house in 1998 for $7.6 million, but it was then divided into 10 apartments, and he didn't obtain a permit to renovate it into a single-family residence until January 2001.

A spokesperson for Cantor Fitzgerald confirmed the arrangement.

New York got to know Mr. Lutnick first as the grieving head of the bond brokerage firm that lost 658 employees in the World Trade Center attacks, more than any other company in New York. But the outspoken chief executive became a lightning rod for criticism later, when families of employees who were killed in the attacks said salary payments to their missing family members had been stopped.

That criticism seems to have died down, and in September of this year, Mr. Lutnick told The New York Times that the move was essential to shore up the company's rocky finances-and pointed out that as of September 2002, Cantor's contributions to those employees' families totaled just under $25 million.

Mr. Lutnick's rental house belongs to Austrian developer Peter Cervinka, who bought the building in 1993 and then spent $8 million renovating it. He decided to rent it out when none of the suitors for the property, including Mr. Tyson, tendered an acceptable bid.

Mr. Lutnick's company is also renting out space until its permanent home is ready. Cantor Fitzgerald employees are now reporting to a temporary office at Lexington and 57th Street until the company finalizes its plans to settle into the old J.W. Mays Department Store building on Union Square.

-Accepting the Universe (1920), John Burroughs

On Monday night, Oct. 22, as American soldiers were continuing their grainy, night-vision incursions into Taliban territory, Paul O'Neill, Tino Martinez and Bernie Williams lofted towering home runs in the Bronx to beat the Seattle Mariners and send the Yankees to their fourth consecutive World Series championship. Almost eliminated earlier in the playoffs, the Yankees are a metaphor for New York, a stirring emblem of the courage of the city and its endless capacity to renew itself despite daunting obstacles.

For the past six weeks, the anxiety and grief felt by all New Yorkers has been matched by their determination to prevail against the threats, real and imagined, that have dominated public discourse. The overall mood has been equal parts civility and tenacity, and there is plenty of evidence that the affection and loyalty that New Yorkers feel for their city and each other will deny the terrorists their deranged dream of hysteria and mass exodus.

The city's resilience has been stunning. Within days of Sept. 11, the government bond-trading business was restarted; within a week, the New York Stock Exchange was up and running. Displaced banking and law firms were offered temporary office space by former rivals. Con Edison and Verizon worked tirelessly to restore critical power and phone lines that had been destroyed. Hotels, which saw occupancy rates plunge to 30 percent in September, are back up to 60 percent. While tourism will continue to suffer in the short term, the attractions that make New York so compelling to the rest of the world-Broadway and Off-Broadway theater, superb museums, four-star restaurants, the vibrancy and energy of the nightlife-will not lose their draw.

The Dow has gained back 75 percent of the losses it suffered immediately after the attacks. Several of Wall Street's most prominent firms, including Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs, have indicated that they will not relocate from the area in the immediate vicinity of the disaster site. Other firms must be encouraged to stay put-not only as a matter of patriotism, but because it makes good business sense. Both of the candidates for Mayor, Mark Green and Michael Bloomberg, understand the absolute necessity to rebuild downtown Manhattan, and whoever wins will surely make the revival of the world's most important financial district a central part of his legacy.

Not everyone has acted with integrity, of course, and there have been some unfortunate lapses. After embracing the city, the federal government is now hesitating about providing a penny over the $40 billion in aid it initially promised. Some of the fault may lie with Governor George Pataki, who tried to sneak some pork-barrel items-high-speed train service to Schenectady?-into the request for $54 billion in aid that he sent to Congress. An example of outrageous conduct was the decision by Cantor Fitzgerald chairman Howard Lutnick to drop the firm's missing employees from the payroll on Sept. 15, just four days after the attacks. While Mr. Lutnick had been very public in his concern for the families of the 700 missing Cantor employees, the stopping of paychecks struck many as callous and ill-timed. Then there was Senator Hillary Clinton's puzzling post–Sept. 11 disappearing act, in which the junior Senator from New York-unlike Rudolph Giuliani, Mr. Pataki and Senator Charles Schumer-could not be found among those elected officials who were taking to the streets and airwaves to show their 24-hour-a-day commitment to a devastated city. Mrs. Clinton's invisibility in the weeks after the attack resulted in her being roundly booed by thousands of firefighters and police officers when she appeared onstage at Madison Square Garden for a fund-raiser organized by Paul McCartney.

But these are small matters when compared with the courage and compassion of most New Yorkers, who have shown the world that they are capable of fortitude in the most challenging of times. Indeed, the nation's and the world's previous view of New York, which had always had a veneer of suspicion and scorn, has been forever changed, replaced by warmth and admiration for this city of heroes.

And while we owe much to the firefighters and emergency workers who have illuminated the city skyline with their bravery, there is another group that deserves to be honored: the average New Yorkers, who have not abandoned this city for the suburbs or other cities, and who, like the Yankees, bring new meaning to the virtue of grace under pressure.

Bring on Arizona!

OnJuly20,the 28,500-square-foot townhouse at 9 East 86th Street, which was built for William Woodward Sr. in 1916, went on the market for $21 million with the Corcoran Group. The very social Woodward family threw lavish parties in this six-story Neo-Georgian mansion until, in 1955, William Woodward Jr. was shot and killed by his wife, Ann, at their home in Oyster Bay, Long Island. Mrs. Woodward told police that she mistook her husband for an intruder; she later killed herself, as did her two sons. The story was the basis for Dominick Dunne's 1985 book, The Two Mrs. Grenvilles .

According to Mr. Dunne, all of the Woodward daughters had their coming-out parties at the Manhattan townhouse. Before one, he said, "a man on a ladder was cleaning the chandelier in the hall when it crashed to the ground and killed him. Somehow they kept that quiet until after the chandelier was re-hung."

In 1957, the home was purchased by the private Town Club. Fourteen years later, a high-stakes card game at the club was held up, and $100,000 in cash and jewelry was stolen.

The townhouse, which features a large swimming pool, two elevators and a sauna, first went on the market last winter for $27 million with Massey Knackal Realty.

"It was clearly overpriced," said broker Elizabeth Mottram of the Corcoran Group, who is now selling the place with Sharon Baum. "The market was not responding to that price, so adjustments had to be made." Ms. Mottram said the townhouse was shown on July 23 to a potential buyer who wanted to turn the property into a two-family residence.

Last year, when the Steinberg family's insurance company went bankrupt, that clan was scarred, too–many members still aren't speaking to each other. According to East End brokers, in late June an offer was made to buy the four-acre Quoguee state of Saul Steinberg, former billionaire and chief executive of Reliance Group Holdings, and his socialite wife, Gayfryd, for about $6.3 million. The Steinbergs had been living at the estate at 188 Dune Road since they parted with their triplex penthouse at 740 Park Avenue last year, for $37 million, after Mr. Steinberg's fortune started to dissipate.

Considering the recent offer, the house seems to have declined in value as the Steinbergs' stock plummeted. The recent offer was a major discount from the $15 million price tag the property had back in 1995, when it first hit the market. It has been on and off the market for years, and in January the price was reduced to $9.5 million. Brokers involved in the deal said no contract had been signed for the property. The Steinbergs' broker, Peter Hallock of Allan M. Schneider in East Hampton, wouldn't comment..

"It was the nicest house in the neighborhood," said one broker who has shown the house. "That was part of the problem."

It may not be Lily Pond Lane, but the Steinbergs' former neighbors include Talk magazine editor Tina Brown and designer Arnold Scassi. A few months ago, the estate of Gwen Verdon, the Broadway dancer and ex-wife of Bob Fosse who died last fall, sold her home in Quogue for $2.5 million.

One broker said the Steinbergs have owned the house for about 15 years, and last year the deed was transferred to Gayfryd Steinberg. According to Allan M. Schneider's Web site, the four-acre, 17,000-square-foot estate with bay views features seven bedrooms, 10 bathrooms and three staff rooms, plus separate children's and guest wings. The gated grounds include a pool, a tennis court with pavilion, extensive English gardens and 250 feet of ocean frontage.

"It's gorgeous," said one East End broker who has shown the house. "It's over the top."

The lavish estate was the site of what many people called the "party of the decade"–Mr. Steinberg's surprise 50th-birthday party on Aug. 5, 1989. Mrs. Steinberg planned the event, inviting 250 of their closest friends, including former Commerce Secretary Robert Mosbacher and his then wife Georgette, Barbara Walters, Steve and Courtney Ross, leveraged-buyout giant Henry Kravis and his then wife, socialite Carolyn Roehm, Robert and Blaine Trump, Ms. Brown and her husband Harry Evans, and former Senator Alfonse D'Amato. The decor made the party emblematic of 1980's gluttony at its height: Identical twins dressed as mermaids floated in the pool, Oriental rugs were thrown over the grass and there were 10 huge tableaux vivants of Old Masters paintings–one actress posed naked for a living re-creation of Rembrandt's Danae . Treasure chests spilling over with pearls were the centerpieces, and guests dined on kilos of Beluga caviar and gallons of Louis Roederer Cristal champagne. The five-tiered gold-and-silver-leaf cake was rolled out on a platform, flanked by two children dressed as cherubs.

Though the Steinbergs' collectibles have been dispersed or auctioned off and the East End's Great Gatsby -esque parties are over, a little bit of nostalgia may help sell an estate in Sands Point, Long Island–where F. Scott Fitzgerald is said to have written parts of the book, and which was also the inspiration for the fictional home of Daisy Buchanan–which went on the market on July 20 for $50 million.

The estate, called Lands End, is being sold by racehorse owner Virginia Kraft Payson. The 25-room white-shingled Colonial Revival mansion was built in 1902 on Long Island's northwestern shore, in a town that was founded in 1695 by brothers James, Samuel and John Sands and then divided among 50 of the nation's wealthiest families by 1900. Other Sands Point homeowners have included publishers Condé Nast and William Randolph Hearst, former Governor Averill Harriman and Newsday founders Alicia Patterson and Harry Guggenheim.

Mr. Fitzgerald called the community "East Egg" and described it as a place of "white palaces glittering on the water." Now some of the glitter has faded–a few of those palaces can be rented out for benefit parties or weddings–but the price has risen to $50 million.

UPPER EAST SIDE

A HELL OF A WAY TO WAIT OUT A TOWNHOUSE Apparently, Howard Lutnick is a guy with a big heart–or at least a big bank account.

Mr. Lutnick, the president and chief executive of Cantor Fitzgerald, a wholesale securities seller and the chairman and chief executive of eSpeed Inc., which develops technology for trading online, bought a Beaux Arts house at 11 East 71st Street for $7.6 million in 1998. At the time, it was divided into 10 apartments. But not until January 2001 did he obtain a permit to renovate the place into a single-family home.

"I think he's bought a complete shell, basically," said Suria Clarke, a spokeswoman for the businessman, who was working from his London offices last week. In fact, Mr. Lutnick told The New York Times ' Christopher Gray that "nothing original remained inside" the Beaux Arts-style 1892 Carrere & Hastings-designed home down the block from the Frick, which Mr. Gray called "a radically new piece of architecture" for its time.

In the meantime, Mr. Lutnick recently signed a four-month lease on the 6,300-square-foot triplex maisonette at 817 Fifth Avenue that belonged to the late pediatrician and philanthropist Anne Dyson. The rent is a mere $45,000 a month.

The apartment has four bedrooms, six bathrooms, a double maid's room, a library, an office, a sitting room, a large living room and two fireplaces. There is a small terrace and two floors with about 50 feet of frontage each on Central Park. "It's like having your own townhouse," said Scott Durkin, chief operating officer of the Corcoran Group. And apartments as little as half the size have rented for $30,000 a month, according to one broker familiar with the building, which is home to Steve Wynn and Richard Gere.

The lease may or may not tide Mr. Lutnick over until his house is ready, which won't be until November at the earliest. But it will certainly buy some time for Dyson's husband, Michael Kramer, a managing editor at the Daily News , to try to find a buyer for the apartment, which has been on the market since last October.

JONATHAN AND CAROLINE SACK TAKE THE LONG WAY TO PARK AVENUE In early June, the full-floor apartment at 640 Park Avenue that had been on the market for more than a year finally sold to Jonathan Sack and his wife, Caroline Sassower Sack. The couple–he's a lawyer, and she's the daughter of banker Philip Sassower and the granddaughter of the late Max Oppenheimer–agreed to pay $11.7 million for the apartment, between 66th and 67th streets, last October.

"It's an enormous, beautiful apartment," said one broker of the 18-room home with four bedrooms, six bathrooms, maid's quarters and four fireplaces. "It's in very nice condition." (Maintenance is $6,890.)

According to brokers, the apartment went on the market last March but was almost immediately taken off by the sellers, an elderly couple represented by Neil Gallagher of Brown Harris Stevens. Last June, a contract was signed for the apartment, but the deal fell through. One broker said the co-op's board had turned down a prospective buyer. In October, the Sacks signed a contract to buy the apartment for $300,000 less than its asking price. They passed the board in December.

But the delay must have been smoothed over by Nancy Elias of Brown Harris Stevens, whose daughter, Wendy, is married to Mrs. Sack's brother, Edward. Ms. Elias and Eleanor Heyman, also of Brown Harris, represented the Sacks.

STEVE WITKOFF LANDS IN HIS VERY OWN AERIE While his company, the Witkoff Group, has been trying to unload a bunch of properties–the Daily News building on East 42nd Street, London's Shell Max House and an Art Deco building on the north bank of the Thames–Steve Witkoff bought a 25th-floor apartment at 188 East 78th Street, near Lexington Avenue, for $6.6 million in mid-June.

The real-estate lawyer turned developer's new apartment takes up 5,400 square feet–the whole 25th floor–and has five bedrooms, six and a half baths and a maid's room. A broker who has worked in the building said the developer had gotten a good deal, considering that a similar apartment on the 29th floor went for $9 million last May, and apartments on the 24th and 26th floors have sold for more than $7 million.

However, the broker said, Mr. Witkoff's new apartment "doesn't have helicopter views."

MURRAY HILL

20 East 35th Street

One-bedroom, 1 1/2 bathroom, 800-square-foot co-op.

Asking: $479,000. Selling: $479,000.

Charges: $1,202; 50 percent tax deductible.

Time on the market: one day.

BROKER KNOWS BEST "They thought they wanted Upper East Side, they wound up buying in midtown," said Bellmarc Realty broker Steve Mandresh of the pair who bought this duplex apartment on July 10. "They thought they wanted postwar, but as I started working with them I realized they loved the charm of a prewar." They knew for sure that they wanted a large place with views, good light and some perks. Two months later, this duplex apartment with a terrace and a fireplace, on the top floor of a prewar building, popped onto the market. "I called them immediately and said, 'Drop what you are doing, I have found the apartment for you,'" said Mr. Mandresh. His clients made an offer as soon as they saw it.

WEST VILLAGE

40 Leroy Street

Four-story, 3,800-square-foot townhouse.

Asking: $3.995 million. Selling: $3.75 million.

Time on the market: eight months.

THE PARTY'S OVER–FOR NOW Party planner Andy King moved out of his penthouse apartment on Prince Street two and a half years ago and bought this 1835 townhouse from the estate of antiques dealer James Ray for $1.4 million. He spent a year renovating the house "top to bottom" with the help of the architect Malcolm Kaye of Aston Associates. When everything was finally done, Mr. King moved himself into the top floor and commenced throwing parties. Over the next year, the elegant townhouse was the backdrop for several weddings, receptions, meetings and birthday parties. Mr. King, who is also a chef, catered the events. But then Mr. King had had it. "The idea was that his living quarters would be separate, but the house was so great that everyone wanted to go to every room and pick up every picture, and his space wasn't that private," said broker Leslie Mason of Douglas Elliman. Mr. King put the place up for sale last year, and a family showed up recently to buy it. Mr. King has not yet decided where he and his parties will go next, but it will probably be a loft space downtown.