Just Listed: 447 West 45th Street, Unit 7E

447 West 45th Street, Unit 7E

HELL'S KITCHEN, MANHATTAN

1 Bed  |  1 Bath  |  800 SqFt

Offered At $3,800 (No Fee)

Description:

 

Experience sophisticated luxury living inside this over-sized one-bedroom home, on the penthouse floor of a boutique elevator condo building. Apartment 7E has been expertly renovated to perfection – with finishes and attention to detail that far exceed those of most other units in the neighborhood.

Pass through the formal entryway and you are greeted with a bright and spacious living room, perfect for entertaining friends or just relaxing. Beautiful open northern city views and even a skylight complement the warm colors of the home. Off to the side is the large chef’s kitchen, upgraded with top-of-line stainless steel appliances and custom cabinetry. Continue on to the spa-like bathroom and king-sized bedroom, with tree-top views and a large walk-in closet. 

The Clinton Club, at 447 W. 45th Street, is an intimate seven-story building with video intercom system, private park/garden that's exclusive for residents, on-site laundry facility, and prime location on a tree-lined block in the exciting Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood.

What State Offers The Biggest Bang For You Buck? In NY The Relative Value of $100 is $86.51

A $100 in New York State has a real value of just $86.51, according to a report released this week by the Tax Foundation, an independent tax policy research group. And while New Yorkers know the cost of housing here ranks among the highest in the country and drives up the cost of living, everyday goods, including groceries, are also more expensive than most other states.

Somewhat surprisingly, the Empire State does not rank first for least valuable $100 but does fall in the top five. A Benjamin is worth the least in Hawaii ($84.46), D.C. ($86.28), New York ($86.51), California ($87.41) and New Jersey ($88.34).

On the other hand, $100 is worth the most in Mississippi ($115.74), Alabama ($115.47), Arkansas ($115.07), West Virginia ($114.16) and Kentucky ($113.90).

The group found that “real purchasing power” (the number of goods one unit of money can buy) is 34 percent greater in Mississippi than in New York. This means, if you have $50,000 after-tax income in MS, to afford the same standard of living in New York, you would need $67,000 in earnings after taxes.

But this makes sense, as states with higher incomes typically have higher price levels. Unless you look at North Dakota, where residents enjoy higher than normal incomes without the high prices. Is the bigger bang for a buck worth the move?

Even With The Current Rental Market Battery Park City Is Still The Most Expensive Zip Code In The U.S. To Rent In

Despite a year-over-year decrease in its average rent, Battery Park City ranks as the most expensive zip code for renters in the United States, according to a RentCafe report. In 2017, the average rent in this downtown neighborhood was roughly $6,000/month. And while it experienced a nearly two percent decrease this year, with average rent falling to $5,657/month, Battery Park City is still the not-so-winning winner. Not surprising but still bleak, 26 out of the 50 zip codes with the most expensive average rents in the U.S. are located in Manhattan.

Tribeca comes in second place for most costly rent at $5,226/month, an impressive year-over-year increase of 10.6 percent. Falling back from last year to spots four and five on the list include the Upper East Side ($4,856/month) and Upper West Side ($4,816/month).

Other pricey neighborhoods in the borough include Harlem, the Lower East Side, the Meatpacking District, and Chelsea. The only other NYC borough to make the top 50 list is Brooklyn, with its Brooklyn Heights neighborhood ranking 38th with rent at $3,702/month on average.

While Manhattan zip codes take up eight out of the top 10 spots on the list, the 90024 zip code in Los Angeles ranks third ($4,883/month) and San Francisco ranks sixth ($4,666/month).

RentCafe’s study, along with data from Yardi Matrix, collected apartment rent averages for every state and zip code in 130 U.S. markets, analyzing roughly 15 million apartment units.

See the full list from RentCafe here.

Meryl Streep Lists TriBeCa Penthouse for $25M

If we had to guess what Meryl Streep’s home looked like, our description would be pretty close to the serene interiors of her Tribeca penthouse, which she’s just listed for $24.6 million. According to Curbed, the three-time Academy Award-winner and her husband, Donald Gummer, bought the four-bedroom apartment in 2006 for $10 million, and they’ve now decided to sell it after buying a mid-century-modern home in Pasadena last December. Though Streep has designed the interiors impeccably, with a laid-back coastal vibe and contemporary art collection, what really sets this residence apart is the 10-foot-wide landscaped terrace that wraps around three sides of the penthouse. A secured elevator leads into a private vestibule and then to the sky-lit gallery. The open living/dining room is surrounded by floor-to-ceiling windows. A modern wood-burning fireplace separates this entertaining space from a cozier library. Adjacent to the dining room is the super high-end and sleek kitchen. And off the kitchen is an office/den. The master suite has two separate baths, separate dressing areas, and a sitting area. The second bedroom also has an ensuite, while the third and fourth bedrooms share a bath. Before buying the Tribeca pad, Streep lived in a historic Greenwich Village townhouse that she’d purchased for $9 million in 2004. Last summer, her daughter, Mamie Gummer, also listed her NYC apartment, a $1.8 million two-bedroom co-op in Chelsea.

NYT Press: Battery Park City: A Resort-Like Community Built on Landfill

Battery Park City: A Resort-Like Community Built on Landfill

The cost of living may be slightly higher in this landfill neighborhood than elsewhere in Manhattan, but many residents say the benefits outweigh the costs.

By Aileen Jacobson     Aug. 15, 2018

Once a landfill and a set of dilapidated piers, Battery Park City has grown during its 50-year history into a vibrant community that one resident recently likened to a resort or a cruise ship, and others to a bucolic suburb.

“It seems like everyone knows everybody,” said Glenn Plaskin, a journalist and author in his 60s who moved into Gateway Plaza, the neighborhood’s first residential complex, 33 years ago. He was looking for an apartment with light, a water view and low rent, he said, when a real estate agent suggested “this place way downtown, where nobody wants to live.”

His first thought when he arrived was, “Where am I?” he said. “It seemed like the middle of nowhere. Being here was like living on a houseboat.”

The area had few amenities or inhabitants at the time, but that has changed dramatically in the years since, in spite of the devastation caused by the attack on the nearby World Trade Center in 2001. These days, the neighborhood is bursting with stores, restaurants, parks and activities,” Mr. Plaskin said. “It’s just booming.”

The resort and cruise-ship analogies are more apt now: “This neighborhood has become affluent,” he said. “There are only pockets of affordability,” including apartments like his, which is rent-stabilized.

“I always say it’s a little bit like cheating to say we live in Manhattan,” said Martha Gallo, who arrived 35 years ago, after her father noticed the waterside community from his hotel window. “It’s more like a suburb. The parks are kept in glorious condition, and it’s well maintained. The streets are clean and there is no graffiti.”

Ms. Gallo, 61, an executive vice president at AIG insurance company and a board member of the Battery Park City Authority, which manages the community, married Chuck Kerner, an investment banker, six years after moving to the area. For $650,000, they bought a two-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bathroom duplex penthouse with a terrace and a fireplace, where they raised two daughters, now 20 and 15. When the children were younger, she said, they belonged to a local sailing club, participated in an annual catch-and-release family fishing day and other free events in the parks, and often visited a duck pond and a park filled with whimsical sculptures by Tom Otterness.

Joanne Hughes, 48, and her husband, Paul Hughes, 50, who works in investment trust at a real estate company, moved to the neighborhood in 2005 because they thought it would be “a good place to raise a family,” she said. They now have two teenage sons and a 5-year-old daughter.

They rented for the first year “to get the feel of the neighborhood,” Ms. Hughes said. “We loved it. Everybody was very friendly.” So they bought a two-bedroom apartment, and when that home started to feel “too tight,” they found a larger place in the neighborhood: a three-bedroom, three-bathroom unit on the 35th floor of a building with views of the Statue of Liberty, for which they paid $3 million.

“The public schools are excellent, and the air is fresh,” said Ms. Hughes, whose sons play soccer in neighborhood fields and walk to the local movie theater. The family eats at restaurants in the sprawling Brookfield Place (formerly known as the World Financial Center) or order pizza from a cafe in their building.

“We have people from all over the world living here,” she said. “The only thing we’re missing is a beach. If we had a beach, I’d never leave.”

What You’ll Find

Battery Park City’s eastern boundary is West Street, and the rest of the neighborhood, from Chambers Street to the Battery, is bounded by the Hudson River. An esplanade wraps around most of the waterfront.

The original plan was to create a 92-acre landfill — mostly with fill excavated during the construction of the World Trade Center — in an area that had been fringed by dilapidated piers, and build a mix of commercial, retail and residential buildings nestled among parks, which now cover 36 acres. In 1968, the Battery Park City Authority was created by the New York State Legislature to manage the area’s development, and by 1980, the first residences were under construction. In 2008, the City of New York leased Pier A and Pier A Plaza, on the southern end, to the Authority, so they are now part of Battery Park City, too. Today there are 30 residential buildings, and no new construction is planned.

“The neighborhood has been developed, and now we have a responsibility to maintain it,” said B.J. Jones, the authority’s president and chief executive. Some of that, he said, involves preventive work on the sea wall and underwater piles that hold the area in place. The authority also has its own security force and a conservancy branch that keeps the area clean.

Free activities — of which there are about 1,000 each year — are expanding, too, Mr. Jones said: “We are investing in diverse programming to make the community welcoming to everyone.”

A major transformation occurred in 2015, when the World Financial Center, a hub for financial services firms, became Brookfield Place, with a greater variety of businesses in its five office towers, and a retail area — a suburban-style mall — comprising 40 high-end stores and six restaurants, including Le District, a French food hall and market. The complex faces the North Cove Yacht Harbor, a particularly lively spot.

What You’ll Pay

Andrew Klima of COMPASS

Monthly costs may be slightly higher than in other areas of the city because of the fees the authority charges, “but a lot of people feel that is a cost they are willing to pay for what they get: the beautiful neighborhood,” said Andrew Klima, a Compass agent. The average sale price of a one-bedrooms in 2013 was $665,475, he said. In 2017 it was $814,278, and this year, through July, it was $865,170.

Several buildings that started as rentals have been converted to condominiums in recent years, said Jessica Weitzman, a Corcoran agent who lives in a condo built in 2006. The Solaire, completed in 2003, is scheduled to convert to condos next year.

On Aug. 9, there were 120 apartments listed for sale on StreetEasy, ranging from $550,000 for a one-bedroom, one-bathroom condo on South End Avenue to $10.995 million for a four-bedroom, five-bathroom penthouse on West Street. Of 129 rentals, the cheapest was $2,900 for a studio on South End Avenue and the priciest, $35,000, was for the four-bedroom West Street penthouse that was also for sale.

The Vibe

Although the area attracts tourists, many residents find it a quiet retreat. “It’s off the grid a bit,” said Dan Cahill, 37, an asset manager who moved into the neighborhood in 2012 with his wife, Alexandra Cahill, 34, a teacher.

He was attracted by the open spaces where he could run or bicycle, he said, and later discovered, after having children, that “the area is also extremely kid-friendly.” Restaurants are welcoming, he said, often supplying crayons, and activities abound.

Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller Park, at the northern end of the neighborhood, is a gathering spot for parents with strollers. Teardrop Park has a water play area and a long slide that ends in a sand pit. Another playground has a house where children may borrow games and toys. Stuyvesant High School, at the northern end, allows residents to pay discounted fees to use its pool, gym and other areas during nonschool hours. (Residents get no advantage, however, in qualifying for the specialized public school.)

Cultural spots include the Museum of Jewish Heritage: A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, on the southern end, in Robert F. Wagner Jr. Park, and the Skyscraper Museum across the street. The Irish Hunger Memorial commemorates the 19th-centruy potato famine with stones from each of Ireland’s 32 counties. Poets House, home to a national archive of 70,000 volumes of poetry, sponsors readings and other programs.

“There’s a waiting list” for plots at the community garden at Albany and West Streets, said Anthony Notaro, who described working on his small plot, for which he pays $20 a year, as one of his favorite activities. Mr. Notaro, 57, who works for a software firm from his apartment, which he bought in 1996, is chairman of Community Board 1, covering the area south of Canal Street.

Karlene Weise, president of the Gateway Plaza Tenants Association, participates in musical events, she said, but sometimes after she returns from her job as a document specialist at J.P. Morgan, she prefers to sit on the esplanade: “I just look at the water and the Statue of Liberty, and after a few minutes, I’m better.”

The Schools

M276, Battery Park City School, in the southern part of the neighborhood, has 802 students in kindergarten through eighth grade. According to the 2016-2017 School Quality Snapshot, 75 percent met state standards in English, compared to 41 percent citywide; 72 percent met state math standards, compared to 38 percent citywide.

At P.S. 89, Liberty School, there are 420 students enrolled in prekindergarten through fifth grade; last year, 79 percent met state standards in English, versus 40 percent citywide, and 85 percent met state math standards, versus 42 percent citywide.

The school shares a building with I.S. 289, Hudson River Middle School, which has 279 students in sixth through eighth grades. It is a screened school, accepting students based on a variety of academic criteria, and only residents of District 2, of which Battery Park City is a part, can apply. On state tests last year, 69 percent met standards in English, compared to 41 percent citywide, and 65 percent met state standards in math, compared to 33 percent citywide.

The Commute

Among the trains that make stops a few blocks east of West Street are the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, A, C, E, J, R and Z trains. The M9, M20 and M22 buses and a free shuttle bus operated by the Downtown Alliance also make stops in the neighborhood. A new pedestrian underpass starts in the Winter Garden Atrium at Brookfield Place and leads to the Oculus, the mall and transportation hub, designed by Santiago Calatrava, where most of these lines, and the PATH system, converge.

The History

After Sept. 11, 2001, when much of the area was damaged and many people were evacuated, about half the residents left for good. Since then, the community has rebounded and grown to about 16,000 residents, 2,000 more than was predicted a decade ago.

Report Shows Subway Platform Temperatures of OVER 104 Degrees

Are subway platforms really as hot as the inside of a rotisserie, or does it just seem that way? On Thursday, August 9, 2018, the Regional Plan Association (RPA) sent out an intrepid task force of staff and interns to measure the temperature in the city’s ten busiest subway stations. The temperature outside was 86 degrees. The data they collected helped to inform a report titled, “Save Our Subways: A Plan To Transform New York City’s Rapid Transit System.”

Above ground high temperature (above ground): 86 degrees
Highest temperature recorded on a platform: 104 degrees (14-Street Union Square
Downtown 4/5/6 Platform)
Average temperature recorded on platforms: 94.6 degrees

The oppressive heat in underground subway stations isn’t just a nuisance, it poses a serious health risk–for subway workers as well as paying customers. According to the NYC Health Department, “A heat index above 95°F is especially dangerous for older adults and other vulnerable individuals.” The city issues a heat advisory when the heat index is expected to reach 95 to 99 degrees for two or more consecutive days, or 100 to 104 degrees for an time at all.

According to a 2015 Academy of Sciences report, the average temperature in New York City has increased by 3.4 degrees between 1900 and 2013. It’s definitely time to turn down the heat on subway platforms. The RPA report suggests several ways the MTA could leverage modern technology like regenerative braking and CBCT–which they are already in the process of installing–to cool off subway platforms by reducing the heat generated by trains.

Just Listed - 225 East 74th Street, Unit 6F

225 East 74th Street, Unit 6F

UPPER EAST SIDE, MANHATTAN

2 Bed  |  1 Bath  |  Co-op  |  24-Hour Doorman

Offered At $1,035,000

 

Wrapped windows to the south and west, this easily convertible two bedroom and one bathroom home offers phenomenal sunlight, ample storage and an open layout in a gorgeous Lenox Hill co-op.

Top-floor serenity and open-sky views make a fantastic first impression in this loft-like corner home. The oversized foyer is surrounded by huge closets, built-ins and a perfect home office nook, nodding to the storage and convenience to be found throughout.

Step down into the spacious living room featuring maple floors, 9-foot ceilings and a long, exposed brick wall — the perfect backdrop for art. The sunny corner dining room provides a great flow for entertaining or the ideal opportunity to add a second bedroom, as needs require. Bright and spacious, the open kitchen is the perfect retreat for cooks who love to spread out during their culinary adventures. Abundant cabinetry and long granite countertops deliver plenty of prep and storage space, and the fleet of stainless steel appliances includes a gas range, dishwasher and built-in microwave. Painted brick, handsome tile backsplash and stone floors add a chic mixed-materials design statement. Head to the palatial bedroom to find plenty of space for a king-size bedroom and sitting area, while the adjacent and newly renovated bathroom boasts lovely marble and modern fixtures.

Set on a quintessential tree-lined Lenox Hill block, 225 East 74th Street is a lovely Art Deco prewar co-op offering full time doorman and live-in resident manager. Residents of the pet-friendly, elevator building enjoy a landscaped courtyard, central laundry, bike room and storage, plus generous co-op rules that allow co-purchases, parents buying for children and pieds-à-terre. Set between Second and Third avenues, the dining, entertainment and conveniences the Upper East Side is known for surround the home, and thanks to its location directly between Central Park and the East River, great open space is minutes away. Transportation is effortless with both the Q and 6 train within blocks.

* Currently/legally configured as a one-bedroom.

The Monthly Update - August 2018

Is The Tail Wagging The Dog?

 

  • 4.1% GDP

  • 25,000+ DOW

  • 3.9% Unemployment rate

  • Deregulation in full swing

Then why this from Bloomberg? Why Manhattan Home Prices Are Sliding

And this from StreetEasy? Most Price Cut Since 2010

Sellers have been feeling the pitch since 2016, but two years later — after much fanfare in the aforementioned stats — the housing market is finally getting its chance to wag. In Q2 2018, what agents have been feeling and whispering about for the past 30 months was finally being reported, namely that there are big changes coming. What, when and how those changes will materialize still remains a mystery, but the are on the horizon.

With so much uncertainty in the market, can buyers purchase with confidence and can sellers sell without losing everything?

Buyers can move forward with confidence because they are buying shelter — a necessity, a home, as well as an asset and investment. Sellers can be confident if they get realistic. If there’s equity in the property, it might be less than before, but if they price wisely with current market in mind, do the necessary prep work prior to listing and have expectations that are based in today’s reality, the market can be extremely generous.

The team at Compass has compiled the borough's most notable data of the past quarter—take a look right here.

  • Compass real estate brokerage disrupts with high-tech, smart 'for sale' sign  Read More
  • Compass Philadelphia is open, and 15 additional new offices coming soon. soon! #CompassEverywhere
  • Who’s Disrupting Brokerage? A Breakdown By The Numbers. Read More

Don't Miss Out!

Summer Restaurant Week

July 23 - August 17, 2018

Love a three-course meal but hate the price? From July 23-August 17, take advantage of lunch or dinner specials at 300 of the city's top restaurants during NYC Restaurant Week. For more information, click here.

Summer Streets

August Saturdays 7am - 1pm

Grab your bike - Summer Streets returns this month, turning Park Avenue into a car-free pedestrian path on three August Saturdays from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. You can find out more about the program, which features activities, food stands, and more, in this article.

Lincoln Center - Out of Doors
August 1 - 12, 2018

Art goes outside with Lincoln Center's Out of Doors program, bringing three weeks of world-class music, dance, and spoken word to the plaza for the public to enjoy. Check out the schedule here. 

416 West 52nd Street, Unit 308

432 West 52nd Street, Unit 308

HELL'S KITCHEN, MANHATTAN

1 Bed  |  1 Bath

Offered At $945,000

Taxes: $842/ mo.  |  CC:$438/ mo.  |  New Development  |  24hr Doorman  |  Roof Deck & Gym

This modern and stylish one bedroom home features luxury condo finishes, central air-conditioning and an integrated chef’s kitchen, in a boutique full-service building with a sprawling fully-landscaped roof deck. Filled with natural light and extremely quiet. Stained white oak flooring and 9-foot ceilings compliment the home’s contemporary style. Three large closets offer plenty of storage space, and an eat-in kitchen with full size 4-burner oven and beautiful Caesarstone countertops will please serious cooks and Seamless users alike. The modern bathroom features premium Kohler and Toto fixtures, a walk-in glass shower and radiant heat flooring. Oversized energy-efficient windows and an in-unit washer-dryer provide the ultimate in comfort and convenience. 

Building amenities include full-time doorman, a state-of-the-art fitness center, yoga room, resident’s lounge, bicycle room, business center, cold storage and temperature controlled wine cellar. The buildings staff is wonderful and you are within walking distance of Central Park, Times Square and almost every major subway line. 416 W. 52nd is located on a wonderful tree-lined block in the exciting Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood.

Compass Reinvents The Real Estate Sign

The final prototype, in the shape of a magnifying glass, stands tall in a 10th-floor conference room at real estate startup Compass, emitting a gentle glow from the inner rim of its ringed frame. At first glance, the matte-black material and minimalist shape would appear destined for a patio, or inside a home. In fact, if it weren’t for the real estate agent contact information in the center of the glowing ring, it would be hard to call this a “for sale” sign. But that is exactly its purpose: to broadcast to buyers that a home is on the market, and, thanks to embedded technology, to give them access to a far richer set of information than a standard printed sign can contain.

In the presence of this final prototype, after months of development, Matt Spangler, Compass chief creative officer, can barely contain his excitement. In jeans and a denim shirt, he detaches the ring from its base, to show how they connect. “The whole thing is modular,” he says. “This piece right here—this slides out.” With the click of a button, he animates the LED lights, which cascade down the sides of the ring. Turning the sign around, he demonstrates how to detach the printed piece in the center, using subtle tabs. In the future, if cost allows, he envisions a fully digital version that agents can update in real time. Right now, Compass’s mobile development team is making plans for an augmented reality iteration.

“Say it was just a plot of land—you could see a house modeled on the land, you could change the color of the house with paint, you could see all the neighborhood data, you could see restaurants that are recommended,” Spangler says, painting the vision.

BRINGING NEW TECHNOLOGY TO A HIDEBOUND INDUSTRY

In other sectors, the merging of digital and physical worlds is well underway. We wear devices that monitor our steps and our sleep, we shop while in-store sensors track our movements, and we manage our homes using Silicon Valley-designed thermostats and security cameras. But when it comes to buying a home, technology is limited to online aggregators, like Zillow, that replicate the functionality of old-fashioned classified ads. Compass, which raised $450 million from the Softbank Vision Fund in December at a $2.2 billion valuation, has until now focused on becoming, in the words of CEO Robert Reffkin, “the largest owner of real estate data, globally, and the number-one real estate technology company in the world.” The company’s reimagined “for sale” sign speaks to a growing recognition that real estate’s most valuable data originates in the real world.

Of course, for many Americans today, the idea of buying a home is as fantastical as using AR to “paint” a home’s exterior. Prices have skyrocketed in many of the cities where Compass operates, while middle class wages have remained stagnant. But for Compass, those rising prices present an opportunity to own the cutthroat top of the market. The company has poached talent capable of annual sales in the eight digits from competitors including Corcoran Group and Douglas Elliman.

Compass agents sell trophy properties and are willing to invest in trophy-worthy tools, or so the thinking goes. The startup expects that its 4,100 agents will snap up the first run of signs; each one will cost roughly $1,000 and ship October 1. (As long as agents charge the batteries, signs can, in theory, last for years.) During feedback sessions, Compass says, over 90% of agents expressed interest in buying one.

“The first thing I want to see is agents happy because sellers are saying, ‘That made my house stand out,'” says Compass COO Maëlle Gavet. Plus, she adds, the technology will make it easier for agents to manage their sign inventory. “‘I know where my signs are, I know if one of them needs to be recharged.’ In the future, ‘I don’t need to go to the sign to change the wording.'”

As an added incentive for agents to place an order, Compass has negotiated a deal with Waze that will showcase sign locations within the Waze app, encouraging prospective buyers to drive by or attend an open house.

“You could imagine a world in which you decide as a consumer that you’re looking for these types of properties, and a map starts creating a route, and it knows which ones have an open house,” Gavet says. “It’s a bit of a dream, but this is what I find really exciting—you start connecting the digital world and the physical world, and that makes the life of the consumer hopefully a little better.”

A NEW VISION FOR A NEW ERA OF HOUSING

The last time that the “for sale” sign went through a major transformation was decades ago, during the post-World War II suburban boom. My own grandfather, Bill Oakley, was on the vanguard of the new trends. Around 1970, he left the Chicago-based printing company where he worked to strike out on his own with a new kind of real estate signage. At the time, two types of “for sale” signs dominated: sandwich-board styles and rectangular styles affixed to a central metal post. Using newer, lighter materials, Oakley created an L-shaped frame, with a hinge affixed to the horizontal bar at top. The design allowed real estate agents to easily swap in different prints, as needed. His first client was the real estate arm of Better Homes and Gardens.

During Oakley Signs and Graphic’s early years, buying a home in the U.S. was both affordable and desirable. In 1983, the year I was born, roughly two-thirds of Americans owned a home, up from a low-point of 44% in 1940. But these days, buying a home is increasingly out of reachfor many Americans. Homeownership rates have been in decline since the Great Recession, when banks pulled back their mortgage lending. In high-demand markets like New York and San Francisco, average home prices top $1 million.

Enter Compass, which assumes that “luxury” is the new normal in residential real estate. The startup has prioritized recruiting agents in wealthy enclaves like Aspen and the Hamptons, and in markets like Chicago has won listings such as a $50 million, 25,000-square-foot urban mansion (“grand in every way, but not overwhelming,” the description reads). For such properties, the company believes, a regular-old “for sale” sign just doesn’t strike the right note with wealthy clientele.

 

 

THE QUEST FOR SMART AND ICONIC SIGNAGE

Compass’s attempt to reinvent real estate signage kicked off last November at the offices of Aruliden, a branding and design firm hired by Spangler. Dozens of sketches line the walls of a conference room in New York’s Flatiron neighborhood, many showing variations on a circle attached to a narrow pole. As mood-board inspiration, the Aruliden team has printed out images of glowing round lights in minimalist living rooms. The goal, in a sense, is to create an exterior sign as elegant as a piece of modern furniture.

Johan Liden, Aruliden cofounder and chief creative officer, leads the presentation, which focuses on the team’s initial research and discovery. “This is a category that hasn’t changed in a long time,” Liden says. As a result, there’s an opportunity for Compass to create a sign that is both “smart” (i.e., tech-enabled) and “iconic.” He points to examples of branded hardware that bridge the physical and digital worlds—Lyft’s dashboard lights, for instance, or Disney’s Magic Band. “You should be able to remove the Compass logo and know that this is a Compass sign,” he says, as heads nod.

Several weeks later, Spangler has had a chance to ruminate on the design options and the sign’s ever-expanding function. “I want to challenge everyone to imagine a world in which the sign is a smart-home hub,” he says. “It’s sending information about air quality and noise pollution, it’s helping open doors for tours, it’s giving you the tour, and then it’s providing actual value to the agent, the buyer, and the seller.” The way that we live is changing, and Spangler wants Compass to be ready for a world in which home “ownership” is more flexible. “More homes are going to be Airbnb-style homes and rentals, mobility will be greater than ever. How can we be at that hub with the other technology players?”

He is conscious of the practical considerations. “To me the toughest challenge is how far can we push the technology today to get it done on a reasonable time frame, with a reasonable cost, to provide a real wow factor and real functionality. We want to get there. Can we get there today?”

GETTING THE LITTLE THINGS RIGHT

In February, that challenge comes into focus during a meeting at Compass headquarters attended by Aruliden and a newly hired team of hardware contractors from Intelligent Product Solutions (IPS). Questions begin to fly, as the contractors review the preliminary designs. Who can use the data? When and how? What about battery life?

“I don’t see a need of live-streaming this data anytime soon,” says Compass CTO Liming Zhao (Zhao left Compass in March to start his own company). But he wants to prioritize gathering data points—like foot traffic, noise, and light—that could improve Compass’s valuation tools, part of the startup’s suite of agent software. “Are there other reasons this home is more attractive?” With the right sensors, his team could bring new insight to one of real estate’s most important questions.

Moving on, the group discusses motion sensors, and whether they make sense in dense, urban settings. They also consider adding red and green lights, to convey that a home is sold or still available. But members of the Aruliden team are skeptical about more complex signals and messaging. “How often do you buy a house?” one says. “A red or green light won’t mean anything to you.”

As the meeting draws to a close, the group agrees to reconvene when the hardware vendor can provide estimates on timing and cost.

By April, there is finally a prototype. It’s a slender pole topped with a circle, around five feet tall. In the center, there is sample text: “Townhouse for sale,” the sign reads, followed by a broker name, contact details, and “Compass.” At the base of the ring, there is now a QR code, which will prompt passersby to download the Compass app.

The meeting begins as Aruliden presents options for animating the LEDs. Should the sign turn on automatically at night? If so, how bright? During the day, what should happen when a person approaches and passes with a 10-foot radius? Six feet? Three feet?

One attendee raises the question of riders, the printed add-ons that agents often use to augment their standard signs. Liden, Aruliden’s CCO, would like to convince agents to embrace the sign’s minimalism. “Could the rider information live more in the phone?” he asks.

The Compass team is hesitant. “We need to test with agents.” Many agents, they believe, will be resistant.

IPS takes the stage, and immediately the idea of using sensors to trigger light animations becomes more complicated. The current plan calls for two sensors, but that will create “blind spots.” Adding a third sensor will affect battery life. “It’s the one thing we can’t turn off,” says one IPS engineer.

“There are obviously going to be scenarios where it will not engage,” Liden acknowledges. “But what is acceptable, as a percentage?” He and the team have envisioned a scenario in which an interested buyer walks by the sign, which activates the LED animation, which serves to draw attention to the QR code, which leads the buyer to information about the property. “This is key for the sign to do what we want it to do.” If the sensors don’t initiate that sequence, then the agent has lost a chance to connect.

In the end, the final prototype contains just two sensor boards, each with the capability to detect proximity and ambient light. In addition, there is a circuit board that contains a micro-controller, a Bluetooth Low Energy module, an accelerometer, and a temperature sensor. Through the Compass app, agents will be able to select from a variety of light animations and monitor battery life.

“It’s a connected ecosystem of devices, with hardware and software and data,” Spangler says. “Which is really the power of Compass—the integration between all those things.”

THE NEXT STEPS

Now, the company will have to convince agents of that ecosystem’s value and sweet-talk municipalities with stringent rules governing signs. (Some towns in the Hamptons, for instance, tightly restrict the size and color of signs, as well as the use of light.) Spangler, Gavet, and Reffkin are also eyeing other opportunities to build for the physical world. “We’re having the same conversation around [real estate office] windows—we think we can do better,” Gavet says. “We want to be different, we want to look different.” The opportunity, she believes, lies in connecting physical places to digital marketing strategies. “Real estate is where e-commerce was 10 years ago.” But the window redesign is a project for another day.

70 Little West Street, Unit 10M

70 Little West Street, Unit 10M

BATTERY PARK CITY, MANHATTAN

3 Bed  |  2.5 Bath  |  Condo  |  Doorman | Roof Deck

Offered At $2,750,000

 

Currently tenant occupied till June 2019. Tenants are currently paying $11,575 per month and a CAP rate of 2.99%.

Combining Battery Park City's residential serenity with chic downtown accessibility, this loft-like three-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bathroom home is the perfect city retreat in a full-service, luxury condo building.

Wrapped in extra-tall windows to the south and east, every room of this 1,689-square-foot stunner is flooded with sunlight and glorious views of The Battery, New York Harbor and FiDi skyline. Flawless hardwood floors, 11-foot ceilings and soaring columns add to the sense of style and scale. The gracious entry, flanked by a coat closet and powder room, leads you to the breathtaking corner great room where spectacular living and dining areas are generously sized. The open kitchen is a vision in granite counters and top-of-the-line stainless-steel appliances. 

Spacious bedrooms are tucked down a private hallway for maximum privacy. The impeccable master suite offers two large California closets — one a walk-in — and a serene en suite marble bathroom with dual-sink vanity, soaking tub and separate shower. The two additional bedrooms share an equally well-appointed full-bathroom, and the in-unit washer-dryer makes laundry day a breeze. No detail was overlooked in this home's updates and features. A built-in fireplace provides a warm focal point, triple-glazed windows make bedrooms supremely comfortable, and automatic blinds run throughout this beautiful Battery Park City home.

The Visionaire is a stunning glass and terra cotta tower from the esteemed architects Pelli Clarke Pelli. Residents of the LEED-certified building enjoy a full suite of premier, white-glove amenities, including 24-hour doorman and concierge service, 24-hour valet parking garage and bike storage, an enormous fitness center, an indoor lap pool and sauna, a children’s playroom overlooking a 12-foot aquarium, a fully stocked residents’ lounge and one of the best roof decks in the entire city.

Located in the most tranquil section of Battery Park City, this world-class building is surrounded by the sprawling green space and recreation of The Battery just two blocks away. The upscale grocery, Battery Place Market, is just downstairs, and the fantastic shopping and dining of Westfield World Trade Center and Brookfield Place are moments away. Public transportation is excellent with 1, R/W, 4/5 and J/Z trains within easy reach.

Fun Fact: 25% Of The World's Gold Is In A Vaults Under Wall Street

Eighty feet below the streets of lower Manhattan, a Federal Reserve vault protected by armed guards contains about 6,200 tons of gold.

Or doesn’t.

The Fed tells visitors its basement vault holds the world’s biggest official gold stash and values it at $240 billion to $260 billion.

But “no one at all can be sure the gold is really there except Fed employees with access,” said Ronan Manly, a precious-metals analyst at gold dealer BullionStar in Singapore. If it is all there, he said, the central bank has “never in its history provided any proof.”

Mr. Manly is among gold aficionados who wonder if the bank is hiding something about what it’s hiding.

Other theorists suspect the gold beneath the New York Fed’s headquarters at 33 Liberty St. may be gold-plated fakes. Some conspiracy-minded investors think the Fed has been secretly leasing out the gold to manipulate prices.

“There has to have been a central bank spewing their gold into the market,” said John Embry, an investment strategist for Sprott Asset Management in Toronto until 2014 who once managed its gold fund.

“The gold price didn’t act right” during the time he was watching it and the likely explanation for the movement was Fed action, said Mr. Embry.

Fed officials have heard theories about their gold holdings for many years and don’t think much of them. After this article was published, a Fed spokeswoman said the Fed doesn’t own any of the gold housed at the New York Fed, which “does not use it in any way for any purposes including loaning or leasing it out.”

The Fed has been selective in giving details about the contents of the vault and in the past has said it can’t comment on individual customer accounts due to confidentiality agreements.

Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan said in a July interview: “When you deposit your funds in a bank, should that bank make your account balances available to whomever asks?”

Seeking a better glimpse inside the vault and at Fed procedures and records, The Wall Street Journal filed Freedom-of-Information requests with the New York Fed. Among the Journal’s findings, from a heavily redacted tour-guide manual provided by the Fed: Tour guides are informed that “visitors are excitable” and should be asked to “please keep their voices down.”

Three Fed staffers must be present when gold is moved or a compartment opened, even to change a lightbulb, and no attempts have been made to break in, documents state.

New York Fed President William Dudley told a March gathering in Queens, N.Y., that the fictional raid by drilling through from a subway tunnel in the 1995 movie “Die Hard With a Vengeance” was far-fetched.

The Fed gives some information about the vault on a website and offers tours. A guide on one tour gave some details: Inside is enough oxygen for a person to survive 72 hours, should someone get trapped; custodians wear magnesium shoe covers to help prevent injuries, should they drop 27-pound bars; the Fed charges $1.75 a bar to move gold but nothing to store it; most of the gold is owned by foreign governments.

Along with the foreign gold, the Fed’s Manhattan vault holds about 5% of America’s roughly $11 billion in gold reserves and coin, valued at the statutory rate of $42.22 per fine troy ounce, according to the U.S. Mint. The U.S. government keeps the rest in Denver, Fort Knox, Ky., and West Point, N.Y.

Elaborate theories build on what the Fed doesn’t say about goings-on in its vault’s 122 compartments.

It doesn’t report when bars enter or leave and doesn’t let in outsiders—other than auditors and account holders—to count the bars or review records.

Visitors on vault tours see only a display sample and can’t verify bars up close.

“All you see is the front row of gold bars,” said James Turk, co-founder of Goldmoney, a gold custodian. “There’s no way of knowing how deep the chamber is or how many rows there are.”

Mr. Turk, based in London, believes much of the gold has been “hypothecated,” or lent out to other parties, and then rehypothecated, or lent to multiple parties at once. In doing so, he says, “central banks actually own less gold than people believe.”

Some gold bugs—investors bullish on the yellow metal—think the Fed secretly lends it out to suppress prices, partly to protect the dollar’s value. In theory, the Fed can feed gold into the market through swaps with other countries.

James McShirley, who owns Sulphur Lumber in Sulphur Springs, Ind., and has traded gold, believes investment banks, probably as agents for the Fed, act to lower prices when gold futures gain 1%. “It’s totally logical that in addition to maintaining artificially low interest rates,” he said, “it would be imperative to keep gold suppressed as an inflationary barometer.”

Then there’s the purity question. Mr. Turk said there are “questions in gold circles as to what’s in an actual bar.” One theory, he said: They could be gold-plated tungsten, which would weigh almost the same.

“I think the gold they have there is real gold,” he said, “but until you do random sampling you don’t know for certain.”

In a 2012 audit of U.S. gold at the Fed’s vault, the U.S. Mint and the Treasury’s Office of Inspector General sent 367 samples to an independent lab for testing. All but three samples came back within 0.13% of the purity recorded by the government, within standard industry tolerance, according to the Mint and Treasury.

Since then, annual government audits of the Fed’s vault have inspected only the locks and joint seals on the compartments to check they haven’t been tampered with, a Mint spokesman said.

That isn’t enough, said Peter Boehringer, founder of the German Precious Metals Society. The problem, he said, is the “complete lack of a transparent, full, independent, external audit in the Fed´s vaults by a sworn-in auditor.”

New legislation, nicknamed the “Audit the Fed” bill, could allow the Government Accountability Office to audit the Fed’s vault, said a spokesman for the bill’s Senate sponsor, Rand Paul (R., Ky.). GAO lawyers wouldn’t speculate on the bill’s reach. Mr. Paul’s spokesman said the Senator has arranged a personal visit to Fort Knox this fall.

Former U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, the senator’s father, has been outspoken about what he says is taxpayers’ need for more transparency about gold from the Fed. “Even if you could walk into that vault and see a lot of gold, you wouldn’t know…whether it’s been loaned out or sold,” he said. “They haven’t convinced me that we have total control of it.”

Fun Fact: NYC Was The US Capital In 1789

In January 1785, the Congress of Confederation convened in New York’s old City Hall on Wall Street, and for more than five years Gotham served as the seat of American power. After the ratification of the United States Constitution, delegates met briefly at Fraunces Tavern as the old City Hall was remodeled to become the first capitol building for the new national government. On the second-floor balcony of the newly renamed Federal Hall, Washington took the oath of office as the first President of the United States on April 30, 1789. A statue of Washington overlooking Wall Street now stands outside a reconstruction of Federal Hall.

Price of Manhattan Apartments Drops For The Fourth Straight Quarter

According to this week’s market reports, the median price for a Manhattan apartment dropped for the fourth straight quarter and U.S. construction spending reached a record high in May.

Residential

The average sales price in Manhattan dropped 4.3 percent to $2.2 million in the four weeks leading up to June 1. The slight drop coincided with an increase in recorded sales. During the period, the number of sales stood at 923 transactions, up from 820 deals during the previous month. The most expensive sale for the period was for unit 85 at One57. The 6,200-square-foot home was sold for $53 million, or $8,649 per square foot. Read the report here.

The asking price for Manhattan homes dropped 3.4 percent on a year-over-year basis to $1,714. For the month of June, the housing market’s supply and demand figures remained soft. Supply, as measured through active listings, rose by 8.9 percent compared to the same time last year. Meanwhile, demand, as measured through closed sales, dropped 41.7 percent on a year-on-year basis. Read the report here.

The median apartment price in Manhattan fell for the fourth straight quarter, dropping 9 percent on a year-on-year basis to $1.1 million. The figure represents the lowest median price for the borough since the fourth quarter of 2016. The median price decline in the second quarter was partly due to a sluggish new development market, which registered 30 percent fewer closing compared to the same time last year. Overall, the borough registered a 12 percent drop on a year-over-year basis. Resale apartments also sold for the highest discounts in over five years.

Commercial

Construction spending in the US rose to a record high of $1.3 trillion in May. The increase, which amounts to a 4.5 percent hike compared to the same month last year, is due to grow in residential and public investment. Private residential spending outpace other segments with a 6.6 year-over-year increase, followed by 4.7 percent for public construction and 1.8 percent for private non-residential construction.

The Monthly Update - July 2018

National Real Estate Market

Trends Finally Reflect Manhattan Trends

According to the WSJ, in four of the first five months of 2018, national resale home prices nationwide have been in decline. And sales of new homes only grew 6.8 percent in the second quarter. With resales making up the bulk of total sales, this equates to Q2 results that are essentially stuck in neutral.

Oh, really??!! This information seems like yesterday’s news if you’re a seller in the New York City market. The Manhattan sales market has seemingly been "stuck in neutral" for quite some time. And with many economists predicting (dare I say it?) a recession, it’s no wonder things are in neutral.

But let's take a step back. The economy is still very strong: The stock market is up and we're experiencing the lowest unemployment rate in decades. So why the hesitation? Why is the national market stuck in neutral?

In Manhattan, we have overbuilding to contend with and an overall buyer sentiment across all price points that a market correction is due. The market is about at the end of a 10-year cycle, so that is a good argument. Rentals have already corrected over the last two years, so many think sale prices are next. We spoke to a HUD representative, and she told us, "A correction is imminent."

What does this mean for you? If you're in market to buy, it's a good time to make deal. If you're selling, be realistic and be prepared to negotiate.

 
  • Check out our HQ office. Read More
  • Our CEO Robert Reffkin has been named one of Glassdoor's Top CEOs. Read More
  • Compass Seattle is opened, Philadelphia & Ft. Lauderdale next month and 12 additional new offices coming soon! #CompassEverywhere
  • Who’s Disrupting Brokerage? A Breakdown By The Numbers. Read More

Don't Miss Out On These Events

Summerstage 

July 1 - 15, 2018

Celebrate summer by getting outdoors! Happening now through July 15th, enjoy fantastic music, comedy, theater, dance, lectures, and films during SummerStage in city parks. The (mostly) free concerts are popular, so be sure to arrive early! Tickets can be purchased online. 

 

Broadway in Bryant Park

July 12 - August 16, 2018

From July 12 through August 16, bring the whole family to the Bryant Park lawn and watch popular on- and off-Broadway shows perform their biggest hits on Thursday afternoons for free! Find the schedule here. 

 

Summer Restaurant Week

July 23 - August 17, 2018

Love a three-course meal but hate the price? From July 23-August 17, take advantage of lunch or dinner specials at 300 of the city's top restaurants during NYC Restaurant Week. For more information, click here.

Don't Forget To Follow Us

@hoffmanteam      #TheHoffmanTeam

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3 Subway Stations Will Close For 6 Months

NEW YORK, NY — The Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced Friday when three Manhattan subway stops will shutter in July for six months of repairs.

The 57th Street station on the F line, the 28th Street stop on the 6 and the 23rd Street station on the F and M will receive structural repairs and upgrades during the sixth-month period and are expected to reopen in December, said MTA officials.

The MTA is staggering the closures with the 57th Street stop shuttering on July 9th, followed by 28th Street on July 16 and 23rd Street on July 23, said transit officials. PATH service at the 23rd Street station will be not be affected.

More than 70,000 straphanger use the three stations on a given week day with roughly 15,700 riders swiping into 57th Street, over 24,000 commuters hoping on the subway at 28th Street and approximately 31,000 customers using the 23rd Street station, according to MTA data. 

The improvements are part of a $124.9 million contract to update a total of five stations sorely in need of repairs. The 28th Street station is among the oldest in the subway system since opening on the day that service began in October 1904. The 23rd Street station began operating during World War II in December 1940 and the 57 Street station welcomed straphangers in July 1968, prior to the construction of the East River subway tunnel to Queens.

In addition to structural repairs, the new and improved stations will feature tech upgrades including digital signage with real-time information, countdown clocks, and brighter, more energy-efficient lighting.

Turnstile areas will be upgraded with glass barriers, security cameras, and new information centers featuring digital dashboards. Platforms will also receive a cosmetic and functional boost with new platform edge warning strips, accessible boarding areas, new seating, digital dashboards and countdown clocks.

2373 Broadway, Unit 1702/03

2373 Broadway, Unit 1702/03

UPPER WEST SIDE, MANHATTAN

4 Bed  |  5 Bath  |  CondOp  |  Doorman

Offered At $7,750,000

This award-winning four-bedroom duplex sets a new standard for breathtaking design and indoor/outdoor luxury in a full-service Upper West Side condop building. 

Set high on the 17th and 18th floors, this sweeping home drinks in sunlight and epic views from floor-to-ceiling windows spanning the entire eastern exposure. Bold concrete pillars make a powerful statement, while sleek white walls and wide-plank oak flooring provide a subtle backdrop for distinctive designer touches.

The lower level is devoted to luxurious entertaining and relaxation with the entire floor flanked by an extra-long terrace and jaw-dropping open-sky views. The gracious flow leads from living room to the dining room and the epic Italian kitchen — winner of a 2018 NYC X Design Award — filled with Miele and Bosch appliances. A fully outfitted home office and guest room, plus a full bathroom, powder room and in-unit washer-dryer, add extraordinary convenience to this well-planned level.

Upstairs, a private bedroom wing ensures secluded rest. The opulent master suite boasts a huge walk-in closet and an lavish en suite marble bathroom featuring a large frameless glass shower, dual-sink vanity and oversized soaking tub with Manhattan skyline views. With great built-ins and views of their own, the two secondary bedrooms are equally extravagant, and each has direct access to a full bathroom and powder room on this level. Thoughtful touches abound in this well-designed home: A Control4 system operates sun/blackout shades and lighting, SONOS invisible speakers run throughout, and the terrace features an automatic awning.

The Boulevard is a phenomenal amenity-rich condop building offering 24-hour concierge and doorman service, party room with full kitchen, play room, bike room, onsite parking garage, two sundecks, a solarium, and a state-of-the-art fitness center with terrace and a 75-foot swimming pool plus courts for racquetball, squash and basketball. This condop building offers larger than usual maintenance tax deductibility and permits subletting from day one.

Perfectly situated between 86th and 87th streets, the great dining, gourmet markets and nightlife of the Upper West Side are within easy reach. Riverside Park is two blocks west and Central Park is just two-and-a-half blocks east, and transportation is truly effortless with the 1, B and C trains and the M86-SBS crosstown bus all nearby.

Monthly Update - June 2018

The Importance of a Buyer’s

Agent in a Buyer’s Market

If you are ready to house hunt, I’m sure you know it can get pretty complicated out there. And when you’re working in a buyer’s market, having an agent working for you can be the difference between winning or losing a property and getting it for the right price! When the average New York City home currently spends 87 days on the market — much longer for luxury properties — it’s time to cut deals. But you’ll need a buyer’s agent to help educate you on the correct pricing for your purchase. Not only will you need to navigate the usual offer forms, financial sheets, pre-approval letters, and (possibly) best and finals, you’ll also need guidance from your buyer’s agent on getting your purchase for the right price!

The process can be stressful and surprisingly complex, which is why you’ll need to assemble a pro team to stand at your side throughout the journey. It can literally make the difference between losing out or winding up on top!

A buyer’s agent is just that — YOUR agent dedicated to representing YOUR interests during every step of the purchasing process — and that’s very important in a buyers market. Not only do they get you into properties fast, they also let you know when those homes are on the market before anyone else (including your competition). And, in a fierce market like ours, they are key to helping you find the home of your dreams.

Despite the fact that we are in what some have deemed a “buyer’s market” — where buyers hold a competitive edge over sellers — a buyer’s agent is still crucial to your home search. Here are the top 5 reason to use a buyer’s agent in a buyer’s market:

  1. It’s free! Sellers rely on the agents (seller’s and buyer’s agents) to bring the best buyers into their property, and to do that, they pay.

  2. Your buyer’s agent will find you the right property. Property search is a full-time job. Having your agent scour listings for the neighborhood, properties, and amenities that fit your needs — and setting up tours and appointments — will be your buyer’s agent’s No. 1 priority.

    • At Compass, we believe your time should be sent enjoying the perfect home, not searching for it. With so many listings out there and a multitude of ways to communicate, it’s not easy to stay on the same page. By creating a Compass.com account, we can use Collections together to: 1. Keep track of homes you like in one place. 2. Invite anyone - your friend, spouse, parents - to help with your search. 3. Share comments about the homes so all communication is organized. 4. Receive automated updates about the homes in real time

    • Learn More HERE

  3. Making the offer. After you find the perfect home, placing the offer is the most important and strategic step. Your agent will help you research past sales in the building and in the neighborhood in order to bring a competitive and educated offer to the seller’s agent. Having an expert negotiate the deal can save you a ton of money and help you avoid the many potential pitfalls along with way.

  4. Recommending the right professionals. Getting you to the right real estate attorney or inspector is part of your agent's duty to recognize your needs and protect your rights.

  5. Help overcome setbacks. There will be hiccups along the away, and your agent will be there to work through them. With their abundant experience, they’ll know what to look for to keep your deal on track and get you to the closing table!

 
  • Check out our office. Read More
  • Compass Seattle is opened, Philadelphia & Ft. Lauderdale next month and 15 additional new offices coming soon! #CompassEverywhere
  • Who’s Disrupting Brokerage? A Breakdown By The Numbers. Read More

10 Things You Didn't Know About The Brooklyn Bridge

135 years ago today, throngs of New Yorkers came to the Manhattan and Brooklyn waterfronts to celebrate the opening of what was then known as the New York and Brooklyn Bridge. 1,800 vehicles and 150,300 people total crossed what was then the only land passage between Brooklyn and Manhattan. The bridge–later dubbed the Brooklyn Bridge, a name that stuck–went on to become one of the most iconic landmarks in New York. But there’s been plenty of history, and secrets, along the way. Lesser known facts about the bridge include everything from hidden wine cellars to a parade of 21 elephants crossing in 1884. So for the Brooklyn Bridge’s 135th anniversary, 6sqft rounded up its top 10 most intriguing secrets.

 

1. The idea for a Brooklyn/Manhattan bridge was as old as the century

Much like the Second Avenue Subway, the idea of a bridge connecting Manhattan and Brooklyn was considered years before construction actually happened. According to The Great Bridge, by David McCullough, the first serious proposal for a bridge was recorded in Brooklyn in 1800. The carpenter and landscaper Thomas Pope proposed a “Flying Pendant Lever Bridge” to cross the East River, and his idea was kept alive for 60 years as plans for the Brooklyn Bridge developed. But the cantilevered bridge, made completely out of wood, didn’t prove to be structurally sound.

Chain bridges, wire bridges, even a bridge 100 feet wide were all proposed to connect the two waterfronts. The main challenge, however, was the East River–actually a tidal straight–known as a turbulent waterway crammed with boats. The bridge needed to pass over the masts of ships, and could not have piers or a drawbridge.

2. When construction actually did start, the bridge was considered “symbolic of a new age”

When plans for a bridge actually came together, in the 1860s, planners, engineers and architects knew this was not to be a run-of-the-mill bridge. From the offset it was considered, according to McCullough, “one of history’s great connecting works, symbolic of a new age.” They wanted their bridge to stand up against projects like the Suez Canal and the transcontinental railroad. It was planned as the largest suspension bridge in the world, lined with towers that would dwarf everything else in view. At the time, steel was considered “the metal of the future” and the bridge would be the first in the country to utilize it. And once open, it would serve as a “great avenue” between both cities. John Augustus Roebling, the bridge’s designer, claimed it “will not only be the greatest bridge in existence, but it will be the greatest engineering work of the continent, and of the age.”

3. The towers were crucial to the bridge’s success

Many of the bridge’s construction challenges, which held the project up for so many years, were solved by its identical 268-foot-tall towers. Architecturally, they were distinguished by twin Gothic arches, two in each tower, for the roadways to pass through. Rising more than 100 feet, the arches were meant to be reminiscent of a church’s great cathedral windows. They were constructed of limestone, granite and Rosendale cement.

These towers, heralded as the most massive things ever built on the entire North American continent, also served a crucial engineering role. They bore the weight of four enormous cables and held the cables and roadway of the bridge high enough so not to interfere with river traffic.

4. The first woman to cross the bridge also supervised its construction

John Roebling, the initial designer of the bridge, never got to see it to fruition. While taking compass readings in preparation for its construction his foot got stuck and crushed between a ferry and the dock. Doctors amputated his toes but Roebling slipped into a coma and died of tetanus. Then his son, Washington Roebling, took over responsibilities but suffered two attacks of caisson disease–known at that time as the bends–during construction. (The bends, a common ailment for bridge workers, was the result of coming up too quickly in the compressed air chambers used to lay the foundations underwater.)

Washington Roebling, suffering from paralysis, deafness and partial blindness, turned the responsibilities over to his wife, Emily Warren Roebling. Emily took on the challenge and studied mathematics, the calculations of catenary curves, strengths of materials and the intricacies of cable construction. She spent the next 11 years assisting her husband and supervising the bridge’s construction–many were under the impression she was the real designer. She was the first person to cross the bridge fully when it was completed, “her long skirt billowing in the wind as she showed [the crowd] details of the construction.” After that, she went on to help design the family mansion in New Jersey, studied law, organized relief for returning troops from the Spanish-American War, and even took tea with Queen Victoria.

5. The bridge was built with numerous passageways and compartments in its anchorages, including wine cellars

New York City rented out the large vaults under the bridge’s Manhattan and Brooklyn anchorages in order to fund the bridge. Some space in each anchorage was dedicated to wine and champagne storage, and the alcohol was kept in stable temperatures throughout the year. The cellar on the Manhattan side was known as the “Blue Grotto” and was covered in beautiful frescoes depicting vineyards in Germany, Italy, Spain and France. They ended up closing in the 1930s, but a visit in 1978 uncovered this faded inscription: “Who loveth not wine, women and song, he remaineth a fool his whole life long.”

6. There’s also a Cold War-era bomb shelter under the bridge’s main entrance

As 6sqft pointed out a few years back, there is a nuclear bunker inside one of the massive stone arches below the bridge’s main entrance on the Manhattan side. It is full of supplies, including medication like Dextran (used to treat shock), water drums, paper blankets and 352,000 calorie-packed crackers. The forgotten vault wasn’t discovered until 2006, when city workers performed a routine structural inspection and found cardboard boxes of supplies ink-stamped with two significant years in Cold War history: 1957, when the Soviets launched the Sputnik satellite, and 1962, during the Cuban missile crisis.

7. A fatal stampede caused New Yorkers to doubt the bridge’s strength

Only six days after the bridge opened, a woman tripped and descended down the wooden stairs on the Manhattan side of the bridge. As the story goes, her fall caused another woman to scream and those nearby rushed towards the scene. The commotion sparked a chain reaction of confusion. More people mobbed the narrow staircase, and a rumor that the bridge would collapse began in the crowd. With thousands of people on the promenade, a stampede caused the deaths of at least twelve people.

8. But a parade of elephants quelled any doubts

When the Brooklyn Bridge was gearing up for its opening day, P.T. Barnum made a proposal to walk his troupe of elephants across it–but authorities turned him down. After the stampede, however, there remained doubts if the bridge was indeed stable. So in 1884, P. T. Barnum was asked to help squelch those lingering concerns, and he got the opportunity to promote his circus. His parade of bridge-crossing elephants included Jumbo, Barnum’s prized giant African elephant.

As the New York Times reported at the time, “At 9:30 o’clock 21 elephants, 7 camels, and 10 dromedaries issued from the ferry at the foot of Courtlandt-Street… The other elephants shuffled along, raising their trunks and snorting as every train went by. Old Jumbo brought up the rear.” The paper of record also noted that “To people who looked up from the river at the big arch of electric lights it seemed as if Noah’s Ark were emptying itself over on Long Island.”

9. This bridge inspired the saying “I’ve got a bridge to sell you,” because people were actually trying to sell the Brooklyn Bridge

Con artist George C. Parker is supposedly the man who came up with the idea of “selling” the Brooklyn Bridge to unsuspecting visitors after it opened. His scam actually worked, as it is said he sold the bridge twice a week for two years. Reports say he targeted gullible tourists and immigrants. (He didn’t just put a price tag on the bridge, he also “sold” off Grant’s Tomb, the Statue of Liberty and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.) Parker’s success convinced other conmen to try their hand at selling the bridge, but none were as successful. The sensation, however, inspired the phrase “I’ve got a bridge to sell you.”

Parker did see consequences for his scamming: after being arrested for fraud a few times, he was sent to Sing Sing for life in 1928.

10. Despite its strength, the bridge still moves

Even today, the Brooklyn Bridge rises about three inches if it’s extremely cold. It’s a result of the cables contracting and expanding in cold temperatures, which has happened ever since the bridge was complete.

But you’d be mistaken to think the cables don’t have super-human strength. Each cable is made of 19 separate strands, each of which has 278 separate wires. (There are over 14,000 miles of wire in the Brooklyn Bridge.) To install the cables, workers would splice wires together, then tie them to make the strands. A boat would come from Brooklyn and sail it across to the Manhattan side. Then, two winches on the outside of the towers would hold the strands in place as workers raised them to the top. This tedious process, often interrupted by weather, took two years to complete.

42 East 12th Street, Unit PH7

42 East 12th Street, Unit PH7

GREENWICH VILLAGE, MANHATTAN

2 Bed  |  2 Bath  |  1,800sqft  |  Condo  |  Full-Floor Loft

Offered At $4,375,000

42 East 12th Street is a boutique condominium set within a stately pre-war brick building. Residents enjoy keyed elevator access, a lovely common roof deck and equal-share ownership of the building's ground-floor retail space. This is an incredible added benefit, as the rental income generated will soon offset the common charges almost fully, in just a few years.

Flawless designer details and bright living spaces will take your breath away in this immaculate two-bedroom, two-bathroom penthouse loft in the heart of Greenwich Village/Union Square.

With dramatic arched windows and two massive skylights, this airy 1,800-square-foot, full-floor home is awash in natural light throughout. Swaths of exposed brick and 7-inch wide plank oak flooring add richness and warmth, while ample designer touches appeal to refined, modern sensibilities. Arrive via private key-locked elevator and revel in the great room's 10-foot tall ceilings and substantial footprint for stylish entertaining. Fantastic art walls await your collection, custom iron columns by Steve Morris add historic reverence, and smart built-ins provide special nooks and storage spaces. With premier appliances and a massive reclaimed wood island with seating for eight, the breathtaking kitchen is the literal heart of the home and a luxe gathering place for all. Guests will be entranced by the copper-trimmed skylight and chic custom fixtures, and chefs will love the abundant Luxe/Alvic cabinets, white quartz countertops and bronze tiled backsplash surrounding state-of-the art appliances by Sub-Zero and Bosch. A large dining area provides additional table space, while a gorgeous full bathroom adds convenience.

The home's two spectacular bedrooms are tucked in the tranquil rear of the home. In the exquisite master suite, you'll find another majestic skylight, two oversized walk-in closets and a serene bathroom with radiant heat flooring, dual-sink vanity and frameless glass shower. No detail was overlooked in making this a home of exceeding comfort and convenience. Floors are soundproofed, and windows are double-paned with motorized shades. A massive storage and laundry room includes an in-unit Bosch washer-dryer. Smart home features include mood lighting, built-in Sonos sound system, and a Nest thermostat controlling the dual-zoned HVAC.

Set in prime Greenwich Village/Union Square, midblock between Broadway and University, this fine building is surrounded by great shopping, dining and entertainment at every turn. The famous Strand bookstore is on the next block, NYU is to the south, and gourmet food shopping is a breeze with both Trader Joe's and Whole Foods minutes away. Fitness centers and kids' activities are abundant, and for open space, take your pick from Washington Square Park to the south and Union Square and its phenomenal greenmarket to the north. Access to transportation is unbeatable with 4/5/6, N/Q/R/W, L, F/M and 1/2/3 lines all within reach.

Your new home awaits.