The Insider: Fresh Color and Vintage Finds Define a Young Woman’s East Village Apartment
Color, pattern, and vintage pieces make the home welcoming and interesting, with unexpected elements.
West Chelsea Two-Bedroom Corner Unit Has Space, Sunlight, Huge Walk-In Closet
There's more than 1,200 square feet in this corner unit, and the living room, dining area and kitchen are an open-plan design.
Upper West Side Two-Bedroom Co-op Features Five Huge Closets and Serenity
Located in a full-service building, it has been renovated from top to bottom, with Brazilian hardwood floors, crown molding and custom window treatments.
Renovation of a 193-Year-Old SoHo Townhome Poses Challenges, Yields Surprises
The project included major upgrades to flooring, electrical wiring, plumbing, and the HVAC system, as well as a restored fireplace and a smart home system.
The Insider: Casual Simplicity Rules in Young Family’s Upper West Side Prewar Apartment
Homeowners do a complete design reversal in relocating from a darkly glamorous Brooklyn townhouse to a sun-filled Upper West Side apartment.
5 Places for Brooklynites to Meet in Manhattan When Meeting in Brooklyn Just Doesn’t Work
Brooklyn is huge. So huge that sometimes the most convenient place to meet a fellow Brooklynite is in Manhattan. You could keep Googling “bars near F train” but first we suggest you try meeting up at the handy venues below.
Where to Kill Time (or Work) in Manhattan With Wi-Fi — Besides Starbucks
You live in Brooklyn, but are in Manhattan between appointments. Where’s a clean, well-lighted place to kill time or work that’s not a Starbucks? An obvious answer is libraries, home to (mostly) free Wi-Fi, with bathrooms and power outlets if you’re lucky.
The View From Brooklyn: 2 World Trade and the Future of New York Architecture
When completed — supposedly in 2020 — 2 World Trade Center will be among the most interesting-looking additions to the Manhattan skyline that we’ve seen in years. It isn’t another of the pin-straight pillars currently in vogue.
From the virtual vantage of Brooklyn Bridge Park, the stair-stepping wedge-shaped building nearly entirely obscures its fraternal twin tower, 1 World Trade, and its stacked rectangular forms appear to flirt with the idea of toppling.
Interestingly, this precarious perspective will be the regular view of the building’s architect, Bjarke Ingels. The Danish designer purchased the $4,000,000 penthouse at Toll Brothers’ 205 Water Street in Dumbo last month.
Last night, Ingels and Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman unveiled a swooping, Times-made visualization of the building at the Cities For Tomorrow conference, an event continuing today.
Panel Says Affordable Housing Crisis Threatens Brooklyn’s Vitality
The lack of affordable housing in a city where rents are skyrocketing is a full-blown crisis that threatens to tear at the city’s social fabric, a panel of four local experts agreed Monday, at a discussion hosted by the Museum of the City of New York.
“We need to preserve the diversity and vitality that makes New York what it is, and I’m worried that escalating housing costs are threatening that very vitality and diversity,” said panelist Ingrid Gould Ellen, director of the Urban Planning Program at NYU Wagner.
The panel, held as part of the museum’s current exhibition on the history of the city’s Landmarks Law, was called “Preserving the Fabric of Our Neighborhoods” – though moderator Simeon Bankoff, executive director of preservation advocacy group Historic Districts Council, suggested at the outset that an alternative title could be “Surviving Our Own Success.”
Several decades ago, the conversation would have been about a fleeing populace and vacant buildings, he noted. Michelle de la Uz, executive director of Brooklyn nonprofit community organization Fifth Avenue Committee, recalled that she “started in Park Slope when there were many abandoned buildings and vacant lots. Obviously now the neighborhood is a very different place.”
The panel broke down the current picture: spiking rents, a burgeoning population that’s expected to grow further, an influx of global capital that’s helping drive prices up and, in the midst of those trends, a declining number of rent-stabilized housing units.
It makes for a “double whammy,” noted Ellen, who said 200,000 rent-stabilized units were lost between 2002 and 2011.
Brooklyn Apartment Sellers Take the Money and Run — Back to Manhattan
For decades, homeowners have been selling apartments in Manhattan and buying townhouses in Brooklyn. As the price gap between the two boroughs narrows and Brooklyn becomes a “primary destination,” according to a story in The New York Times, that dynamic is changing.
Now owners of apartments in Brooklyn’s most expensive areas, such as Dumbo and Boerum Hill, are selling and buying apartments in Manhattan’s bargain neighborhoods — which now include the Upper East Side.