Manhattan

For many, Whole Foods still automatically means "Whole Paycheck," but Min Liao is set on changing our thinking that fresh, organic food and fine dining are reserved for just a few. Min is the Culinary Center director at the Whole Foods Market (WFM) on Bowery and the brains behind the school's incredible course offering where menus range from handmade pasta dishes to "Les Essentiels-Chocolate" and whipping up eggs the way the Israelis do. The center is a delight designed specifically for the average New Yorker, focusing on growing culinary confidence, even in a small kitchen that might not have all the right tools. And best of all? The classes are inexpensive and often cost no more than $50. (There are even free ones!) We recently caught up with Min to find out how she got into the business of food and to find out what makes the WFM Culinary Center different from other cooking schools in the city. Keep reading for our interview ahead, and if you want to give a class a try, enter our latest giveaway. Min and her team are hosting a "Dumplings of the World" private cooking class for eight 6sqft readers at the center (enter here).
Let's get cookin' with Min here

February 20, 2015

Troubled Plaza Penthouse Returns with the Same $59M Asking Price

This troubled triplex penthouse at The Plaza just can’t seem to catch a break. It’s been a steady fall from grace ever since 2008, when an unhappy buyer who bought the $53.5 million place sight unseen sued for his $10.7 million deposit plus damages, claiming the home was misrepresented. Well, London-based developer Christian Candy purchased the pad for a comparatively dirt cheap $25.4 million in 2012 and tried to sell it for $59 million a couple of times in 2013. Now the plagued penthouse is back at the same $59 million asking. There’s something to be said for consistency. Let’s just hope the stars align this time and this “townhouse in the sky” finds an owner.
More pics inside

Distinctive Homes

Rent-Stabilized Tenant Gets Evicted for Listing His Apartment on Airbnb in a Landmark Decision

Inside the apartment. Image via Airbnb

February 20, 2015

Rent-Stabilized Tenant Gets Evicted for Listing His Apartment on Airbnb in a Landmark Decision

If you were questioning how truly serious the city is about its beef against Airbnb, look no further than this landmark ruling to evict a rent-stabilized tenant from his ultra-luxe 450 West 42nd Street building. The Post reports that Henry Ikezi was just given the boot by a Manhattan Housing Court judge for posting his 46th-floor Hell's Kitchen apartment on the site for $649 per night, about triple what he was paying at $6,670 per month. The home's market value is upwards of $9,000.
More on the landmark case here

February 20, 2015

One Vanderbilt May Offer Sky-High Observation Deck

When we talk about One Vanderbilt we typically focus on the base of the building–how it relates to its neighbor Grand Central and how it interacts with the planned public plaza in Vanderbilt Corridor. But at a presentation last night about the project, hosted by Open House New York and put on by Jamie van Klemperer, […]

February 20, 2015

Chelsea Townhouse Channels Its Inner Diva with Bold Patterns and Textures

Where’s Beyoncé when you need her? If she is indeed looking for another place, she might want to look at this Chelsea pad for design ideas. DHD Interiors gave this Robert Young Architecture-designed townhouse its own alter ego with bold textures and colors in the family and kids’ spaces and soft, polished style in other areas like the master bedroom and dining room.
More pics inside

New Waldorf Astoria Owners Will Add Luxury Condos to the Iconic Hotel

image via KerSaber

February 20, 2015

New Waldorf Astoria Owners Will Add Luxury Condos to the Iconic Hotel

Back in October, it was revealed that Hilton Worldwide Holdings, who owned the landmark Waldorf Astoria since 1972, had agreed to sell the 1,232-room hotel to the Anbang Insurance Group Co., a financial and insurance company based in Beijing, for $1.95 billion. The deal closed just last week, and now the new owners are planning to convert part of the Art Deco building into luxury condominiums. According to The Real Deal, Anbang’s chairman Wu Xiaohui recently said: "We plan to renovate the two towers into luxury residential apartments with world-class amenities and finishes to reflect its culture and social status."
More details

February 19, 2015

Modern Family’s Jesse Tyler Ferguson Buys $1.2M Gramercy Co-op

By Annie Doge

Jesse Tyler Ferguson, famous for his portrayal of neurotic lawyer Mitchell Pritchett on the sitcom Modern Family, has scooped up a $1,232,500 Gramercy Park co-op with his husband Justin Mikita, according to city records released today. The one-bedroom apartment at 200 East 16th Street is pretty standard, but will still make a lovely home for the couple when Ferguson isn't in LA filming.
Check out the unit here

February 19, 2015

$300K Rental at the Surrey Hotel Is the City’s Most Expensive One-Bedroom

Why buy a $3.6 million dollar home when you can pay the same amount of money to live in a modest one-bedroom for a year? The latest unit to join the city's ever-growing collection of priciest listings is a 1200-square-foot apartment in the Surrey Hotel at 20 East 76th Street. The Post reports that the pad—which is actually the 17th-floor penthouse if that sweetens the deal any—is currently renting for $300,000 a month and comes with one "oversized" bedroom, one-and-a-half bathrooms, and access to the hotel’s English rooftop garden and five-star amenities, which include a day spa and a place to pamper your pooch, amongst other perks.
Have a look around here

February 19, 2015

Get Moves Like Jagger in This West Village Rental Formerly Owned by the Rolling Stones

People always complain that when you travel for work you never really get to see the city. Well, that’s about to change, starting with this $7,500 a month fully furnished rental at 43 Perry Street. If it’s not enough to tell your friends you stayed in a West Village stunner, just try telling them your pad was once owned by The Rolling Stones… and then watch their jaws drop to the floor. Mission accomplished.
More pics inside

February 18, 2015

GIVEAWAY: Win a Spot in 6sqft’s Private Cooking Class at the Whole Foods Market Culinary Center!

By Alyssa Alimurung

Whether you're the worst cook in the world or a seasoned top chef, it's always fun to cook with others and learn more about the craft. We've partnered up with our friends at Whole Foods Market to host a private cooking class for eight lucky 6sqft readers in their Bowery Culinary Center! In this two-hour class you'll learn how to whip four delicious dishes—made with fresh and yummy products right from Whole Foods—in their state-of-the-art kitchen alongside pro chef and Culinary Center educator Chef Wai Chu. Wai will be teaching his hit class "Dumplings of the World", a fun, very hands-on course that will afford you plenty of Instagram-worthy moments alongside your delicious creations. To enter, all you need to do is: 1. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter Fill out the form below and click Subscribe. You'll get a confirmation e-mail a couple minutes later. Be sure to click Confirm in the e-mail to be added to our list! P.S. If you're already signed up for our newsletter, just leave a comment below telling us what you love to cook. Email Address First Name Last Name 2. Like our Facebook page Just click the Like button below. And that's it—you're entered to win a spot in our cooking class! The deadline to enter is Wednesday, February 25th. We'll be announcing the winners on the 26th in our newsletter so make sure you're signed up. Please note that the class is will be on Wednesday, March 4th.
Check out the menu for our private course here

City Living

February 18, 2015

Extell’s UWS ‘Poor Door’ Building Now Taking Affordable Housing Applications

Easily 2014's most controversial building, Extell's 40 Riverside Boulevard—a.k.a. the "Poor Door" building, and recently rechristened 50 Riverside Boulevard in light of the scandal—is back in the news, this time for reasons far less unsavory. Starting today, qualified New Yorkers can apply for one of the building's 55 subsidized rentals.
Find out how much units are going for

February 18, 2015

Sony Building Penthouse Will Ask a Record-Breaking $150M

There's a new priciest listing record in town, and it goes to the $150 million triplex penthouse at the Chetrit Group's Sony Building condo conversion, according to The Real Deal. The 21,504-square-foot unit will occupy floors 33 through 35 of the 37-story tower at 550 Madison Avenue and have a private elevator, eight bedrooms, eight bathrooms, and ten powder rooms. If it gets what it's asking for, it will break the record for the current highest condo sale, the $100 million penthouse that sold at One57 last month.
Check out the impressive Sony Tower floorplans here

February 17, 2015

Orlando Bloom Looks to Flip His Tribeca Loft for $5.5M

Maybe Orlando Bloom didn't like having New York's very own welcome ambassador Taylor Swift as a neighbor... because after only eight short months*, he's put his Tribeca loft back on the market. Back in June, Bloom purchased the three-bedroom apartment at the Sugarloaf Warehouse building for $4.88 million, and he's now looking to rake in just under $1 million in profit, re-listing the home for $5.5 million. It was reported over the summer that the actor was drawn to the loft's “cast-iron columns, exposed brick walls, open chef’s kitchen and wood-beamed ceilings,” but clearly that wasn't enough to keep his attention.
See what else Orlando Bloom is giving up

February 17, 2015

Chinatown Loft by Buro Koray Duman Architects Mixes Tenement Details with Bright, Modern Geometry

If you take a look at the exterior of this Chinatown tenement building located across the street from Sarah Roosevelt Park, you might imagine that the apartments inside are typical cramped railroad-style units with the token exposed brick wall as a selling point. But this unit, renovated by Buro Koray Duman Architects, looks like it could be in a swanky Miami hotel or sunny LA condo. When Turkish-born architect Koray Duman bought the residence in 2011, the 750-square-foot corner apartment was a dark, three-bedroom renovation from the 1980s. He and his firm transformed it into a bright, open one-bedroom loft with bold, sculptural architecture and décor.
Tour the home here

Proposed Condo Tower Could Stall Entire South Street Seaport Redevelopment Plan

Rendering of the proposed tower

February 17, 2015

Proposed Condo Tower Could Stall Entire South Street Seaport Redevelopment Plan

Less than a week after it was revealed that the Howard Hughes Corporation paid $31 million for more than 300,000 square feet of air rights at the South Street Seaport, it looks like the entire $1.5 billion redevelopment project could be stalled. The overall plan would breathe new life into the downtown historic district by rehabilitating crumbling piers, preserving and finding new use for landmark buildings and constructing a 42-story waterfront condo tower at the foot of Beekman Street. And it's this last point that has local officials, civic groups, preservationists and some community residents worried or downright angry. The 494-foot-tall, SHoP Architects-designed tower has already been scaled back from its original 650 feet, but concerned parties still feel that the building would "obscure views of the Brooklyn Bridge and clash with the low-scaled, early-19th-century brick buildings that make up the 11-block seaport district, once the center of the city’s maritime industry," according to the New York Times.
More on the debate

February 16, 2015

VIDEO: Katz’s Deli Owner Shares Stories of the Shady LES of 20 Years Ago

By now many of you have probably seen this amazing video showing a changing Lower East Side circa 1995. While plenty of colorful characters and weirdness abound, let's not forget that the area at the time was also one of the city's most unsafe. As part of the new video series called "True Yorkers," Katz's Deli owner Alan Dell reflects on the Lower East Side that once was—well before it transformed into the bar crawl we know today. Sharing his own memories of the neighborhood as a kid, and more poignantly his opinion of what it has become, Dell's recount really makes you think about just how severely pacified and homogenous today's version of New York is. "A lot of people from the neighborhood moved away...I just can't get used to it," Dell says in the episode. "I have customers talking about their million dollar penthouse on Rivington Street—it blows my mind. The Bowery was unsavory, there used to be bums, I don't even know if kids know what a bum is...You know, they call it progress, I'm not really sure about that. It's a mixed bag...15-20 years ago we were closing early. Unless you were coming to buy crack late at night over here, it was not safe...it's just changed. It's just different."
watch the video here

Uncategorized

February 13, 2015

New Yorker Spotlight: Curator Sarah Forbes on the Museum of Sex (It’s Not Exactly What You Think It Is)

By Susan Cohen

If you've walked along lower Fifth Avenue, then the Museum of Sex most certainly has caught your eye; maybe you've even visited it and seen a few of the exhibits curated by Sarah Forbes. Sarah is the museum's sole curator, which means it's her job to conceive and oversee exhibitions on a myriad of topics related to sex. Her goal is the same as the museum's goal: to expand visitors' horizons and to dispel myths and misconceptions that are out there. Beyond educating the public through its oftentimes provocative exhibits, the Museum of Sex is dedicated to sharing information and artwork through its permanent collection of over 15,000 artifacts as well as its research library and media archive. With Valentine's Day approaching, we couldn't think of a better time to chat with Sarah to find out more about New York's relationship with sex, how the museum helps the city understand it differently, and why it's the perfect spot to celebrate the holiday.
Read on for our interview with Sarah

February 13, 2015

Joseph D’Urso-Designed Penthouse in Gramercy Park Asks $3.4M

There’s a gorgeous new penthouse available at 215 East 22nd Street, right in the heart of coveted Gramercy Park. Interior designer Joseph D’Urso went for a minimalist industrial take on this duplex, which is part of the Gramercy Habitat condominium. And with rich wood to add warmth, this lofty $3.35 million condo is a surefire winner.
More pics inside

Distinctive Homes

February 12, 2015

The Meatpacking District: From the Original Farmers’ Market to High-End Fashion Scene

By Penelope Bareau

Why is it called the Meatpacking District when there are only six meat packers there, down from about 250? Inertia, most likely. The area has seen so many different uses over time, and they're so often mercantile ones that Gansevoort Market would probably be a better name for it. Located on the shore of the Hudson River, it's a relatively small district in Manhattan stretching from Gansevoort Street at the foot of the High Line north to and including West 14th Street and from the river three blocks east to Hudson Street. Until its recent life as a go-to high fashion mecca, it was for almost 150 years a working market: dirty, gritty, and blood-stained.
Read the full history here

History

February 12, 2015

Carmelo and LaLa Anthony Score an $11 Million Pad Overlooking the High Line

By Annie Doge

New York Knicks star Carmelo Anthony and wife LaLa have been on the hunt for a Chelsea home since last fall, and after touring countless multi-million dollar homes (like this one and this one) it looks like the pair have settled on a High Line-adjacent condo at Cary Tamarkin’s new 10-story, 15-unit complex at 508 West 24th Street. The Post reports that the hoopster is putting down $11 million for a massive full-floor home.
Check it out here

February 12, 2015

Pier 55 Floating Park Moves Forward with a Lease Deal

Last we heard about Pier55–the 2.4-acre futuristic floating park and performance space proposed by billionaire media mogul Barry Diller that would jut 186 feet into the Hudson at 13th Street–Community Board 2 had mixed feelings about the project. They liked Thomas Heatherwick's design, but cited concern over the lack of transparency from Diller and the Hudson River Park Trust. Despite these feelings, though, we've learned today from the Times that the Trust approved a lease agreement with Pier 55 Inc., a nonprofit group controlled by Diller, to help develop the $130 million public space. Diller has already pledged $113 million toward the project through the Diller-von Furstenberg Family Foundation (his wife is fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg). So, what's next?
What's to come for Pier 55

Architecture And Design

The New Broadway Plan Could Bring 3,000 Housing Units to West Harlem, 50 Percent Will Be Affordable

Broadway and 146th Street, a typical stretch in West Harlem

February 11, 2015

The New Broadway Plan Could Bring 3,000 Housing Units to West Harlem, 50 Percent Will Be Affordable

You may remember the Harlem Promenade project, which proposed transferring air rights over the Amtrak rail lines in West Harlem to create affordable housing and using the sale of the air rights to pay for $170 million in community improvements in Hamilton Heights, including a High Line-esque park. We've now learned that the project has taken on a new life as the New Broadway Plan, which may be smaller in scope than the original plan, but would be the largest creation of affordable housing in Manhattan since 1959 if fully realized. It would also make a huge dent in Mayor De Blasio's goal of creating or preserving 200,000 affordable units over ten years. The Plan proposes a rezoning of portions of Broadway from 125th to 155th Streets in order to build 3,000 new units of housing, 50 percent of which will be permanently affordable, and to equalize the amount of new affordable to market rate housing stock, which is currently at a disproportionate ratio of 20 percent to 80 percent, respectively.
Get the scoop here

February 11, 2015

A New Bjarke Ingels or Rem Koolhaas-Designed Development Could Be Coming to the High Line

The High Line is continuing its trajectory as the destination for the city's most exciting new architecture, and it looks like another starchitect could soon join the already impressive roster of designers making their mark on the area. The New York Post reports that HFZ Capital Group is currently in the works to bring a "monumental" new structure to a lot located next to the elevated park at 76 11th Avenue—a site that spans from 17th to 18th and across 10th to 11th Avenues. Although the parcel is still in contract (expected to close in April), HFZ has reportedly already tapped Bjarke Ingels (BIG) and Rem Koolhaas for initial drawings, which were revealed by the company's head, Ziel Feldman, yesterday at the Young Men’s/Women’s Real Estate Association luncheon. The renderings are said to show "triangular structures that won't block views".
Find out more here

Architecture And Design

February 11, 2015

A Rich (and Potentially Famous) Buyer Snags the Penthouse at 250 West for $29.5 Million

After yoyo-ing on and off the market over the last two years, the penthouse at 250 West has finally found a buyer. City records filed this afternoon reveal that the unit traded hands for $29.5 million, way down from its original $42 million asking price back in 2013. The buyer was shielded under an LLC, but it was previously reported that the penthouse was being marketed to high-profile individuals, celebs amongst them, given its private entrance separate from the door used by the rest of the residents. Leonardo DiCaprio was rumored to be one of the names to have checked out the space—though he eventually purchased a pad at the Delos. With that in mind, we wonder who nabbed this Tribeca deal.
Check out the interiors here

Real Estate Trends

February 10, 2015

New Fly-Through Video of 190 Bowery Gives Us a Peek at How Photographer Jay Maisel Lived