"Wreck" article on NYC

I hope they keep those kitchen cabinets at 789 WEA.

Those pictures do make me feel better about my mess.

Aren't they fabulous? This sort of thing gets me all sex-cited though it surely isn't an easy thing to renovate anywhere, let alone NYC. I remember some time back when Candace Bergen & Louis Malle's farmhouse style home in the L.A. area was on the cover of Architectural Digest. C.B. said, "The realtor called this a teardown; we said, 'We like it just the way it is, thank you very much'"

OMG.....I love prewar! But I could never move to Jackson Heights for that....bummer....off to find something like that in Upper Manhattan now!

"Does anyone (besides me) see some of the lovely detail in these wrecks and hope against hope that the buyers won't just rip everything out and put in something ghastly and charmless from Home Depot?"

Or even worse, change the floorplan completely and "open" the kitchen?

I fear that one day there will no longer be apartments with kitchens in this city any more -- just apartments with kitchen appliances in the living room. Sad.

Amen NYCMatt! I don't get the open kitchen - kitchens are closed for a reason, especially in an apartment, to keep the smells, steam, heat, smoke apart. How can you give an elegant dinner party with all the cooking smells and clanging pots and pans staring your guests in the eye? Who wants to watch the help clean up after they clear? And it spoils the surprise of what delicacy is coming out next!

I understand in big suburban homes that a kitchen can flow into a family room, which is nice for casual entertaining at times, but I would still insist on a formal dining room.

I feel the same way about the foyer cum dining room. They're generally too small, first of all, but it also takes away the drama of revealing the beautiful table at dinner time.

unfortunately odds are fairly good that whoever buys these units will denude them of most of their prewar characteristics.

There was a quip in ?New York Magazine? in the ?mid-80's? about yuppies, saying something like (and I wish I had it exactly, because I remember hearing it exactly it sounded brilliant) "they moved into lofts in Soho and Tribeca in the 70's and early 80's and divided them up into 3 br apartments, and then in the later 80's bought Classic 6's on West End Avenue and knocked all the walls down".

I think I've said this before, but when properties were worth less and therefore most renovations were done on more of a budget, I remember seeing a surprising amount of UWS apartments where you could "read the original floorplan" by looking at the floors and seeing the boarders.

I don't know if this is urban legend or not, but I had heard that at The Dorilton Darryl Hana bought a big wreck and ripped all teh details out making it into a "loft" and the Board voted that from then on they wouldn't allow that type of gutting of details anymore. Anyone know more on that?

I have to say that the most proud I am of any renovation I've done (aside from where I live) was 885 West End Ave, 3B. At one point during our renovation, the Board wanted to know why we were taking so long since we didn't submit any complicated plans so they had the super let them in after hours to inspect (because they thought we might be doing a lot more than we represented). When they saw that we had pretty much restored all the original details, they somewhat sheepishly admitted they doubted us (and I told them I totally understood why) and then gushed about how they wish everyone did what we did. We even had customer knives cut to match the existing door casings and base moldings, and stripped ALL of the ?maple? casings and all of the doors which had been painted. I did change the layout, but I think it was an amazing improvement since it turned the maids room into a bedroom accessed off of the bedroom wing hall as opposed to thru the kitchen (and we had to make a doorway with matching details, etc.). OK, I know I'm gushing/bragging.... but I really did love that unit and what we did to it. And if I remember correctly, we got about double the money we spent on the reno back on the sale price.

30yrs: sigh, I know. I feel pangs of pain every time I think of the details I gutted in our current place - but there was a less compelling case for preservation of original layout. I also had a GC who didn't want to put the effort into salvaging some stuff & even threw away some things that I told him specifically to save.

NYCMatt- open kitchens, the bane of my existence!!! If you have the space, keep the kitchen!!! /end of rant

nyc10023 -- Looked recently at an apt in same condition as many of those in the accompanying pictures. Lots of great details, hopefully whoever buys it retains many/most of them.

on the other hand some of the pricing seems still too high -- that one at West 57th that started over 2million (cobbled together out of 3 apts - 1 studio and 2 1br apts) seems to me that current asking is still too high.