Which was the bigger mistake?

holy moly.

What am I missing? Some ugly ceiling sculpture by some artist nobody ever heard of? A sex dungeon with the broker at the ready? Something else?

LOL..... I've never seen so many apartments with rooms without windows. I know a windowed kitchen is considered a room. But if a bathroom has a "full sized" window, is it also considered a room in Manhattan real estate?

@dave, bathrooms are never included in room count.

This is certainly a contender in my book for 'worst layout'. Walk through the hallway posing as a kitchen to get to the LR? Ugh. Is the exit in the "H.O." a service entrance or the main entrance?

I'm guessing HO exit is for service/fire stairs.

So y'all rather have the kitchen in the middle of the living room instead?

There is enough wrong with this apartment that I wouldn't consider it at all. I don't like apartments where one wall of the LR is the kitchen, and I don't like walking through the kitchen to get from the front door to the LR. Assuming the architecture permits it, for my tastes, the best rescue would be to lose the H.O., and put the kitchen there, and pull out everything that encloses that 'Den' to turn the space into a large loft. Alternatively, keep the kitchen where it is, open up the wall to the 'Den'/LR and pull out the den to have a loft with an open kitchen. But for the cost of that on top of the asking price one could find a much better space.

@aaron2, I can't get to my office to see reference materials, but sitting at home my guess is that your choice number two, "put out the den to have a loft with an open kitchen," restores the original floorplan.

It's really hard to make good space out of large floorplates with mostly interior walls. These owners picked their poison. This building should really be an office building. Oh, wait...