Steven Gaines - The Skys the Limit: Passion and Property in Manhattan

*The last of New Yorks original Old Guard aristocracy to actually live in a Fifth Avenue mansion lingered until 1949, when Augustus Van Horne Stuyvesant, the last living male bearing the name of the first governor of New York, ended his days in a town house at East Seventy-second Street, deaf and alone, sitting all day in front of a portrait of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and cursing.

*Brevoort evidently was the only property owner able to thwart the grid of 1811. An old grove of Brevoorts favorite trees stood on his farm where the city engineers were going to grade West Eleventh Street between Fourth Avenue and Broadway, and Brevoort was said to have stood in the doorway of his farmhouse with a loaded blunderbuss, threatening to blow away any man who touched one of his trees. More likely, Brevoort was rich and powerful enough to persuade the corrupt politicians to leave his farm alone. In any event, that the street stops for one block is the only anomaly of the system, and where East Eleventh Street should be, Grace Church now stands instead, which, not coincidentally, was designed by Brevoorts grandson James Renwick.

* The open-minded constituency of 834 has been attributed to the liberal influence of Laurence Rockefeller, who lived in a triplex apartment (with its own running track on the roof) that recently was sold for over $44 million to publisher Rupert Murdoch.

* When McAllister eventually published the Four Hundred, it had only 319 people on it, and when he died, not even that many showed up at his funeral, while his benefactor, Mrs. Astor, gave a ball on the eve of his burial.

* The locale of the apartment of the duped art collector in Six Degrees of Separation is given as 1049 Fifth, the building where radio commentator Rush Limbaugh now lives, and as previously noted, Sidney Poitiers real address was once 1158 Fifth.

* A trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, she has so much clout at the museum that she was able to get it to ditch the considerable presence of Madonna. When Versace died, the next clothing gala turned into a virtual paean to him, at which Madonna was supposed to perform. Mrs. Wrightsman thought Madonna unseemly and got her knocked off of the show.

** In a few rare instances buyers are asked to prequalify before seeing an apartment where there might be curiosity value, as was the case when Jacqueline Kennedy Onassiss apartment was for sale at 1040 Fifth. Buyers were asked to present financial and social accreditation to her estates representativein this case, her son-in-law, Edwin Schlossberg, before the family would consider allowing a stranger to see her private quarters and lavatory.

* Wolfes GBs are: 1 Beekman Place; 10 Gracie Square; 1 and 120 East End Avenue; 550, 555, 635, 640, 720, 730, 740, 765-75, 770, 778, and 812 Park Avenue; 810, 820, 825, 834, 953, 960, 998, 1020, 1030, and 1040 Fifth Avenue; 435 East Fifty-second Street (River House); 4 and 131-35 East Sixty-sixth Street; 2 East Seventieth Street; 4, 19, 36, 117, and 160 East Seventy-second Street; 50 East Seventy-seventh Street; 21, 39, 66, and 79 East Seventy-ninth Street; 25 Sutton Place North; and One Sutton Place South.

** In the 2000 census, demographers found that 10011 had the highest concentration of male same-sex households in the city, seven times the norm.

* NFO WorldGroup, a market-research firm, put the number of cash millionaire households in Americaexcluding the value of houses and retirement fundsat an astounding 3.8 million in 2003.

** The word millionaire was coined by a newspaper in 1843 upon the death of tobacco farmer Pierre Lorillard to describe the amount of money he made by selling snuff.

* Flack incurred the ire of the board as well as the citys Landmarks Preservation Commission when she removed original building blocks from the Dakotas thick walls to install new air-conditioning units; she was allowed to keep the new air conditioners but was ordered to put the original blocks in storage to be replaced at some future date.

* The woman who asked the question later admitted that it was Puff Daddy she meant to ask about but couldnt remember his name.

* When Dr. Kissinger walks his dog in the neighborhood, a security man walks behind him and cleans up after the dog because it would be undignified for the former statesman to be seen scooping up dog poop.

* In contemporary Manhattan real estate parlance, a studio apartment means one room, perhaps with an alcove for a bed.

* Ironically, none of the new buildings would contain artists studios, which had become the purlieu of prostitutes in the guise of artists models, or as the New York Times put it in 1922, those looking to cloak loose living by the glamour of art. An estimated 70 percent of artists studios in New York were being occupied by persons of questionable character.

* F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.... Anything can happen now that weve slid over this bridge.

* Every Sunday Woollcott served breakfast in his pajamas in his third-floor apartment to his friends from the Algonquin Round Table. Because of the buildings seeming remoteness, Franklin P. Adams, the newspaper columnist, suggested that Woollcott name his apartment after the Indian word ocowoica, the Little Apartment on the East River That It Is Difficult to Find a Taxicab Near. But it was Dorothy Parkers suggestion that stuck. Parker said that the building was far enough east to plant tea and that it should henceforth be known as Wits End.

* Contrary to what Mrs. Sherrill believes, Mr. Bryan did not go broke and he sued the New York Post when they printed that he had lost all his money.

* As it would turn out, there would be no commission for Stein. Everett rented a West Village townhouse through another broker and later bought it, for $3.7 million, direct from the seller, paying a commission to no one.

* In 2003 the Real Estate Board of New York, a self-governing creation of the industry, made it mandatory that all brokerages share listings with one another electronically seventy-two hours after getting them, a largely unenforceable decree.

* In November 2003, just one-sixth of Seymour Steins remarkable collection of objets was auctioned off at Sothebys for over $4 million.

* Perhaps the most famous of these estate condition apartments was the 810 Fifth Avenue apartment of Mary Tod Rockefeller, Nelson Rockefellers first wife, who died in 1999 at the age of ninety-one. The apartment hadnt been touched since her divorce in 1962, and it had a tiny twelve-by-eleven-foot kitchen and appliances from the 1960s. The New York Observer quoted a broker describing the apartment as moldy. And yet, within a month, the historic apartment had a signed contract for $16.5 million from fifty-one-year-old Gary Winnick, a telecommunications multibillionaire from California, who hired architect Charles Gwathmey to draw up plans. When the co-op board, which included art patron Maureen Cogan, the wife of high-rolling investment banker Marshall Cogan, and Elizabeth Rohatyn, the wife of financier Felix Rohatyn, was presented with Gwathmeys ambitious architectural plans, it returned Mr. Winnicks deposit to him.

** The San Remos formidable list of famous residents, as subletters, renters, or owners, includes songwriter Peter Allen, whose apartment had a music composing room with walls covered in tonga bark from New Hebrides; singer Barry Manilow, who sublet his apartment to actress Raquel Welch, who gave him a hard time about leaving when the lease ran out; Diane Keaton, who was a member of the board; concert pianists Misha and Cipa Dichter, whose apartment has a soundproofed practice studio designed around their two pianos; Zero Mostel, who lived at the San Remo when he starred on Broadway in