Five Manhattan West. Rendering via Millerhare.

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced today that tech giant Amazon will be growing its presence in New York City. The company just signed a lease for a 359,000-square-foot administrative office at Five Manhattan West, Brookfield Property Partners’ 16-story, 1.8 million-square-foot Skidmore, Owings & Merrill-designed building located on Tenth Avenue between 31st and 33rd Streets. The new addition is expected to create 2,000 new jobs in finance, sales, marketing, and information technology. The offices will be the main New York location for Amazon Advertising, which handles sales, marketing, product, design, engineering and more. “We’re excited to expand our presence in New York–we have always found great talent here,” said Paul Kotas, Amazon’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Advertising.

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Given the renovation fever that has swept the city’s historic neighborhoods, it sometimes seems rare to see a home like this one, built at the turn century in a Neo-Gothic style, that retains its grandeur after being designed and remodeled into a picture of 21st century city living perfection. This four-story Prospect Heights townhouse at 577 Carlton Avenue, currently asking $3.495 million, has retained its historic details, while color, texture and inspired design decisions elevate it above many of its more ordinary brownstone Brooklyn neighbors.

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Interior at Penthouse 88B at 15 Hudson Yards. Rendering courtesy of Related-Oxford.

The sleek 910-foot-tall tower at 15 Hudson Yards has held the attention of real estate and skyline watchers since construction began last spring. Just listed for $32 million is penthouse 88B, the first of the building’s four penthouses to arrive on the market. The suitably stunning 5,161-square-foot duplex home sits on the building’s 88th floor near its crown. And even in a city filled with penthouses, several things make this one unique.

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Fifth Avenue from the Metropolitan. Image: Wiki Commons.

Finding addresses on most of Manhattan’s streets and avenues is a pretty easy task in most places. Cross streets make sense thanks to the decimal system-based numbering that began in 1861, when each street block between two major avenues was assigned a set of 100 numbers. And we have this nifty algorithm for avenues, right? It all works…except when it doesn’t. And we’ve spent centuries trying to tame the city into an easy equation. But there are always outliers–and we always wonder why. If you look on the address algorithm chart, Fifth Avenue doesn’t fit easily into the “all” category. This is nothing new: According to The New York Times, in 1940 the Avenue of legend nixed a plan to renumber avenue addresses throughout the city because its wealthy business bigwigs didn’t want to have to change their letterhead.

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Image via Rockaloo/App Store

We don’t all remember mom’s wise advice to “go before you leave the house” as often as we should. And once we’re out there, the prospects for finding a restroom in the city when we need one can be, at best, a crapshoot. Which is where a new app called Rockaloo comes in. According to Time Out, for a small fee, it allows users to buy a pass to restrooms at private businesses across New York City, giving them the opportunity to reserve a time slot to do their private business without having to wait in line. (Are we taking the sharing economy just a little too far?)

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Fort Greene has some really creative people in residence, and we’re pretty sure at least one of them is the person who has owned this unique duplex at 159 Carlton Avenue since (according to the listing) 1998. The landmarked 2,015-square-foot carriage house that was once the Feuchtwanger Stable is as colorful and inspired as it is well-designed for living, with its hard-to-miss Swiss blue entry arches, and this condo inside is on the market for $1,595,000.

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The kitchen may be in the cellar, but this 2,400-square-foot townhouse at 154 West 11th Street in the lovely western reaches of Greenwich Village keeps every inch of interior space clean, bright and airy. At 20 feet wide with three (legit) floors, it’s understandable why so much thought was put into making sure space was used wisely. Built in 1845 and surrounded by its historic brethren in the Greenwich Village Historic District, the three-bedroom home has been lovingly restored and made ready for modern family life from to its walnut-stained oak floors and four wood-burning fireplaces to its charming garden.

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The East Village in the 1980s

From Broadway to Bowery, 1980s New York City was a very different place compared to today’s manicured metropolis. Courtesy of Maps Mania, the 80s.NYC street map picks up where the Finance Department of New York City left off. In the mid ‘80s the bureau photographed every single building in the five boroughs in order to accurately assess building taxes and estimate property taxes. Brandon Liu and Jeremy Lechtzin have finessed this trove of photographic information into a nifty map that allows users to travel the city’s streets in the bad old 1980s with a map-based street view for an easy-to-browse glimpse of the streetscape 30 years ago. You can browse by location by clicking anywhere on the map for vintage street views on that spot, or type in an address. For more context there are curated “stories” that provide historical background where it’s available (and interesting).

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A massive Upper East Side single-family townhouse at 50 East 69th Street was just wrestled off the market for an equally monumental $45 million, sources have told the New York Post. Joshua Harris, co-founder of Apollo Global Management, owner of the Philadelphia 76ers and part owner of the NHL’s New Jersey Devils, just bought the 21,070-square-foot house, which was listed at $72 million last September and reduced to $59 million in June. The 44-foot-wide limestone-clad building, known as the Dommerich Mansion, was built in 1917 in a neo-French classic style by architect Henry C. Pelton for Otto Louis Dommerich, who ran his family’s family cotton business. It was most recently being used as a cosmetic surgery facility.

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This adorable one-bedroom co-op at 326 East 73rd Street shows what designer talent can do for a small apartment. High ceilings, white oak floors, and a great Upper East Side location don’t hurt matters much, while the stylish and well-appointed kitchen, elegant lighting, and reclaimed wood accents make this space seem like a find indeed. There are also quartz countertops, glass French doors, big closets, and plenty of sun to enjoy, and we’re guessing a new owner will be doing just that, very soon.

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