NYT: A Landmark Building With a Fraught History

It sounds like a delightful mixed-income place to live.

Although they should really put that big void in the center to use by building a NYCHA housing project on it.

Mixed income Alan? In Manhattan? South of 125th on the UWS? Don't you know that if you can't afford $10K+ a month you don't deserve to live on the UWS? Never mind that you have lived there for 50 years, or all your life and have given more to the community than a trust fund transplant or investment banker could give in fifty years of being rich and beautiful.

The regulated rents there are unusually low because of the former owner, Mrs. Seril. She was always in court for failure to provide heat, etc., and the tenants usually won and would have their rents rolled back. Also, the building went decades with no Major Capital Improvements, so no increases for those. She was famous as the worst landlady on the UWS.

Of course, she paid zilch for the building precisely because of the regulated rents. As is often the case, she was a rent-controlled tenant herself.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/25/us/lillian-seril-95-dies-landlord-at-center-of-rent-strike.html

I visited the building several times in the 1970s. It was like the (free-market) city of Detroit!

We're all glad I got out of there alive.

Fine, fine - don't begrudge the original rent-control lessees. But I feel far less sympathetic to the grandson who is suing to overturn grandpa's contract.

Fine, fine -- but I'd need to know if Gramps had professional help negotiating, or was flim-flammed. The lady who's living out her years rent-free moved from a Classic Twelve to a much much smaller apartment, rent-free for the rest of her years, and also got a reasonable-sounding cash award for her troubles. And signed away succession rights. She has at least one child. I'm not sure if the child signed on to the agreement.

I know all this not from the NYT article, but because I gossip sufficiently. Try it yourself before you criticize.

NWT and nyc10023 can confirm or deny, but I was told that the Belnord was originally built as all (or mostly) 25-room apartments ... Classic Twenty-Fives, as they're called in the trade. Too much vacuuming for me, though.

[The Majestic's towers were designed as Classic Thirties, but the actual classic Thirties put an end to that, possibly before they were occupied, and so they were divided into tiny half-floor apartments instead. I'm told by gossips.]

We shouldn't be kicking out current elderly (elderly <> AARP members) tenants who are there on or prior to 1971 and were born before 1946, the first year of the baby boomers. The rest - free market. Landlords - no windfalls. Any elderly tenant can switch to a smaller apartment in the same building with the same continuing rights. Landlords who don't fix the elevators, turn on the heat, or prevent roof leaks, should have their buildings foreclosed upon by the city.

The Belnord had mostly 6/7/8/9-room apartments: http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/id?417226

Typical for its time, not quite enough bathrooms.

On some of the floors, an apartment would trade a BR for a bigger LR. That's why the window pattern at the SW corner varies.

See - that's why you can't trust the press. I see no Classic 12s in the NYPL floorplan - 4 brs, parlor, library, DR, 2 maid's, K at the most - ah, I see NTW beat me to it. Flim-flammed or not, you'd find that one hard to disprove if everyone else got similar deals. I wonder if the tribe who sold Manhattan to the Dutch had adequate legal representation.

That particular tribe and transaction pre-dated rent regulation, so moot. The important thing is that we later beat back those Loyalist Canadians and set up border control.

These floors have apartments with three servant's rooms ... needed if you have six servants.
http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/dgkeysearchdetail.cfm?trg=1&strucID=243005&imageID=417224&total=304&num=80&parent_id=241921&s=&notword=&d=&c=&f=&k=1&sScope=&sLevel=&sLabel=&lword=&lfield=&sort=&imgs=20&pos=87&snum=&e=w

And I guess maybe they count no-nos like foyer and the, um, the ... what IS that behind the kitchen? Scullery? Pantry? Solitary-confinement isolation booth for errant domestics?

Anyway, I stand corrected on the 25-room apartments, NWT. Or maybe the ground-floor apartments were larger, or duplexes? There was probably still bias among the 1% against apartment living at this time.

"Many windows are the width of a grown woman’s wingspan".

Exhibit A in the "Continued decline of the NYTimes editing staff" category.

Speaking of that, some rooms seem to have been divided right at the window mullion. Classy.

Nuh-ah. The 3 maid's layout does not have a library. The double maid's layout has a library and a windowed pantry.

I see your point. There are even apartments with libraries and only one servant's room. How on earth anyone can manage with only two servants is beyond me.

And I now see that the rooms divided at window mullions were original. Shocking, truly.

alan, you and your mullions.