Construction Defects Abound In New Buildings Citywide
Real estate lawyers throughout the city are fielding more and more calls about faulty construction these days, leading many to wonder if the current development boom is a repeat of pre-bust building tomfoolery. From crumbling concrete facades to unusable balconies and mysteriously flooding apartments—all in new buildings—theTimes reports that the pace of the market is putting pressure on "untested" developers and those they contract to merely finish a job rather than finish it with rigor.
What $4,100/Month Can Rent You in New York City
Welcome to Curbed Comparisons, a column that explores what one can rent for a set dollar amount in various NYC neighborhoods. Is one man's studio another man's townhouse? Let's find out! Today's price: $4,100/month.
↑ This Greenpoint apartment is described as a "true raw loft" and there is definitely no arguing with that. What walls it does have look like they were put up as a set for a play. Though we do doubt its claim of being a four-bedroom, there are at least two beds...somewhere. The layout involves ladders and is not entirely clear. It's asking$4,100/month.
New York City's "urban menagerie"doesn't just consist of raccoons and invasive swansand rats, but also the slightly more regal coyote. In the past few months, the omnivores have been spotted in parks like Pelham Bay, Riverside, Railroad out in Jamaica, and even in Stuy Town. All of the city's (many) nature fearful will be glad to know that no reaction is a good reaction when confronted with the small animal, although the likelihood of a run-in is way unlikely. [NYT]
Meet Flo Fox, the Blind Photographer Who's Chronicled
New York City for 40 Years
Welcome to In Focus, a feature where writer Hannah Frishberg profiles some of the great street photographers of New York City's past and present.
[Metropolitan Life, 1988. All photos by Flo Fox.]
Flo Fox is legally blind, yet she has shot over 120,000 images and counting. "I'd like to prove that even though I'm a total cripple, I can still take fantastic photos," Fox says of her continuously growing portfolio. Diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at age 30, Fox, now 69 and completely paralyzed, still takes her camera with her everywhere, having attendants, friends, and strangers take photos for her with an autofocus camera. Fox was born in Miami, raised in Woodside, and has lived in Manhattan for most of her life. She describes her work, which is in the permanent collection of both the Brooklyn Museum and the Smithsonian, as capturing the "ironic reality of New York City." In addition to her photography, Fox works as an advocate for the disabled, helping build ramps all over New York and teaches photography classes for the visually impaired. She likes to refer to Stephen Hawking as her "competition" and has done a breathtaking job of capturing a gritty side of New York that has, unlike her boundless energy, all but disappeared. Here, Fox talks about her body of work—and sneaking into the original World Trade Center—and shares a collection of photos, largely taken in the 1970s and '80s.
This Studio Is Trying Really Hard To Make Up For Its Small Size
A cute, petite studio just hit the market asking a very sane $289,000. Maintenance is a reasonable $600/month. And because good things come in small (and cheap-ish) packages—there's proof of that—let's take a closer look at the minuscule space on 30th Street between Second and Third avenues. It's on the third floor of a former carriage house. But the owner has added plenty of shelving to maximize storage in the living/sleeping area, as well as in the kitchen and above the toilet in the bathroom. There's a mounted TV, and a built-in desk: both ways to conserve valuable space. There's also a communalbackyard and sweet, muraled courtyard, "including a rose gardenwhere residents can BBQ in the warmer months." Whenever those come.
Today in news about holes in the ground that will eventually become tall buildings, New York YIMBY has published photos of the excavation process going on at both Jean Nouvel's MoMA Tower and 55 Hudson Yards. The former is a starchitect-designed, sky-high mess o' condosthat'll range from $3 to $50 million, while the latter is a pretty standard ("basic, fundamental") office building that is the second to begin ascending at the Hudson Yards megaproject's massive site. [NYY; prior coverage of MoMA Tower and 55 HY]Children's Museum's Dumbo Expansion Stokes Controversy
The Brooklyn Children's Museum, the first children's museum in the United States, has been located in Crown Heights since 1899, and will soon expand out of the neighborhood for the first time when it opens an annex in Dumbo, in a rent-free space in Alloy's residential development One John Street. Offering itself up as luxury condo amenities may be one way for a financially struggling cultural institution to survive in future New York City, but the expansion is not sitting well with current and former employees and local politicians. Some are questioning how the museum, where the number of full-time employees has fallen from 69 to 35 since 2008, is planning to staff the new annex, underscoring accusations its mostly white directors (five out of six members of the executive leadership team is white) are trying to abandon the largely black community in which the museum has existed for more than a century.
Old Soros Townhouse Back For $33M After Four Months
After just four months off the market, the East 70th Street townhouseformerly owned by Susan Weber Soros, ex wife of finance guy George Soros, is back on the market. Whether this is a flip or a change of heart is unclear: the townhouse sold to an anonymous LLC for $31 million in November in an off-market deal, and now a few short months later isback on the market for $33 million. What is clear is that the home's price has escalated by over $10 million in the past three years, but to be fair, it underwent a thorough renovation under Soros' lead. Whatever's going on here, the listing brings new peeks into thepalatial 1869 townhouse between Park and Lexington avenues, and that's nothing to scoff at.
What if Baghdad had been aFrank Lloyd Wright mega-city? Five modernist plans commissioned by Iraq's final monarch—created by the likes of Walter Gropius, Alvar Aalto, Le Corbusier, and, yes, Frank Lloyd Wright—reveal a very different Baghdad that could've been. Curbed National takes a look at the plans and what came of them, this way. [Curbed National]
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Construction Defects Abound In New Buildings Citywide
Real estate lawyers throughout the city are fielding more and more calls about faulty construction these days, leading many to wonder if the current development boom is a repeat of pre-bust building tomfoolery. From crumbling concrete facades to unusable balconies and mysteriously flooding apartments—all in new buildings—theTimes reports that the pace of the market is putting pressure on "untested" developers and those they contract to merely finish a job rather than finish it with rigor.
What $4,100/Month Can Rent You in New York City
Welcome to Curbed Comparisons, a column that explores what one can rent for a set dollar amount in various NYC neighborhoods. Is one man's studio another man's townhouse? Let's find out! Today's price: $4,100/month.
↑ This Greenpoint apartment is described as a "true raw loft" and there is definitely no arguing with that. What walls it does have look like they were put up as a set for a play. Though we do doubt its claim of being a four-bedroom, there are at least two beds...somewhere. The layout involves ladders and is not entirely clear. It's asking$4,100/month.
New York City's "urban menagerie"doesn't just consist of raccoons and invasive swansand rats, but also the slightly more regal coyote. In the past few months, the omnivores have been spotted in parks like Pelham Bay, Riverside, Railroad out in Jamaica, and even in Stuy Town. All of the city's (many) nature fearful will be glad to know that no reaction is a good reaction when confronted with the small animal, although the likelihood of a run-in is way unlikely. [NYT]
Meet Flo Fox, the Blind Photographer Who's Chronicled
New York City for 40 Years
Welcome to In Focus, a feature where writer Hannah Frishberg profiles some of the great street photographers of New York City's past and present.
[Metropolitan Life, 1988. All photos by Flo Fox.]
Flo Fox is legally blind, yet she has shot over 120,000 images and counting. "I'd like to prove that even though I'm a total cripple, I can still take fantastic photos," Fox says of her continuously growing portfolio. Diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at age 30, Fox, now 69 and completely paralyzed, still takes her camera with her everywhere, having attendants, friends, and strangers take photos for her with an autofocus camera. Fox was born in Miami, raised in Woodside, and has lived in Manhattan for most of her life. She describes her work, which is in the permanent collection of both the Brooklyn Museum and the Smithsonian, as capturing the "ironic reality of New York City." In addition to her photography, Fox works as an advocate for the disabled, helping build ramps all over New York and teaches photography classes for the visually impaired. She likes to refer to Stephen Hawking as her "competition" and has done a breathtaking job of capturing a gritty side of New York that has, unlike her boundless energy, all but disappeared. Here, Fox talks about her body of work—and sneaking into the original World Trade Center—and shares a collection of photos, largely taken in the 1970s and '80s.
This Studio Is Trying Really Hard To Make Up For Its Small Size
A cute, petite studio just hit the market asking a very sane $289,000. Maintenance is a reasonable $600/month. And because good things come in small (and cheap-ish) packages—there's proof of that—let's take a closer look at the minuscule space on 30th Street between Second and Third avenues. It's on the third floor of a former carriage house. But the owner has added plenty of shelving to maximize storage in the living/sleeping area, as well as in the kitchen and above the toilet in the bathroom. There's a mounted TV, and a built-in desk: both ways to conserve valuable space. There's also a communalbackyard and sweet, muraled courtyard, "including a rose gardenwhere residents can BBQ in the warmer months." Whenever those come.
Today in news about holes in the ground that will eventually become tall buildings, New York YIMBY has published photos of the excavation process going on at both Jean Nouvel's MoMA Tower and 55 Hudson Yards. The former is a starchitect-designed, sky-high mess o' condosthat'll range from $3 to $50 million, while the latter is a pretty standard ("basic, fundamental") office building that is the second to begin ascending at the Hudson Yards megaproject's massive site. [NYY; prior coverage of MoMA Tower and 55 HY]Children's Museum's Dumbo Expansion Stokes Controversy
The Brooklyn Children's Museum, the first children's museum in the United States, has been located in Crown Heights since 1899, and will soon expand out of the neighborhood for the first time when it opens an annex in Dumbo, in a rent-free space in Alloy's residential development One John Street. Offering itself up as luxury condo amenities may be one way for a financially struggling cultural institution to survive in future New York City, but the expansion is not sitting well with current and former employees and local politicians. Some are questioning how the museum, where the number of full-time employees has fallen from 69 to 35 since 2008, is planning to staff the new annex, underscoring accusations its mostly white directors (five out of six members of the executive leadership team is white) are trying to abandon the largely black community in which the museum has existed for more than a century.
Old Soros Townhouse Back For $33M After Four Months
After just four months off the market, the East 70th Street townhouseformerly owned by Susan Weber Soros, ex wife of finance guy George Soros, is back on the market. Whether this is a flip or a change of heart is unclear: the townhouse sold to an anonymous LLC for $31 million in November in an off-market deal, and now a few short months later isback on the market for $33 million. What is clear is that the home's price has escalated by over $10 million in the past three years, but to be fair, it underwent a thorough renovation under Soros' lead. Whatever's going on here, the listing brings new peeks into thepalatial 1869 townhouse between Park and Lexington avenues, and that's nothing to scoff at.
What if Baghdad had been aFrank Lloyd Wright mega-city? Five modernist plans commissioned by Iraq's final monarch—created by the likes of Walter Gropius, Alvar Aalto, Le Corbusier, and, yes, Frank Lloyd Wright—reveal a very different Baghdad that could've been. Curbed National takes a look at the plans and what came of them, this way. [Curbed National]
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