The problem with the award is that Mr. Giuliani's new wealth has been earned after the dissolution of the relationship, if not the marriage. Ms. Hanover, who stopped using her husband's name in 1996, kept her work life separate from his. Although her acting and TV presenting career certainly benefited from his high profile, there is no sense in which his career benefited from his tabloid-fodder marriage to Ms. Hanover in recent years.

Here's the question: Why does Ms. Hanover have a right to assets that were accumulated after Mr. Giuliani sought to leave the marriage and was no longer living with her? Legally speaking, the answer is pretty straightforward: Since 1980, New York State has followed the principle of "equitable distribution" of assets acquired during a marriage. The beginning of a divorce action marks the cut-off moment for a couple's assets. While Mr. Giuliani filed for divorce in October 2000, he wasn't able to convince the court that he deserved a divorce. New York is a "fault grounds" state (for example, adultery, abandonment, or cruel and inhuman treatment; the latter was Mr. Giuliani's stated grounds).

This meant that it was only at the beginning of Ms. Hanover's suit for divorce, in May 2002 on the grounds of adultery, that the couple's assets were subject to "equitable distribution" and given a cut-off-and by that point, Mr. Giuliani's financial situation was much better than in 2000, when he had originally filed. As to how the assets were to be divided, New York's 1980 equitable-distribution law uses no fewer than 13 factors to determine how property acquired during a marriage is divided. One is "marital fault."

Did Rudy's lawyers back down because they guessed a trial would mete out worse punishment for his adultery? Stanford Lotwin, a divorce attorney at Blank Rome who handled the divorces of Donald Trump (both of them),Vanessa Williams and Diana Ross, insisted that marital misconduct "plays no part in the distribution of marital assets unless it is so egregious that it shocks the conscience of the court," as adultery no longer does. In other words, Mr. Giuliani had nothing to fear at a trial. Mr. Lotwin believes Mr. Giuliani settled because he felt that his earnings could have been pegged even higher: "He made a business decision that he could have been hurt more than 6.8 million." Mr. Lotwin also speculates that Ms. Hanover probably intended to stall and frustrate the divorce in an effort to get more money out of Mr. Giuliani, who didn't have many assets before 9/11: "After 9/11, a good strategy became a great strategy." As for Mr. Giuliani, he must also have felt the need to move on with his life-trials usually end in appeals, which would have given the case two more years of life. Another prominent divorce attorney, Harriet Newman Cohen-who has represented Howard Stern's ex, Alison, and Laurence Fishburne-said that Mr. Giuliani's "celebrity value as of his filing for divorce wasn't anywhere near double $6.8 million. He paid several million dollars as a premium for ending the matter then and there and not airing his dirty linen."

So Ms. Hanover's award is legally sound, but whether it's just is another question. While adultery or cruel and inhuman treatment have long been considered grounds for divorce, it doesn't necessarily follow that they ought to be punished financially. Why does every emotional hurt require a financial Band-Aid? People who are tormenting each other ought to be allowed to dissolve their legal ties, but it isn't clear that emotional injury can be prevented-or discouraged-by legal punishment. We could view the trouble inflicted on Ms. Hanover in her marriage as a painful but often inescapable part of life, and one that is best resolved privately.

The best explanation for Ms. Hanover's huge settlement might be our deeply entrenched beliefs about the relation between sex and money. It's partly because we take it for granted that every woman has her price that money seems a natural way of resolving grievances between men and women. But it's an outdated way of thinking, and in the end it's bad for women. The Giuliani-Hanvover settlement harks back to the days of breach-of-promise suits, when women sued men for the damage to their reputations and worth on the marriage market resulting from a broken engagement.

It may be the equitable-distribution system that's in need of an overhaul. Before 1980, New York State was a "title state," in which husbands and wives retained rights to assets in their names, such as their earnings, savings and acquisitions, during the marriage. Of course, in that era it was mainly husbands who had earnings, savings and acquisitions; wives had children. The system wasn't fair then, but it might work better now that most married women work outside the home and nearly a third of them outearn their spouses. To protect women (or men) who stay home with the kids, we could make special rules for single-earner families.

Equitable distribution also makes ridiculous assumptions about the relation of spouses to each other's career. The "corporate wife" as a full-time gig is defunct except at the most rarefied heights of business. Most wives are at jobs of their own, and their husbands are even less likely to be investing much in helping them there. It's women who stand to lose more by laws that encourage the pooling of career efforts, since it's women who tend to both earn less money and give more emotional support in most marriages. The idea that married couples somehow "share" careers also can't help but affect the kinds of careers women choose. All too often, they scale down their ambitions, unconsciously believing that the true measure of their worth-defined as attractiveness-is the earning power of the man they can pull in. And most women still take the income or future income of their boyfriends into account in deciding whether they would make good marriage partners, while men don't perform a similar calculus.

The $6.8 million that Ms. Hanover received is undoubtedly good for her and her children. It may even be fair payback for Mr. Giuliani's mean and cowardly behavior to her. But it isn't good for women in general, or for marriage.

That cover–and the story inside it carrying the crudely curdled quotes of Mr. Giuliani's attorney, Raoul Felder–belonged to the old New York: the one from the 80's, where the boom of wealth and power gave way to a lifeboat mentality laced with cynicism and mean-spiritedness. We reveled in our wickedness then, because we were survivors in a city that had come back from the brink. The rest of the country had shunned us as too coarse, too sybaritic, too sharp. And when we bounced back, we delighted in flashing our incisors, our money and worse.

But Mr. Giuliani changed that. He growled louder and more tenaciously than anyone in this town. He left no question that he was the lead dog, and though we often howled in resistance to his picayune quality-of-life decrees, we listened. And changed. When we rose again, this time we did it with a measure of dignity. It started small, with bans on jaywalking and ferrets, and trickled up into a pervasive atmosphere of humanistic respect. You can see it in the subway stations, as straphangers wait for disembarking passengers to get off the train before boarding. And you could hear it in the way that the power elite discussed the marathon Ron Perelman-Patricia Duff divorce proceedings, not with Schadenfreude , but with genuine dismay for the welfare of the couple's child.

So it was especially unsettling to wake up to that front page of the May 15 Post , because we knew when we saw that photo and that headline, "Cruella DeHanover," that the Mayor responsible for restoring the city's dignity was allowing his lawyer, Raoul Lionel Felder, to humiliate his wife. "She's howling like a stuck pig," Mr. Felder had told the press. "She reminds me of a little kid who murders his parents and complains he's an orphan."

It's a strange paradox–one that threatens the sanctity of the Mayor's family. Certainly, Ms. Hanover has not refrained from occasionally sticking her thumb into her husband's eye. But no matter who's hurting whom, and whether they divorce tomorrow or five years from now, they will be forever linked by their two children. So they should be thinking about the future, not channeling the acrid fumes of their failed past.

And for the citizens of this town, each assaultive hyperbole handed down by Mr. Felder– "I suppose we're going to have to pry her off the chandelier to get her out of there" –whether disavowed by Mr. Giuliani or not, desecrates the atmosphere of civility and straightforwardness that the Mayor reinstilled here. Moreover, Mr. Felder's dissemination of the ravages of Mr. Giuliani's prostate-cancer treatment as a weapon against Ms. Hanover is a sad counterpoint to the newfound humanity and humility that Mr. Giuliani exhibited last summer shortly after his diagnosis, when he even expressed contrition for having tyrannically and corrosively shot his mouth off in the wake of the murder of Patrick Dorismond.

Mr. Felder's function as the main carburetor of this noxious mess does not come without its risks, either. "At 9 o'clock in the morning, he's telling the judge he wants a gag order. At 10 o'clock in the morning, he can't stop talking. He has given a new meaning to the word 'insincerity,'" opined divorce attorney Norman Sheresky, a longtime rival of Mr. Felder's.

The tension between Mr. Sheresky and Mr. Felder dates back to 1988, when the former was quoted in the Miami Review saying, "Felder pretends to be a trial lawyer when he is not. He has no familiarity with how to try a case." Mr. Felder sued Mr. Sheresky for libel, but in July 1989, a New York State Supreme Court justice dismissed the $7 million suit, saying that Mr. Sheresky's comments about Mr. Felder were Constitutionally protected opinion.

Asked if he had an opinion about Mr. Felder's jabs at Ms. Hanover, Mr. Sheresky replied: "Somebody ought to put a muzzle on him."

Later in the day on May 15, there was the sense that Mr. Giuliani, who had publicly expressed regret over some of the comments about Ms. Hanover in the press, may have put the breaks on Mr. Felder. Ms. Hanover's attorney, Victor Kovner, told The Transom: "We now have some hope that he is going to exercise some control over his lawyer. From reading the papers, the Mayor appears to be troubled about some of the wild, baseless and scurrilous statements that Mr. Felder has made." Mr. Kovner added: "Today I haven't heard that they're out there making the same statements. And that's a degree of progress."

If the case progresses to the courtroom, it will be interesting to see what Mr. Felder does.

More than 10 years after he sued Mr. Sheresky, Mr. Felder got a shot at payback last October, in the courtroom of New York State Supreme Justice Joan Lobis. Mr. Felder defended the husband of a client of Mr. Sheresky's (because they are not public figures, they will remain anonymous), who was seeking divorce on the grounds of abandonment. Mr. Sheresky recalled that when the judge asked Mr. Felder why he was going to try the case, Mr. Felder replied: "I want to see how good Mr. Sheresky is." Mr. Felder denied saying this, adding: "I hadn't seen him in years. I didn't recognize him. He looked like he'd had a facelift."

In this case, Mr. Sheresky's client was the breadwinner of the couple. Mr. Felder's client, on the other hand, had fathered a child out of wedlock while he was still married to the plaintiff.

In his cross examination of the defendant, Mr. Sheresky caught his client's husband in a number of lies, among them that he had failed to report income that he had gotten from his wife's company on his tax returns.

During his summation, Mr. Felder addressed his client's admissions by telling the jury (according to the court transcript, which was obtained by The Transom): "I'd like to say a word about lies. You know lots of people lie.

"Mr. Gore, running for office, told lies–he invented the Internet, he invented the Love Canal. That doesn't mean he's going to be a bad President. President Reagan lied about Iran-contra," said the lawyer, in a baroque aria celebrating the vagaries of verisimilitude. "Bush lied about taxes, and yet all of these people were successful Presidents–particularly Clinton, he was a very successful President. So life is not all about lies. But it's all about lies, what you are to consider here. That's what it's all about: who's telling the truth here. You can't have both people telling the truth." (Later in the proceedings, Mr. Felder also told the jurors that "as far as finances are concerned," his client was "not the sharpest knife in the drawer.")

When the summation was read back to him, Mr. Felder replied: "I didn't think I was that articulate."

But then he explained: "I was trying to say there are lies and lies . This was an ambiguous situation where the wife gave the husband money but the husband didn't report the money on the tax returns. This was a transaction between a husband and a wife. I don't think it should reflect anything more than that."

Mr. Sheresky was up next.

"Well, maybe a liar could make a good President–I don't even want to touch that one," he said in response to Mr. Felder's summation. "But a liar can't make a good witness.

"Imagine, imagine that anyone, a lawyer, would say that," Mr. Sheresky continued, according to the transcript. "What we sell in this courtroom, what her Honor is here to protect, what we do for a living, is search for the truth." Then he added: "This case is about money. That's all it's about."

The jury found unanimously that Mr. Felder's client had abandoned his wife.

Mr. Felder did not see the verdict as a loss, though. "It's a question of whether my client gets a lot of money or more than a lot," he said.

Asked about the outcome of the case, Mr. Sheresky said of his old rival: "He used to look good on the diving board, but he wasn't so hot in the pool. Now he doesn't even look good on the diving board. He's a disgrace."

Mr. Felder's only response to Mr. Sheresky's comment: "He's a sad person."

Asked if he regretted any of the comments he'd made about Mr. Giuliani's wife, Mr. Felder said, "Not at all." He had the sound of a man telling the truth.

Meeting Across the River

As if Meadow Soprano and Jackie Aprile Jr.'s troubled romance wasn't attracting enough attention …. On May 8, Jamie-Lynn Sigler and Jason Cerbone, who play the star-crossed characters on the HBO series The Sopranos , caused a real-life sensation at Blue Hill restaurant in the West Village when they dined at a table for two. Fellow diners reported that the pair, "looking chic"–he in a sport coat, she in a denim jacket and full makeup–arrived at the restaurant around 11 p.m. and came off "like kids on a date." Ms. Sigler has just finished a run at Madison Square Garden in the musical production of Cinderella, while the world waits to see if Mr. Cerbone (first seen in Suzanne Vega's "Luka" video!)–whose character has run afoul of both Meadow and her mob-boss father, Tony Soprano–survives his first season on the series.

Seven people who sat cater-corner from the young celebs concluded that both actors looked nervous around each other, or maybe just uncomfortable with the fact that so many of the restaurant's diners seemed to have them under surveillance.

A spokesman for Ms. Sigler confirmed that the pair dined together but maintained that "it was not a date. They are just friends." Mr. Cerbone's spokesman had no comment.

–Rebecca Traister

Rock & Sole

If you made a reputation for yourself in the old days, you used to get a sandwich named after you. Now you get a shoe. On May 14, Christ-worshipping independent-rock eccentrics the Danielson Famile (or Tri-Danielson, as they are also known) appeared at the opening of the new John Fluevog shoe store at 250 Mulberry Street, both to christen it with a song and to celebrate the release of their namesake footwear, the Familevog, a clunky white leather loafer adorned with a red heart that clearly was designed to complement the doctor's scrubs and nurse's uniforms favored by the band members. According to a company employee, the shoe is made of "100-percent natural" and "biodegradable" materials.

The Danielsons reciprocated this honor by performing a new song dedicated to the Familevog that will be given away with the purchase of a pair. The tune was titled … well, what was it called, anyway? The shoe company's founder, John Fluevog, identified the song as "'Flim Flam Fluevog Flam,' I think? Something like that."

Actually it's "Flip Flop Flim Flam," and with lyrics such as "Fancy free juice flop flim flam / A Fluevog toe jam," Danielson leader Daniel Smith characterized it as a song about "the spirituality of feet."

Mr. Danielson told The Transom that he initiated the idea of a Danielson show with Mr. Fluevog. "I build houses. I first thought of this exchange while working on a roof," he said. "I was having troubling thoughts. I was thinking, 'Why am I doing this? Shouldn't I be writing songs?' I was daydreaming and thought of Fluevog," Mr. Danielson continued. "I had a strong feeling John's shoes were coming from a creative Christ." Perhaps this was evidenced by the proverb "Sole blessings on all who enter" scrolled over the portal to the store's back room.

But later, Mr. Danielson admitted that he may also have been motivated by less spiritual impulses. "Of course," he said, "I was also hoping all along that he would make some shoes for me."

–D. Strauss

Spray Anything

Apparently there are still a few artists left in Soho. The folks at the Reggio Emilia-based MaxMara designer label found this out recently at their still-under-construction boutique at West Broadway and Broome Street. To gussy up the work site, the company pasted large posters from last season's print ad campaign, featuring blond model Melanie McJanett, on the construction barriers surrounding the space, which is scheduled to open this summer. In no time, they were covered with graffiti–but not your run-of-the-mill illegible scribbling. According to Suzanne White, director of production at Dente & Cristina, the advertising firm behind MaxMara's ad campaign, the artistes weren't simply spray-painting their names. "They would use the correct color spray paint to put a beard and mustache on her," she said. "You know those little devil triangle beards? They'd be the right shade of blond."

The job fell to Ms. White to make weekly visits to the store with a few cans of Easy-Off oven cleaner ("an industry secret," she said) to remove the offending marks. But the retouching of Ms. McJanett's image continued until MaxMara's president, Luigi Maramotti, and his advertising team decided to approach the problem from another angle. They stretched a blank 8-by-32-foot canvas across the barricade (beneath an unreachably high sign reading "MaxMara Soho") and invited all comers to spray, splatter and tag it. After three weeks, there's not an inch of white space left. Even the Dente & Cristina people have made their mark. "It was one of those anything-could-happen spaces," said Ms. White. "But now it's really beautiful. Maybe we can keep a section–one of the prettiest."

–R.T.

In the last week of June, sources say, producer Marty Richards–who has reserved two apartments on the 72nd floor in the new Trump condominium for about $6 million–signed a $17 million contract to sell his 16-room maisonette at the River House, an exclusive co-op at 435 East 52nd Street, where the street dead-ends east of First Avenue.

Two brokers with knowledge of the deal said the buyer, an executive at Smithfield Foods Inc., will have to wait until September to meet the building's board, which does not generally conduct any business during the summer. But that should be no problem, since the deal stipulates that Mr. Richards will be allowed to occupy the apartment until next spring–the deadline he has given Mr. Trump to finish his new home.

In the meantime, Mr. Richards (who is reportedly organizing a Broadway production of Woody Allen's Bullets Over Broadway ) will collect a down payment for his co-op, with its marble entrance hall and view of the gardens in the rear of the 1931 building.

Until recently, River House was the longtime home of Libbet Johnson, an heir of the Johnson & Johnson family (and a cousin of Mr. Richards' late wife, Mary Richards). Ms. Johnson first moved out in order to renovate her River House pad. She telephoned Mr. Trump to ask if she could rent a place in his then new building, the International Hotel & Towers at 1 Central Park West. Instead of returning to the east side, she bought $50 million worth of real estate there and sold her co-op at the River House for $12 million.

After cutting his own deal with Mr. Trump earlier this year, Mr. Richards put his four-bedroom, 7 1/2-bath apartment on the market for $17.5 million on March 27; he was represented by Kathy Sloane, a broker with Brown Harris Stevens. Calls to his office were returned by Gail Miranda-Schmidt of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy. She confirmed that a contract had been signed.

Mr. Trump told The Observer that the apartments at World Tower were designed to make buying more than one unit more attractive. The border between Mr. Richards' two apartments is two living rooms, which when combined will become one huge living space. The apartment will have ceilings between 12 and 16 feet. The sheer glass building does not have any terraces, but the roof will be open to all tenants.

Mr. Trump takes Mr. Richards' challenge seriously. "We'll top out next week," he told The Observer on July 11. Estimates of the real move-in date range from February to April of next year. Some good news for Mr. Richards and another Trump World Tower buyer, Bill Gates.

RAOUL FELDER FLEES: TAKE MY HOUSE, PLEASE! (IF YOU CAN FIND IT.) Three years ago, divorce lawyer Raoul Felder climbed into a limousine headed for East Hampton with a friend, comedian Jackie Mason. They were on their way to one of Mr. Mason's gigs, but planned to stop by the beach house Mr. Felder bought in 1980 on Three Mile Harbor Road. As the car turned onto his block, however, Mr. Felder found himself telling the driver to circle back over and over again. He couldn't find the place.

"We gave up," he said, adding that he hadn't been there for five years and that the house must have been buried in overgrown weeds.

Mr. Felder, 66, headed back to the city and hasn't been to East Hampton since. "East Hampton is fine," he said, "if you could move it 60 miles closer to the city." He said he prefers to sunbathe on one of the four terraces of his Sutton Place penthouse, where he is not apt to run into one of his clients–say, Patricia Duff or Luciana Morad, the mother of Mick Jagger's youngest child.

Even so, Mr. Felder wouldn't rent the house. He said he didn't need the money and that the thought of a stranger sleeping in his bed was too unappealing for him to consider: "Thank God I don't have to sleep in a bed someone [else] slept in."

A few years ago, Mr. Felder started getting calls from people interested in buying the three-bedroom house with a pool on .61 acres, which he describes as "like a skiing chalet," as well as the empty lot he owns next door. In late May, he sold the house for $293,000 to Mary Hatten, a professor of neurobiology at Rockefeller University, and in July, he signed a deal to sell the lot separately. Ms. Hatten was out of the country and unavailable to comment.

"If I want water, I'll take a bath," said Mr. Felder about unloading the house by the sea. On the other hand, he may consider buying a condo in a Hampton closer to the city, where he wouldn't be expected to take on a pool boy or, God forbid, a gardener.

WEST VILLAGE

GLENN CLOSE GETS CLOSER: ACTRESS TAKES CHARLES ST. DUPLEX Call it a fatal attraction. On April 29, actress Glenn Close purchased a 1,450-square-foot duplex at the Memphis Downtown, a 22-story condominium at 140 Charles Street, near Washington Street. According to sources, the apartment, for which Ms. Close paid $899,000, will essentially be a pied à terre .

"Maybe she missed the Village," said one broker. In the 80's, Ms. Close lived in a townhouse in Chelsea with her second husband, John Marlas, then in a two-bedroom penthouse in Greenwich Village. In 1988, while pregnant with her daughter Annie, she rented a house in Greenwich, Conn., the town where she was born and raised. Now she owns a home in Bedford Hills, N.Y. Ms. Close could not be reached for comment.

According to brokers, her new apartment needs work, but no renovations have been made yet. "I am really shocked she bought it," said one broker who had been called in to price the apartment. "It's a postwar building, nothing special."

On the other hand, it was stylish enough for fashion designer Michael Kors, a former resident.

Said Merle Barash, who owns her own real estate firm and has sold numerous apartments in the building: "Every apartment has a curved balcony... and every apartment is a corner apartment. The only reason people leave is if they are [leaving town] or can't buy the apartment next door."

407 Bleecker Street

Asking: $2.4 million. Selling: $2.3 million.

Four-story, 5,000-square-foot townhouse.

Time on the market: Six months.

MODELS, MILLIONS, MAGNOLIA BAKERY Here's proof that models and money are all that's left in the West Village. A young couple with kids had turned this 21-foot- wide, four-story townhouse into two three-bedroom apartments. "It was refurbished meticulously," said Douglas Elliman broker Nancy Weaver. "It wasn't decrepit." One block north of Magnolia Bakery (and across the street from Abbington Square), the red-brick home eventually led to a bidding war between three potential buyers. A fashion editor and an investment banker took it, deciding to restore the townhouse to a single-family home, but without a total gut renovation–a careful ploy designed to discourage at-home photo shoots.

UPPER WEST SIDE

91 Central Park West

Two-bed, two-bath, 1,300-square-foot co-op.

Asking: $999,000. Selling: $1.125 million.

Charges: $1,194; 50 percent tax deductible.

Time on the market: One week.

A TALE OF THE TAPE MEASURE Two apartments in this 93-unit Central Park West building–nearly identical in size and both in the back of the building–were on the market at the same time and through the same broker (Brian Rice of the Corcoran Group) earlier this year. This one, a ninth- floor pad, has a "peripheral" view of the park, the original moldings, a decorative fireplace and a recent redecoration. The other one is simply on a higher floor, the 15th–typically a major selling point. But in April, when both apartments sold, the ninth-floor apartment sold to a woman in her 50's for $265,000 more than the apartment upstairs, bought by a young professional couple. The seller of the ninth-floor unit is buying another apartment in the building.

UPPER EAST SIDE

350 East 72nd Street

Four-bed, 3 1/2-bath, 2,750-square-foot condo.

Asking: $2.5 million. Selling: $2.4 million.

Charges: $2,600. Taxes: $1,700.

Time on the market: Four months.

THE PRICE OF PROCREATION Twins quashed a couple's plan to continue on in this 19th-floor apartment with two balconies, a library and a gourmet kitchen, which they bought about five years ago. Almost immediately after their family of four became a family of six, they put the apartment on the market and began looking for something with an additional bedroom (five!) in the same neighborhood. Another young couple–without twins–hope they won't outgrow the 2,750-square-foot condo as fast. The building, which went up in 1987, has a doorman, a concierge, and just one apartment per floor.

SUTTON PLACE

BEEKMAN SAVES OLD SCHOOLHOUSE, PLANS 19-STORY LUXURY CONDO The old P.S. 35, at the top of Beekman Hill at 931 First Avenue, faced demolition for nearly 20 years, but neighbors stubbornly clung to the notion the turn-of-the-century schoolhouse should be preserved.

Finally, after a last-minute close call with the city, the facade of the building has been saved. And, like virtually everything else in Manhattan, the structure will be converted to luxury condominiums.

Dennis Herman of Beekman International, the development company that owns the building, will construct the Beekman Regent, a 19-story luxury residential complex that will rise out of the base of the old schoolhouse.

All that's left of the Romanesque revival building, designed by George W. Debevoise in 1892 and believed to be styled after the now-landmarked Dakota on West 72nd Street and Central Park West, are two external walls of yellow brick with brownstone trim that form the northwest corner of First Avenue and 51st Street. The new construction, designed by architect Costas Kondylis, "will incorporate the essence of the [existing] facade," said Beekman International project manager Lori Levine.

The complex will contain approximately 64 apartments, from one to five bedrooms, a street-level garage and a health club. It should be completed by the end of next summer, said Ms. Levine. She said price estimates for the apartments weren't available yet.

Preservation of the site followed a long battle by the Coalition to Save 931 First Avenue, which grew out of the concerns of Community Board 6 and the Sutton Area Community group, as well as other neighborhood civic organizations. The final plan was announced at the June 14 meeting of Board 6.

Mr. Herman bought 931 First Avenue last year from the city's Economic Development Corporation, under a contract stipulating preservation of the facade. The building had served as P.S. 35, then P.S. 135, the United Nations School and a city-run women's shelter. It is listed in the National Register of Historic Places because American Revolution hero Nathan Hale was captured and held there during the war, but it has not been designated a New York City landmark. That left it vulnerable to demolition.

Under the Koch administration, the city was prepared to sell it without restrictions, but the Coalition to Save 931 First Avenue convinced city officials to include a preservation clause in its offering. The building sold at auction in 1983 for $12.3 million, then the second-highest amount ever paid for a city property. However, developer Philips International could not work out its financing plan with the city, and the property went back on the auction block. Twice more it was auctioned off and development plans collapsed.

Then Mr. Herman came into the picture, and Richard Eyen, chairman of the coalition, witnessed something he hasn't often seen in his 25 years of community involvement: the city, community and developer all in agreement. "For one of the rare times in the City of New York, we're all on the same side," he said.

Despite the solidarity, the development plan was threatened by a regulatory snafu last month, when the city's buildings department classified the development of the gutted building as new construction. And local zoning for new construction would require half the first floor to be glass, trouncing the preservation efforts.

Community Board 6, the Coalition and City Council Member Gifford Miller urged the city agencies to work out the kink, which they promptly did. So the old schoolhouse gets to keep its old New York face as it metamorphoses into brand-new, prime residential real estate. With only a little extra glass.

-Karina Lahni

Park Avenue in the East 70's

Four-bed, five-bath, 4,000-square-foot prewar co-op.

Asking: $3 million. Selling: $2.8 million.

Maintenance: $4,000; 35 percent tax-deductible.

Time on market: two weeks.

THE GYPSIES OF PARK AVENUE Life's rough: You live in an elegant eight-room apartment, but the family's getting bigger. You put it on the block, and it sells right away at a record price within the building. In the meantime, your broker is looking for those 12 rooms you need. But there's nothing out there. Why? Your broker says something about capital gains taxes and $75,000 apartments bought in the 1970's that are now worth $750,000. You look at more than 70 apartments, anyway, but come up cold. Meanwhile, you have eight rooms of furniture that need a home. You see a nice layout, Park Avenue in the 70's, so the address is right, but the place is boring. "It was bland and styleless," remembered the broker. "They were trying so hard to make it to anybody's taste that they made it to nobody's." Your broker finds another apartment in the building with the same layout. The owner realizes he may be sitting on a gold mine, tests the open market for a few weeks, then turns around and accepts the buyers' offer. Broker: William B. May Real Estate (Suzanne Sealy).

If Zorba's Walls Could Talk …

It's an open secret Iolanda Quinn is plenty mad at her divorce lawyer, Raoul Felder, for not squeezing enough green out of her ex-husband, 82-year-old actor Anthony Quinn, in their August divorce settlement. But, as The Transom reports this week on page 3 of The Observer , Mr. Felder did get her the couple's 13-room co-op at 60 East End Avenue. Now Mrs. Quinn is liquidating the pad for a terrific price of $2.5 million, according to real estate sources.

A fellow resident in the building has made an accepted offer to buy the apartment, on the 32nd floor of an elegant, early-1970's high-rise-thereby avoiding the trouble of brokers and broker fees. The apartment, which has great views of the East River, was a somewhat rough combination of two apartments, one with seven rooms, one with six rooms. Since the randy Mr. Quinn has fathered 13 children by two wives and three mistresses (including two with his latest, a 35-year-old woman who used to be his secretary), they probably needed those seven bedrooms and 8.5 baths. Maintenance is just under $5,000 a month. Mrs. Quinn's new lawyer, William Betts, would not confirm the sale.

Mrs. Quinn, who is 62, met her husband in 1961 while working as a wardrobe assistant on the set of Barabbas. Before 60 East End Avenue, they lived in a terraced penthouse at the Adams Hotel on East 86th Street. They left when it was sold, gutted for condos and renamed 1049 Fifth Avenue.

Real estate sources say the East End apartment could use a little fixing up. No word on where Mrs. Quinn will hang her hat in New York, but so far she hasn't sold the couple's lovely villa near Rome.

Upper West Side

West End Avenue near 92nd Street

Two-bed, two-bath, 1,600-square-foot prewar co-op.

Asking: $579,000. Selling: $579,000.

Maintenance: $1,147; 50 percent tax-deductible.

Time on market: eight weeks.

KEEP THE WINDOWS, SCRAP THE REST The single woman who moved into this Victorian-era building didn't buy just to be near Morgan Freeman (Kiss the Girls), the building's best-known resident: she was gunning for a view of the Hudson River. Her previous apartment was very similar (same layout, on 90th Street) but didn't have the views. The determined buyer was willing to put up with boxing it up, moving it out and setting it up for a vista or two. She wasn't your typical prewar purchaser, however; preferring simplicity to charm, she stripped the apartment-goodbye, french doors, stained glass windows and original wainscoting-and ended up with a loft-style space. Broker: Orsid Realty Corporation (Olga Fisher).

2250 Broadway near 81st Street

Two-bed, 2.5-bath, 1,415-square-foot postwar condo.

Asking: $525,000. Selling: $512,000.

Charges: $896. Taxes: $649.75.

Time on market: two months.

10 West 66th Street (Park 10)

One-bed, two-bath, 1,000-square-foot postwar co-op.

Asking: $425,000. Selling: $425,000.

Maintenance: $925; 47 percent tax-deductible.

Time on market: one week.

UPPER WEST SIDE COUPLE RISES After four years of living in a street-level duplex maisonette at 2250 Broadway, Mina and Gordon Kuhn, a paralegal and a restaurant manager, were looking to move high above the din of baby gap stroller traffic. From the sidewalk, the maisonette had a nice prewar look-but inside, it's clear the apartment was really part of a high-rise building that was erected behind the preserved facade of an old structure. They decided they could live in smaller space but wanted some fresh air. The broker who sold their maisonette, Dexter Guerrieri, went looking for the new apartment and quickly found a 15th-floor co-op just down the block from the massive Reebok sports club-where Ms. Kuhn happens to work out. The balcony looks north, affording a nice glimpse into the windows of the Hotel des Artistes on 67th Street. Broker: Vandenberg Real Estate (Dexter Guerrieri); Corcoran Group; Marilyn Korn Real Estate.

East Midtown

250 East 54th Street (Mondrian)

Two-bed, two-bath, 1,300-square-foot postwar condo.

Asking: $565,000. Selling: $550,000.

Charges: $903. Taxes: $682.

Time on market: two months.

MOTHER KNOWS BEST One day not too long ago, broker Katie Rosenberg got a call from Italy from a friend of 25 years: "find my daughter an apartment." Of course, few things kill a friendship quicker than an apartment hunt, and this one barely made it. Ms. Rosenberg took the daughter, who had landed a good job, to see 40 apartments in three weeks; they were all one-bedrooms in the $350,000 range, located in the East 30's, East 60's and on the west side. Suddenly, mama booked a flight. "she didn't know what was happening here," the broker said. So broker, mother and daughter went back and forth between Upper East and Upper West; they almost unpacked at a building called the Alfred on West 61st Street. But the daughter ended up at the Mondrian on Second Avenue, with a big wall of windows taking in Midtown. "now they're happily ensconced and pretty well furnished," said Ms. Rosenberg. "and I just got out of Bellevue." Broker: Prudential/M.L.B. Kaye International Realty (Katie Rosenberg).

Gramercy Park

28 East 21st Street

One-bed, one-bath, 600-square-foot prewar co-op.

Asking: $215,000. Selling: $210,000.

Maintenance: $688; 60 percent tax-deductible.

Time on market: one month.

DESIGNING MEN It makes perfect sense that an architect bought the garden apartment in a circa 1850, four-story stucco brownstone. After all, Richard Morris hunt, the fellow who designed the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Carnegie Hall and the big stone box upon which the Statue of Liberty stands, owned the house from 1871 until 1877. And while hunt then moved into a house he designed for himself on Cortlandt Street, his son kept an architectural office on 21st Street through the turn of the century. The 25-foot-wide house was divided up but is historically intact. It is surrounded by those big loft buildings full of computer companies, ad agencies and ravenous art-yuppies in black who dine at the airy restaurants on Park Avenue South. The co-op is about to get working on restoring the facade. Meanwhile, the architect is about to get going on restoring the wainscoting, french doors, tiles and arts and crafts fireplace of his cozy new home. Broker: Stribling, Wells & Gay (Vals Osborne).

243 East 17th Street

Four-story, 6,550-square-foot town house.

Asking: $1,650,000. Selling: $1,595,000.

Time on market: two weeks.

HOUSE OF MIRTH Selling this town house between Second and Third avenues was a saga: there was a rent-stabilized tenant with rights of first refusal; three serious bidders; a silent partner; and an owner under a tight deadline to sell (she was under contract to buy a house uptown). The contract was finally signed at midnight by the third set of buyers after nine hours of deliberation in an all-cash deal. Said seller's broker Eva Marie Bozsik: "I regret not writing every single day down." The house was built in the 1800's by a judge; its 28-foot width is unusually wide by Manhattan standards. (the good judge erected smaller houses for his daughters on either side.) The seller in this transaction had grown up in the building; her family had been living on the premises for half a century. Broker: Corcoran (Eva Marie Boszik, Tina Silver, Sara Gelbard).

61 Irving Place

Two-bed, two-bath, 1,100-square-foot loft co-op.

Asking: $350,000. Selling: $350,000.

Maintenance: $ 1,425; 75 percent tax-deductible.

Time on market: two months.

STELLA! In the 1970's, artist Frank Stella, left, would occasionally get a hankering to create something in metal and, when he did, he turned to the metalsmith who just sold this apartment. Over the years, the metalworker has collaborated with many great artists, but finally decided to be the master of his own fate and decided to start his own foundry in upstate Newburgh. He bought this apartment two years ago, for $240,000, and just sold it to a Florida couple for $350,000. At one time, the building was a school for the deaf. The couple employed their son, an attorney from New Jersey, to represent their side of the transaction (law school finally paid off!). They'll use the apartment as a pied-à-terre. Broker: Corcoran (Susan Caldwell).

Clarification

The sale of a condominium apartment at 220 East Fifth Street was reported in the Oct. 13 column under the title "First, We Kill All the Real Estate Brokers." The sentiment was misdirected.