Despite winning the presidential election last fall, Donald Trump’s New York City properties have hit a losing streak. Trump-branded hotels and condos throughout the city have seen a sharp decline in event bookings and property values. And at the 55-story Trump Palace at 200 East 69th Street, one of the tallest towers in the neighborhood, the average unit sits on the market for 107 days, 35 percent longer than the average luxury unit. To combat declining property values, an apartment owner at Trump Palace has written a letter asking neighbors to come together and remove the name “Trump” from the building, as the Hollywood Reporter discovered.

Find out more

Trailblazer and feminist icon Gloria Steinem appears to be expanding her Upper East Side digs. The Post reports that Steinem has just purchased a $1.1M floor-through on the third floor of 118 East 73rd Street, a brownstone where according to property records—and this Oprah video—she already owns two floors.

see more inside here

“Master builder” Robert Moses–he of the 13 expressways that crisscross New York City–spent the 1970s living with his wife, Mary Grady Moses, in a three-bedroom co-op at 1 Gracie Terrace in Yorkville on Manhattan’s Upper East Side (h/t NYPost). We can see how the home’s sweeping river views would inspire the subject of Robert Caro’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York,” when pondering the conflicting issues of a complicated and changing city. The apartment is now for sale asking $1.95 million.

See more

Just a month after opening on the first of the year, the Second Avenue Subway had eased congestion on the Lexington line by 11 percent. Now, nearly five months in, that figure has more than doubled, with ridership on the 4/5/6 decreased by 26 percent and a whopping 40 percent during peak morning hours. Moreover, Second Avenue’s average weekday ridership is up from 140,000 to 176,000 passengers, an increase which has prompted the MTA to add two additional train trips during rush hour come this November.

Find out more

The 7,067 square-foot penthouse at 995 Fifth Avenue owned by Claude Wasserstein, ex wife of the late Bruce Wasserstein, former chair of investment firm Lazard, was just listed for the first time since a brief stint on the market in 2010. Wasserstein, who died in 2009, was the brother of the late playwright Wendy Wasserstein. The 11-room, five-bedroom duplex atop the Rosario Candela-designed former Stanhope hotel was purchased by Ms. Wasserstein for $34.8 million in 2008, The Real Deal reports. In addition to five garden-like wraparound terraces crafted by landscape designer Madison Cox, “epic NYC views” and 72 linear feet of Central Park frontage, the full-service building offers top-drawer amenities like a gym and a spa. But does all of that add up to $65 million–$9,285 per square foot?

Get lost in the terraces and gardens overlooking Central Park

After over a year-long debate, the city has finally unveiled renderings of a mixed-income tower set to rise on an existing playground at the Holmes Towers public housing complex in Yorkville. The New York City Housing Authority’s plan, which falls under the city’s NextGen program, will construct a 47-story building among the complex on East 93rd Street, as well as a new 18,000-square-foot recreation and community center run by Asphalt Green (h/t DNA Info). The new building will feature 300 total units, with half of them at market-rate prices and half of them affordable. However, an alleged plan to separate the floors by income level, as well as the fact that high-end housing is coming to a low-income site where the community wasn’t consulted, has sparked a good deal of controversy.

Get the whole story

Award-winning actor Robert Redford’s former Lenox Hill pied-a-terre has hit the market for $1.35 million, reports the Post. The one-bedroom duplex co-op is located in a limestone mansion at 47 East 67th Street, between Madison and Park Avenues. Redford owned the newly renovated pad in the 1980s, and it now boasts plenty of space with a chef’s kitchen, double-height ceilings with massive windows, and a woodburning fireplace.

Take a tour

Welcome to New York, Ryan Seacrest. The former American Idol emcee and now Kelly Ripa’s co-host on ABC’s morning show “Live,” moved to the city and recently landed luxurious new digs on the Upper East Side. Seacrest’s rental is at 34 East 68th Street in Lenox Hill and runs him $75,000 per month. The architects of the townhouse, Michael Chen Architects, rebuilt an entirely new structure inside of a 19th-century mansion, preserving its historic character while adding cool modern touches such as a 30-foot-tall vertical living garden, elevator, and sculptural staircase. As reported by the Daily Mail, the 11,000-square-foot home features 15 rooms with six bedrooms and five+-plus bathrooms.

See inside his new digs

Photo: DBOX for Macklowe Properties

Harry Macklowe, the P.T. Barnum of developers and never one to miss a chance to nibble the tallest branches, has found an 18-foot fiberglass giraffe (plus elephants and rhinos) to do just that. And not to be outdone by the live giraffe used in marketing a Rem Koolhaas (the P.T. Barnum of starchitects, if you will) building outside Paris (Or by Richard Pandiscio’s now-retired beaver) Macklowe has decided that an entire life-sized safari of zoo animals is just the thing to remind people that the vast terraces at his new glass-walled condo at 200 East 59th Street with a “Miami Beach look” are big enough to house an entire circus, the Wall Street Journal reports. Macklowe said the idea was born in a staff meeting where said terraces were touted, and that the critters were sourced in Southampton, NY.

Step right up for more

This undeniably grand home of pale carved limestone in the Beaux Arts style, designed by turn-of-the-20th-century architects Clinton & Russell, is in its element on what’s known as the most valuable corridor on the Upper East Side just across from Central Park. And unlike many of its kind, the interiors of the 25-foot-wide, 11,500-square-foot mansion at 7 East 67th Street are neither overly opulent and intimidating nor tastelessly renovated. There’s an elevator, gym, double-height library, two grand staircases, and decks and terraces around every turn. Why, then, has this home been seeking a buyer since 2009? It’s certainly possible that when other houses like this are asking less than half its current price of $36.5 million, an ask of $37 million nearly a decade ago that hopped to $49.5, fell to $42.5, and steadily dropped since then might have less appeal for buyers when the choices are many.

Take the tour, from the gym to the roof deck

Perfectly situated in the we-never-heard-of-it-either Treadwell Farms Historic District on the Upper East Side, this $14.79 million townhouse at 215 East 61st Street, originally built in 1875, survived a two-year renovation and emerged as a “seamlessly cohesive modern home encased within historic architecture.” Within are five stories plus a finished basement and an elevator to navigate them. Five exterior spaces were created to match, including a bluestone-paved landscaped garden with a cedar fence, an automatic watering and lighting system, a sound system and a gas grill.

Take the five-story elevator tour

Qualifying New Yorkers aching to be in the thick of the city’s performing arts scene now have an opportunity to join the waitlist for two Midtown West rental towers: One Columbus Place and 55-75 West End Avenue. The NYCHDC is currently accepting applications for studio and one-bedrooms priced at $613 and $659, respectively. The towers, both developed by the Brodsky Organization in the mid-90s, boast not only a fantastic location close to Columbus Circle, Central Park, and Lincoln Center, but also come with great perks like roof decks, swimming pools, laundry facilities, gyms, and concierge and doorman service.

find out if you qualify

6sqft has reported on the townhouse combo mega-mansion phenomenon before, such as when Roman Abramovich clashed with the DOB over a set of Upper East Side townhouses and when Sarah Jessica Parker and the unrelated but also loaded Sean Parker dropped a bundle on their respective two-and three-fers; now another stunning double scoop of insane townhouse living just hit the market at 166 East 81st Street and 179 East 80th Street (just down the street from Madonna’s triple Georgian townhouse compound). The two contiguous houses comprise 8,000 square feet of gorgeous 1899 historic details and uptown opulence for the appropriately uptown ask of $28 million. Unlike those other Siamese townhouse siblings, though, these bad boys are adjoined back-to-back through a private 74-foot two-tiered landscaped garden with a swimming pool. Take that, Madonna.

Take the front to back tour, this way

A few weeks ago the New York Post reported that the six-story Beaux Arts mansion at 854 Fifth Avenue that had belonged to the granddaughter of railroad baron Cornelius Vanderbilt and which most recently housed Serbia’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations was about to hit the market for $50 million. Built in 1905 for stockbroker and future governor of Rhode Island R. Livingston Beeckman and designed by the same firm that designed Grand Central Station, the building is virtually unchanged, including hand-carved balustrades of white marble, ceiling frescoes of angels and clouds and an original working stove. The opulent abode includes two elevators, eight bathrooms and 32 rooms in total. Now officially listed for sale, the storied Upper East Side manse reportedly already has six potential buyers.

Find out more about this rare piece of New York City history