living in historic distric in Manhattan

What is a "historic district" in new york? Isn't pretty much all of Manhattan below 59th street "historic"?

Some individual *buildings* are "historic", and yes, you'll pay a premium on your maintence to live in those. But there are no guidelines for entire *districts*. It varies from one building to the next.

I was looking in upper west side in the 80's near central park

The advantage of living in a historic district -- especially the Upper West Side historic district that runs from 63rd to 90th Streets from Central Park West through Columbus Avenue and mostly to Amsterdam Avenue -- is that it is extremely difficult for developers to increase the density of the area so the current low to mid rise building height and architectural integrity will be preserved. That way you will not encounter extreme high rise and intensive density like you see on the Upper East Side east of Third Avenue with block aftre block of 40-story high rises with balconies (or like the Ariel East and West on Broadway and 100th which is not in a historic district). The only disadvantage is that as an owner in a historic district ou can not make structural changes to the facade of the building without landmarks commission approval. Our building rehabbed our windows and had to use wood frames on the facade instead of aluminum which cost us more money. You can change interiors and the rear wall of buildings. Overall, being in a historic district is a great advantage.

I think you mean "Landmark" districts, like Soho. The differences don't impact the way your coop board does things or the cost of managing your building, but it does impact what is allowed when it comes to renovation, new construction, even exterior paint. There are pros and cons. One great benefit is that the neighborhood generally preserves those qualities which make it unique. For instance landmarked building owners can't remove unique iron work or stone and replace it with an aluminum and glass facade (unless that aluminum and glass was somehow around in 1900). On the other hand, if you're someone who wants to do that, a Landmark neighborhood is probably not for you.

That said, these restrictions are managed by a city agency, and we all know how smoothly that can go. As for increased cost, any construction plans of any sort have to go through Landmarks to get their rubber stamp. For interior work this is really not a big deal, but you do pay a filing fee and expeditor's fee, so that and the tedious headache are a little bit of a premium added to the district. Basically, if you're worried about your coop board, historic designation will have nothing to do with anything except for city restrictions.

FYI, here's the web site for the Historic Districs Council. Unless I'm missing something, however, I could not find a listing of all the historic districs with their boundaries.

http://www.hdc.org/index.htm

I live on the upper east side east of third avenue and all I can say is that I think it is the best and safest section of NYC. I love it here and I've lived in other parts of Manhattan including the west side and I would trade living here for any other part of NYC.

good for you #7. . .and many others are happy you like it there - as they like it somewhere else.

#6 here again with a list of the Historic Districts that I found -

http://www.nyc.gov/html/lpc/html/maps/historic_district.shtml