56 Ludlow Street: artists still live here!

Luxury lofts and a gourmet deli now occupy the former home of Max's Kansas City and Warhol's Factory in the Decker Building has been replaced by a Puma Store and yet more luxury apartments. But here's some news that's not completely disheartening: John Cale's old apartment on Ludlow Street is occupied by artists, reports The Wall Street Journal.

The Velvet Underground co-founder fled the Lower East Side and New York City long ago (he now lives in L.A.), but we can all breathe a collective sigh of relief that the cultural geography of the city has not been completely eroded by wealth.

This may be the first time that The Journal's Mansion section hasn't made us feel bad about ourselves, New York and/or the state of the world. The famous people reminiscing about the hell holes where they lived before they were famous is by and large our favorite part of this aspirational reading for the upper classes.

Mr. Cale moved to New York in 1964 and soon met experimental filmmaker Tony Conrad, who invited him to split the $25-a-month rent for his one-bedroom at 56 Ludlow. The place was a total dump—a railroad flat with no heat besides a gas stove and a fireplace where they burned crates and furniture in the winter to keep warm.

It was squalor, but not very glamorous squalor. Mr. Cale writes about wedging a hollowed-out mattress into one of the windows to prevent break-ins from the fire escape, eating a lot of canned soup on said gas stove and having rocks thrown at them by local kids who thought their haircuts were stupid. Lou Reed stayed there on weekends so they could practice, commuting in from—also not very glamorous—Long Island.

Still, it proved a conducive setting for creativity. It was there that the band taped the six songs that became the basis for their first album. Plus, the rent, adjusted for inflation, would be $186 per-month today. Split between two people that's an astoundingly low $93 per person.

According to Streeteasy, apartments in the building have been recently rented for between $2,400 and $3,300 a month, which is affordable to successful artists, but not starving ones. Our thoughts on the raging Manhattan real estate market, as expressed in the immortal words of the Velvet Underground: Sometimes I feel so happy/ Sometimes I feel so sad/ Sometimes I feel so happy/But mostly you just make me mad.

kvelsey@observer.com

Maybe the house in Hastings-on-Hudson was inspiration for Mr. Shatner's lyrical masterpiece "I can't get behind that?"

Finally, a celebrity house that doesn't fill us with feelings of longing and sadness! And it's written about in The Wall Street Journal, that organ of the upper classes. What gives?

No, this is not a new turn for the paper that brought you that video segment on whether or not rich people should buy yachts. Nor is a paean to Bloomberg's plan to bring micro apartments to Manhattan. It's William Shatner, remembering fondly the shithole he lived in back in the late 1950s.

The story appears in the paper's inaugural edition of Mansion, its unfortunately named new real estate section. And it seems to be the lone article in the section that does not deal with the (current) real estate of the fabulously wealthy. (Other features include a look at the three homes of Maya Angelou none of which she finds suitable for writing, a story about tech titans buying beach-front property in L.A. and best of all, a story about the market for equestrian estates.)

But onto the dump Mr. Shatner lived in way back when. It was in Hastings-on-Hudson and he paid $19,500. It had a screen door on the porch that "slammed with a snap" and a wood-burning stove that darkened the ceiling with black ash and filled the house with the scent of burning wood.

Not so bad, right? But it gets worse.

"The floors creaked, the windows wouldn't go up and, when they did, they wouldn't come down." Also, the roof leaked, the water pressure was terrible and worst of all, there was this onetime that the upstairs toilet overflowed.

You know what, the house still doesn't sound that bad. But we're sure that such descriptions might leave a well-heeled reader gasping in horror. As it happens, the house wasn't that bad because it had pig bristles in the plaster! Which might sound like a bad thing, but apparently, they held the plaster in the toilet-saturated ceiling together, and the young, penurious actor, who lived there with his wife and baby, didn't have to pay for a complete plaster job.

We assume Mr. Shatner's current place in Hollywood Hills is way nicer and the house where he once lived is looking pretty good these days as well. With its view of the Hudson River and its pig bristle charm, it's now assessed at $756,000, The Journal reports. Happy endings!

Little Green Houses.

So The Journal announced its new Friday real estate section today. You can read all about it in the release below. What struck us though, was the name. "Mansion" it will be called.

We couldn't help but think it lacked a certain sophistication (say the people who brought you VelvetRoper.com), so herewith are some suggestions:

• Penthouses
• Oh Castle, My Castle
• Third Homes and Gardens
• Don't Dwell, Buy
• Eight-Figure Estates
• Bubbles Weekly
• Finer Foundations
• You're Still Not Ira Rennert
• Money Boxes
• Jealous?

WALL STREET JOURNAL TO LAUNCH WEEKLY SECTION
FOR RESIDENTIAL REAL ESTATE

Friday Journal Section to be Renamed; Showcase Expanded Arts & Culture, Sports

NEW YORK (Oct. 2, 2012) – The Wall Street Journal will debut a new weekly section covering the global luxury real estate market on Friday, Oct. 5. To serve a global audience, “Mansion” will appear as a stand-alone section in the Journal every Friday in the U.S., with select content appearing each week in the Journal’s Europe and Asia editions. Relevant content will also be presented across WSJ.com’s Chinese, Japanese and German-language editions.

Along with additional features and coverage on WSJ.com, all Mansion content will be available via the Journal’s universal app for iPhone and iPad.

“The mantra for real estate has always been location, location, location – the location for the most intelligent, original, trustworthy and insightful journalism on prestige property is now The Wall Street Journal,” said Robert Thomson, editor-in-chief of Dow Jones & Company and managing editor of The Wall Street Journal. “We all like to think of our home as a mansion, even if it is a humble abode, and we all have the license to aspire, so we have created Mansion to be the home of both aspiration and real estate realization.”

GLOBAL COVERAGE FOR A GLOBAL MARKET
Mansion will offer in-depth stories from a global team of journalists, including property-focused coverage with industry statistics and a focus on high-end financing; luxuryreal estate topics from iconic buildings and renovations to investments associated with those projects; distinctive neighborhoods and properties around the world; unique views from select residences and more.

Buoyed by the Journal’s existing staff of real estate reporters as well as a newly formed dedicated team for Mansion, led by editor Emily Gitter, recurring features include:

§  The Market: A data-driven look at a sector of the luxury market;

§  House Call: A notable person recounts a real estate adventure;

§  Private Properties: High-profile transactions and property news;

§  The Balance Sheet: A profile of a renovation project;

§  Who Lives Here: An in-depth profile of a building or iconic block, the notable people who live there, the history and recent noteworthy sales;

§  Inside Story: A profile of a prominent individual home;

§  Portfolio: A look inside the real estate portfolio of a well-known person;

§  Jumbo Jungle: How to finance a luxury home now;

§  The Trade: The business of buying and selling; real estate brokers on the rise; trends in marketing homes andmore;

§  Foreign Correspondent: A guide to buying homes overseas, with a look at the quirks of the particular localreal estate market.

WSJ.com will also unveil an enhanced experience on Friday at WSJ.com/RealEstate, the Journal’s portal for property coverage. A dedicated page for Mansion will have all slideshows, including House of the Day, as well as videos and articles exploring the world of high-end homes. WSJ Live will also offer a daily segment focused on realestate as part of its Lunch Break show. In conjunction with launch, Wall Street Journal real estate reporter Lauren Schuker Blum will host a chat Friday at1:30 p.m. EST on WSJ.com to discuss how the luxury-home market is being redefined.

Complementing Mansion, The Journal will continue to cover real estate news and features in its national news pages, the Greater New York section as well as Personal Journal and WSJ. Magazine.

In addition to the launch of Mansion, the current Friday Journal section in the Journal’s U.S. edition, which previously featured real estate coverage in addition to arts, will now focus on arts, culture and entertainment, showcasing the Journal’s expanded coverage of these areas. Renamed “Arena,” it will feature Pulitzer Prize-winning movie critic Joe Morgenstern, a leading team of television and theater critics, and the Journal’s growing arts staff’s reporting on movies, music, television, books, art, and new media. The Journal’s sports coverage, currently part of Friday Journal, will also appear as part of Arena.

Mansion will be included with Arena as a single section in some U.S. markets.

ADVERTISERS TO REACH AFFLUENT, INFLUENTIAL AUDIENCE
A number of advertisers across multiple categories have recognized the opportunity Mansion presents to target the Journal’s affluent and influential audience. Launch advertisers include Coldwell Banker; Extell Development Company; LandVest; Luxury Portfolio International; NetJets; New York Design Center; Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate; Related Companies; Sheldon Good & Company; Sotheby's International Realty Affiliates, LLC; Stribling Marketing Associates; and Sub-Zero and Wolf.

“We know our audience is already well-versed and interested in the high-end real estate market, and Mansion provides advertisers the opportunity to speak directly to that audience with a proven affinity for real estate and the subjects and trends surrounding it – from investment to renovation to design,” said Michael Rooney, chief revenue officer, The Wall Street Journal.

"Today's consumers are demanding a single source for all the latest intelligence on the world's luxury real estate markets. The new section delivers this in a timely, consistent and trusted way, providing critical insights into the globe's most far-reaching markets," said Wendy Purvey, chief marketing officer, Sotheby's International Realty Affiliates LLC. "With the Sotheby's International Realty® network's expertise and global presence, The Wall Street Journal is an ideal outlet for educating buyers and sellers on the latest industry trends and showcasing the most extraordinary property available today."

"We arethrilled to support The Wall Street Journal's newest section and see it as an exciting way to share our brands' stories about food preservation and greatcooking results with new readers," said Michele Bedard, vice president of marketing for Sub-Zero and Wolf. "Our work with The Wall Street Journal has been integral to the engagement of readers and consumers that are as passionate about design and cooking as we are at Sub-Zero and Wolf and lookforward to the same with the addition of Mansion."

On Aug. 11, a limited liability corporation controlled by Charles Yassky, a developer and real estate investor, paid $13.2 million for a 36-foot-wide red-brick mansion at 122 East 78th Street.

The building, split into two floors of offices and three floors of small apartment units, went on the market two weeks ago for $18.9 million, slightly more than 43 percent above what Mr. Yassky paid just three months ago. Last week, his price came down to $16.9 million, still $3.7 million more than August’s sale.

“Well, look, I’m in the real estate business, O.K.?” Mr. Yassky said this week, reached at his office. “I buy houses to renovate, and I buy houses to sell. It’s a financial transaction. I’m in business to buy and sell. That’s what I do.” As it happens, the Department of Buildings shows he hasn’t done any renovation there. Still, he pointed out that between brokers’ fees, mortgage payments, recording costs, taxes, insurance and upkeep, profits on these kinds of flips can be significantly lower than they seem.

Mr. Yassky, whose holdings include shopping centers and Manhattan apartment buildings, was last in the news in 2004, when the mega-broker Michael Shvo was forced to take an ethics course because of his dealings with the investor: The two simply visited one of Mr. Yassky’s developments together without the building’s exclusive broker, who then complained.

As for the East 78th Street mansion, Mr. Yassky said it now costs only about $1,100 per square foot—“the lowest-priced mansion in Manhattan.” But the research Web site PropertyShark lists the building at 13,734 square feet, which means the current price per square foot is $1,230. “Now you’re getting yourself into a logjam of facts,” he told this reporter. “The building is in excess of 15,000 square feet.”

Either way, a listing with Brown Harris Stevens says the mansion is “ready to be converted to a single-family residence,” though phone records suggest there are still several tenants. “Let’s just say my attorney has advised me not to discuss the tenancy of the building. Period,” Mr. Yassky offered. Joanna Cutler shares the listing.

A deed filed in city records this week shows that he just bought a $2.275 million apartment at the Olympic Tower on Fifth Avenue. It’s not clear if he lives there, but it’s apparently his third unit on the same floor.

mabelson@observer.com