November 28, 2015 09:00AM
By Christopher Cameron

Before there was a billionaire’s row on 57th Street, there was Long Island’s Gold Coast. At the height of the Gilded Age (and in the following decades), familiar names like the Vanderbilts, Roosevelts, Whitneys, Charles Pratt, J. P. Morgan and F. W. Woolworth, to name a few, built stately mansions reminiscent of English country homes on Long Island’s North Shore.

Thankfully, many of those homes still stand, and they remain arguably the most splendid homes surrounding New York City — one is even on the market for a cool $100 million.Here are a few of the best specimens.

1. Winfield Hall (Woolworth Estate)
77 Crescent Beach Road, Glen Cove

Fire it seems is not Woolworth’s friend. After his first home was destroyed in a fire (which some believe was started intentionally), Woolworth spent $9 million building the current estate — roughly $196 million in today’s dollars.

Outside the main house the estate features a large garage with living quarters, a main entrance arch, two greenhouses and a tea house.

Unfortunately, in January of this year the house caught fire causing millions of dollars worth of damage.

“The priceless woodwork can never be replaced. I’m standing on a beautiful, priceless Oriental rug that’s never going to be the same,” James Hickman, head of fire investigations for the Nassau County fire marshal’s office, told Newsday at the time.

The house is owned by the family of Martin Carey, the brother of former New York Gov. Hugh Carey.

2. Old Westbury Gardens (the Phipps Mansion)
71 Old Westbury Road, Westbury

Old Westbury is the former estate of John Shaffer Phipps, the heir to a steel fortune. It was built in 1906 to resemble Battle Abbey in East Sussex — the place where Phipps married his fiancée Margarita. However, it doesn’t look like the properties have much in common.

Designed by George A. Crawley in the Charles II-style, the home has 23 rooms and sits on a 160-acre estate.  Today, the property is open to the public.

3. Castle Gould (Hempstead House)
127 Middle Neck Rd, Sands Point

Howard Gould, the son of railroad tycoon Jay Gould, began construction on Castle Gould in 1900. Initially, He modeled the massive home on Kilkenny Castle in Ireland.

After the castle was complete, the Goulds built another house on the estate, which eventually became the main dwelling.

However, it seems that the Goulds were never quite satisfied with their castle. In 1912, they sold the property to Daniel Guggenheim. Guggenheim changed the estate’s name to Hempstead House. Just five years later he donated the estate to the Institute of Aeronautical Sciences.

4. Oheka Castle (Otto Kahn Estate)
135 Westgate Dr, Huntington

Oheka Castle was the country home of financier Otto Hermann Kahn (Oheka is an acronym of his name). It took five years, from 1914 to 1919, to complete the 109,000-square-foot manse. Not bad, since it is the largest private home in the nation after Biltmore.

Today, the castle is currently a hotel with 32 guest rooms and additional suites on the upper floors.

It is owned by Long Island real estate developer Gary Melius, who was shot in the face by a would-be assassin on the estate’s grounds last year.

5. Beacon Towers (demolished)
Sands Point

There is nothing sadder than when a beautiful home is destroyed to make way for some lesser structure. Unfortunately, that is what happened to Beacon Towers.

Built in 1917 for Alva Belmont, the ex-wife of William Kissam Vanderbilt and the widow of Oliver Belmont, the home was the last Long Island house designed by the legendary architecture firm Hunt & Hunt.

Inspired by the alcázars of Spain and depictions of castles in medieval illuminated manuscripts, the home’s interior contained  140 rooms. The mansions exterior was  coated in white stucco.

In 1927, the estate was sold to William Randolph Hearst, who expanded the home. Hearst  sold Beacon in 1942, and just three years later it was demolished to make was way for a new development.

Some scholars believe that the mansion inspired F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby,” which describes the house of Jay Gatsby as:

“A factual imitation of some Hotel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin bead of raw ivy, and marble swimming pool and more than forty acres of land.”

November 07, 2015 12:00PM
By The Real Deal 

If Larry Silverstein could go back in time, he’d keep all of his Manhattan holdings off the block.

“Every time I’ve sold anything – and I’ve only sold at very high prices – five years later, I’ve thrown my hands up and said, ‘I’ve done a dumb thing,’” the developer said Wednesday, speaking at a Corcoran Sunshine event at the sales office for his latest condo project, 30 Park Place. “I always tell my kids, ‘When I’m no longer here, remember one thing: Don’t sell!’”

The Silverstein Properties head, who’s been in the business for 60 years, said he’s seen cycles come and go, but at the end of the day, Manhattan real estate will stand the test of time.

“I’ve been functioning here for about 60 years and I’ve always been bullish on New York,” he said. “Every once in a while there’s a glitch or a decline – some of those declines are sharper than others and some last longer than others – but, on the balance, if you draw a line through the ups and the downs, you’ll see that the ups are more significant. I’ve been watching this damn thing and it just continues to grow.”

Silverstein’s talk, moderated by The Real Deal’s Katherine Clarke as part of a series of industry discussions dubbed CS Talks, also touched on the mogul’s long-term vision for Lower Manhattan. Silverstein, who inked a lease for the original twin towers just days before they were destroyed, was one of the earliest proponents for rebuilding the towers and spoke to the challenges he faced along the way.

“The greatest challenge was to succeed at a time when there was a sea of adversity out there,” he said. “Government officials are not known for their unity of thought. Everybody had a different agenda. We’ve now lived with five or six governors in the state of New York, seven governors in the state of New Jersey and several mayors. All of that brought a profusion of confusion.”

Silverstein, who is responsible for rebuilding a large swath of the World Trade Center, including 7 World Trade Center and 4 World Trade Center, said he’s even faced adversity at home — from his wife Klara, who initially had reservations about his purchase of the site for 1 Comment

“My wife was giving me hell one day … She said, ‘You have such a concentration of projects around the World Trade Center. You need to diversify.’ So, obviously when the opportunity came to buy a site just one block north of the World Trade Center, I took it.”

His wife may not have thought it his wisest purchase, but Larry has had the last laugh. The project, designed by Robert A.M. Stern, is now 70 percent sold, Silverstein said.

The developer also sung the praises of the controversial new Santiago Calatrava-designed new transit hub at the trade center site, renowned as the most expensive train station ever built. The Oculus reportedly cost close to $4 billion, almost twice the estimate when plans were first unveiled in 2004. He dismissed criticisms of the cost marring the legacy of the project.

“It’s the most magnificent building in America as a transportation terminal,” Silverstein said. “The beauty of that building is unprecedented. The quantity of white marble is unbelievable. Yes, it’s probably the most expensive building in the world on price per square foot basis, but such is life. You’ll love it.

Equity Residential put the 38-story rental at 420 E. 54th St. up for sale earlier this year.

By Amanda Fung

PropertyShark.comRiverTower at 420 E. 54th St.

Equity Residential has found a buyer for its massive rental on East 54th Street. Slate Property Group and GreenOak Real Estateare in contract to buy RiverTower for $390 million, according to The Real Deal, which first reported back in April that the 38-story building was up for grabs.

If the sale is completed, it would be the biggest deal so far for Slate Property Group, which has been developing rental and condo buildings outside Manhattan. Earlier this week, the firm partnered with Adam America Real Estate and Vanke to acquire a development site in downtown Brooklyn for $50 million, where it will erect a condo tower.

It’s unclear if the developers plan to maintain RiverTower, at 420 E. 54th St., as a rental or convert it into condos.

More real estate news

M&T Bank lends $174M for William Macklowe’s condo project on former Bowlmor site (Commercial Observer)
Italian café Pulia signs lease for second Manhattan outpost (Commercial Observer)
Celebrating Central Park, one landmark at a time (The Wall Street Journal)
One 57 becomes the city’s most expensive residential building (New York Post)
Monday Properties is moving to Madison Ave. (Bisnow)
Former dumping ground in Brooklyn turned into wetlands (NY1)

A shift from subsidizing affordable housing to downsizing apartment sizes would help house young workers and low-income seniors.

Mayor Bill de Blasio has called for the city to spend $41 billion over 10 years on affordable apartments while asking developers to kick in billions of dollars’ worth of such housing. But housing could be made less costly and more available without a dime of subsidy. How? By allowing smaller units.

Decades ago, in response to fears that some neighborhoods would become overcrowded slums reminiscent of the turn of the 19th century, the city established a 400-square-foot minimum dwelling size in most medium- and high-density residential zones. But quite a few New Yorkers live happily in units smaller than that, including at least one City Council member, Corey Johnson, whose flat in the Village is all of 319 square feet. With modern technology and design, builders are now providing even greater efficiency and comfort in small spaces.

The first step should be to eliminate the 400-square-foot minimum, which limits supply and raises costs in a housing market that is already tight and expensive, especially in Manhattan. As our Joe Anuta has reported, the Department of City Planning wants to do exactly that. Its proposal, part of a larger zoning reform now undergoing public review, should be approved.

Small apartments are particularly attractive to young people who want to move to the city or remain here for its culture, opportunities and dynamism—but certainly not for spacious dwellings. Likewise, low-income elderly people need housing to be affordable and convenient, not expansive. But they are subject to outdated housing regulations as well, including something called the density factor, which was designed for general-population buildings. Prompted by recommendations from nonprofit builders of senior housing, City Planning proposed to relax these rules, too. That’s a no-brainer.

City codes generally allow a building’s average unit size to be smaller as the zoning increases in density, but an inexplicable quirk in the rules paradoxically raises the minimum unit size in certain high-density zones near mass transit. The proposal would fix that.

The plan would allow developers to respond to demand among young professionals for independent housing. Such flexibility is far more sensible than repeatedly amending regulations as conditions and tastes change. On pricey blocks, builders will likely continue to chase the higher profits of sprawling apartments—the so-called luxury premium. But elsewhere we’d expect to see more small units, lowering housing costs for people who can’t or don’t want to pay for more space than they need. And the increase in overall supply will help all buyers.

At one time, the property at 36 E. 57th St. was home to the New York outlet of couturier Christian Lacroix.

CoStar Group Inc.The brownstone that once stood at 36 E. 57th St.

Rising like a slim, silvery Lego tower, 432 Park Ave. will be the tallest residential building in the Western Hemisphere upon completion. Right next to it, until very recently, was a brownstone that was just 24 feet wide and five stories tall. The vacant, locked building, hidden behind scaffolding and stripped of ornamentation, with forlorn white curtains visible in the top-floor windows, was a vestige of an older New York. Now it’s gone. It was torn down last spring by the owners of 432 Park Ave. for purposes that have not been made clear.

This is an obituary for 36 E. 57th St., although it’s an incomplete one because most of the people who knew the building in its prime are gone now. In its day, the humble brownstone housed the New York outlet of couturier Christian Lacroix and may have been co-owned by a Hollywood kingpin. New York City records list 1930 as the year that 36 E. 57th St. was built, but the records are probably wrong. By that year nobody was building short, narrow brownstones on the high-toned block between Park Avenue and Madison Avenue.

It’s more likely that the building was erected in the 19th century, during the building boom that blanketed acres of Manhattan with the narrow, sandstone row houses known as brownstones. The 1879 edition of Bromley’s Atlas of the City of New York was the first to show a townhouse with a stone facade at 36 E. 57th St., according to researchers at the New York Public Library Map Division. That’s consistent with what Christopher Gray, a historian of New York City architecture, wrote in 1988 in the New York Times: “In 1877, a speculative developer, Duggin & Crossman, put up a row of brownstones at 32-50 E. 57th St.” Gray wrote that the poet Emma Lazarus—”Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses …”—lived for a time at 36 E. 57th St.. She died at age 38 in 1887.

The building pops up in the Commercial Record of 1919-20, listing among its occupants a Miss Rose Gruening, a Bradish J. Carroll, and one Frank B. Taggart, whose occupation is listed as vice-president at 60 Broadway in lower Manhattan. By then, the block had begun its transition from residential to commercial.

Wrote Gray: “Gradually, the row became sandwiched between the giant Fuller Building (1929) at Madison Avenue and 460 Park Ave. (1954). As the last vestiges of the residential character of the 50’s just east of Fifth Avenue began to disappear in the 1950’s, the 57th Street row came to represent a sort of symbolic demilitarized zone between the midtown skyscrapers and the Upper East Side residential district.”

The next appearance of 36 E. 57th St. in the public records is as a retail establishment. Montblanc, Piaget, and Oxford Clothes occupied the ground floor over the years. Ownership changed hands several times, at one point in the 1980s belonging to a group that included somebody named Lew Wasserman. Circumstances point to this being the same Lew Wasserman who built up the MCA talent agency and bought Universal Studios and Decca Records. He died in 2002.

Architect Maurice Medcalfe worked in the building during the 1960s. His firm, Hills & Medcalfe, was inspired by the Apollo program to design a building on East 71st Street that was pink and had bulging ovals for windows. It stood out in its block of brownstones like a Martian invader and was quickly dubbed, not affectionately, the Bubble Brownstone.

The last blaze of glory for 36 E. 57th St. came in 2007, when it became the home of Christian Lacroix’s first shop in the city. New York magazine gave it a Critics’ Pick: “Joining the high-fashion parade along 57th Street, Lacroix’s two-story store eschews the minimalism of nearby neighbors like Dior and Yves Saint Laurent, presenting instead a sensory overload of lights, textures, and ornamentation. Part pomp, part disco, a mirrored front wall gives way to an array of tinseled stilettos, embellished handbags, and op-art bangles.” The fun didn’t last long. Christian Lacroix filed for bankruptcy just two years later, and the decor was hauled away.

In its final years, according to city records, the building housed such establishments as World Wide Visa Service, Syd Levethan Shoes, New Horizons Beauty Salon, and Bryant Enterprises design services. Next to the front door, until the demolition, was a sign for Federico, a hair salon and spa that was one of the building’s final occupants.

The structure’s fate was sealed when 432 Park Ave. began to rise, and rise, and rise, to 96 stories. The luxury condo building—separated by a foot of space from 36 East 57th Street—s taller than the Empire State Building. It’s also taller than the Freedom Tower would be without its spire. Prices for apartments in it begin at $17 million. Its owners are powerful enough that they managed to get a Park Avenue address for it, even though it isn’t on Park Avenue. The first residents should move in “this fall,” said Joey Arak, who handles public relations for the residences.

Last August, 36 E. 57th St. was sold for $65 million, a lot for a structure covering 0.06 acre. At that rate, a full acre would cost $1.2 billion. The sum was no indication of the value of the building, which was nothing but an inconvenience. The new owner has the right to put up a building on the site approximately four times as big as the one that’s there. Robert Zirinsky is listed as the new owner. According to the website Real Deal, the demolition permit was filed by New York Medical Investors, which shares an address with Zirinsky, and by Macklowe Properties.

Macklowe is refusing to say what it has in mind for 36 E. 57th St.. The building permit that’s posted on a fence in front of the lot is for a retail building consisting of one story plus a cellar, but it’s hard to believe that such a small project is all that Macklowe has in mind. Arak has heard the space would be used for a lobby to reach the office floors of 432 Park Ave., but he wasn’t sure and wasn’t authorized to speak about it. Representatives of Macklowe did not return phone calls.

There was no good reason to save 36 E. 57th St. It was not architecturally distinguished and no president ever lived there. It was built in the era of Boss Tweed, mutton-chop sideburns, and horse-drawn carriages, and it had clearly outlived its usefulness. Spare a thought, though, for the passing of an era.

The bistate agency will be able to recoup most, if not all, it has invested in rebuilding the World Trade Center site since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, according to a study by New York University’s Rudin Center.

By Daniel Geiger

BloombergThe World Trade Center site.

The World Trade Center site will pay for itself in two decades, according to a new report by New York University.

NYU’s Rudin Center, which focuses on transportation and infrastructure, released a study Thursday showing that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey will be able to recoup the nearly $7 billion it is anticipated to invest in the rebuilding of the 16-acre site.

“The Port Authority will recover more than 97% of its capital outlay by 2036,” said Mitchell Moss, dean of the Rudin Center. “It has also had a tremendous regional impact on economic development and has been a catalyst for the diversification of downtown’s economy.”

According to the Rudin Center, the Port Authority will have spent $6.7 billion of its own funds by 2019, when the site’s redevelopment will be largely complete. That money is sorely needed at a time when the bistate agency is contemplating huge infrastructure projects, namely the estimated $10 billion replacement of its bus terminal on Eighth Avenue. In total, the authority has spent about $17 billion on rebuilding WTC, but about $10 billion of that has been paid for by government, insurance and other money.

The Port Authority will be able to recoup the money it will pour into the site from several sources, the Rudin Center said. Among them is the sale of the final development parcel at the site, 5 WTC, which could generate hundreds of millions of dollars for the agency. The agency will earn hundreds of millions in rental income from tenants at the completed office towers. It will benefit from further leasing at 1 World Trade Center, where it has already le rented more than 1 million square feet to Condé Nast.

Additionally, the Port Authority will rake in money from its deal with Silverstein Properties, which built 4 WTC and is in the process of erecting 3 WTC. Silverstein is also in the process of finalizing a huge lease with News Corp. and 20th Century Fox that will allow the developer to build a third tower on the site, 2 WTC. The agency collects ground rent from Silverstein for those sites and is entitled to 15% of the value of the three towers if the developer refinances the properties—an event that could eventually net the authority $1 billion, the Rudin Center estimates.

So far, the Port Authority has collected money from a number of other sources: a sale of the site’s retail space and a $100 million stake in 1 WTC that it sold to the Durst Organization. The agency also leased 1 WTC’s observation deck to Legends in a deal that is expected to generate more than $800 million.

Still, there has been chatter from some that the Port Authority should sell off the WTC site and its other real estate assets to focus on transit and regional infrastructure. Moss said it should resist that suggestion. “You don’t sell a real estate asset just before it’s about to go up in value,” he said.

Although public perception of the WTC site has improved in recent years as construction has neared completion and the site has attracted office tenants, tourists and shoppers, the rebuilding, which fell years behind schedule and clocked in billions of dollars over budget, had been widely viewed as a financial sinkhole for the bistate agency.

“The agency has focused on managing the WTC project to remain as close to schedule and budget as possible,” the Port said in a statement. “As the WTC reconstruction continues to wind down, the Port Authority also has strived to return to its core transportation mission of state-of-good repair work and new infrastructure investments … while pursuing the Special Panel on the Future of the Port Authority recommendation to phase out of real estate ownership and prudently look to divest non-core real estate holdings.”

The report also noted the large economic impact the site has had on lower Manhattan. The Rudin Center said 51,000 people will work at the WTC site, accounting for two-thirds of the job growth in the area over the next 10 years. Those employees will earn a total of about $7 billion in yearly wages. The rebuilding will also generate about $11.9 billion in salaries for construction workers and related job

Private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts is about to pull the trigger on a long-rumored Hudson Yards investment.

KKR is looking to buy 400,000 square feet of space at 30 Hudson Yards, which is now under construction at West 33rd Street and Tenth Avenue, the New York Post reported.

The company, which would relocate from its 160,000-square-foot space at Sheldon Solow’s 9 West 57th Street, has been mulling the move since at least May of this year.

A number of major tenants have already signed on to occupy the 90-story, 2.6 million square foot tower, which is set to open in 2019. Time Warner has committed to buy over half the building’s space in the form of a 1.6 million square office condo. The Related Companies, which is developing the Hudson Yards complex along with Oxford Properties Group, announced last week it would take 270,000 square feet across six of the building’s upper floors. Oxford, for its part, will take 45,000 square feet. [NYP] – Ariel Stulberg

The de Blasio administration is pursuing two zoning changes that could make the city a denser place without increasing the size of buildings.

The city hopes to allow more so-called micro apartments, or units smaller than 400 square feet, and give developers leeway to carve up buildings into more apartments.

The modifications—which would only alter a building’s innards, not size—are buried in a citywide proposal called Zoning for Quality and Affordability, which is currently making its way through the public-review process. That overall proposal includes a number of other changes to the way buildings will be constructed in New York City.

However, these two changes are geared toward tackling a simple housing problem that housing advocates have called on the city to address for years: the dearth of apartments for single households. Nearly 50% of the city’s population is estimated to be single people, spanning a wide range of ages and demographics, according to the nonprofit Citizens Housing and Planning Council. Yet only about 7% of the city’s housing stock is made up of studios, and about 35% are one-bedrooms, which are units also eyed by couples.

“You can’t deny the data,” said Sarah Watson, deputy director of the Citizens Housing and Planning Council, which has been advocating for more flexibility in unit sizes for years. “This mismatch causes all sorts of economic distortions.”

Here’s how the zoning changes would address the issue: Currently, there is a cap on the number of units allowed to be constructed inside a building in New York City. The limit varies by district and neighborhoods, but in parts of the Upper West Side, for example, a 6,800-square-foot building is limited to a maximum of 10 apartments by something called the density factor.

The rule was designed to limit the density of a given building. It’s the reason, for example, that developers can’t build an entire complex consisting of studios. The de Blasio administration is seeking to relax this limit in areas of the city where buildings are roughly 12 stories or higher, which were hitherto forced to be less dense than some of their smaller counterparts.

In practice, a 72,500-square-foot building in Long Island City, for instance, might currently be allowed a maximum of 101 units. But if the rules are changed, 106 apartments could be built. In the most extreme case, a building could contain a maximum of 15% more apartments than currently allowed.

While many developers don’t even hit their maximum allowable density (meaning they stock their buildings with larger units), Watson believes that giving them more flexibility in deciding the makeup of apartments is a step in the right direction to addressing the shortage of small apartments, though she would like to see the city give developers even more leeway. The shortage is a problem because, when singles can’t find their own place, they find roommates and take over larger apartments that would have been taken by a family.

“It’s far better to do this in an upfront way and allow denser housing, rather than having hidden density on the inside of these buildings,” she said. “Otherwise you get into the issues of not being able to plan for education or transportation, because you need to understand where people are living.”

The other major change sought by the administration would be to eliminate the current 400-square-foot minimum apartment size that still exists but is seen as outdated.

In fact, there has been an industry consensus that smaller units can easily provide desirable living conditions, and that minimum room sizes and other specific measures are already dictated by the city’s building code and provisions in the Americans With Disabilities Act, among others.

With this in mind, the Bloomberg administration in 2012 commissioned a contest to build a micro-unit pilot project to increase the density of units allowed inside a building. That pilot has resulted in a 11-story modular housing development in the Manhattan neighborhood of Kips Bay called Carmel Place, with studios as small as 260 square feet, which is set to open later this year.

The proposed changes would not allow for a building as dense as Carmel Place, which had its density requirement completely waived instead of modified.

– See more at: http://therealdeal.com/blog/2015/10/23/gladstones-madison-equities-partners-plans-65-story-condo-at-45-broad/#sthash.bZw488JT.dpuf