One of life’s great pleasures is to be led around by a kind and generous real estate broker in the company of a friend who’s looking to buy an apartment in Manhattan. Not knowing exactly what your friend is looking for, nor how much they are truly willing to spend, the broker will take you to all kinds of places that you would never step foot in otherwise.

For example:                           A perfectly square building on Warren Street, whose street-level facade combines squiggly, gnarled metal sculpture with shrubbery. The front door opens onto a living room/dining room/kitchen that manages to feel claustrophobic despite its open plan and thirty+ feet high ceilings. ‘Why has the current owner crammed a heavy, glass-topped dining table, that comfortably seats eight, into such a small space?,’ you ask yourself. (This will be the first of many questions that will occur to you regarding the owner’s taste and apparently distorted sense of scale.) Nothing about the living/dining/kitchen space is remarkable. There are expensive looking lighting fixtures and hardwood floors. The amount of natural light let in by the large frosted windows is pleasantly diffuse. But there is also something subterranean and bunker-like, that you realise is caused by the floor being set three or four feet below street level. Next you head up the narrow staircase that you’re told leads to the master bedroom and bathroom. Upon arriving at the top of the stairs, you find that the ceiling is so low that you almost whack your head on a row of ill-placed track lighting. The ‘master bedroom’ itself is really a glorified (if that) mezzanine/loft. Again, the current owner’s radical conceptualisation of space has induced them to squeeze a California king sized bed into an area that would already feel cramped by a queen. To your further surprise, you notice that a large animal is sitting on the bed. It’s a panting bull mastiff in the stationary pose of a pony-sized sphinx. ‘That must be Bluebell,’ the broker informs you, ‘The owner said she’s harmless.’ Leaving Bluebell to continue dripping giant globs of saliva onto the metallic silver sheet set, you and your companions quickly peek at the unimpressive, black tiled toilet/shower area, and then head down two flights of stairs to the apartment’s basement-level room. Your first impression when you enter the fully underground space is that this is more-or-less the setting you imagined when, years ago, you read about the infamous bunga bunga parties held by Silvio Berlusconi in clandestine Italian locales. The only source of light in the room comes from a series of recessed LED bulbs that emit a dim, orange-ish hue. The only piece of furniture is a low, black leather couch pushed against one wall. The rest of the otherwise empty space is sprinkled with a few Persian carpets and various shiny floor pillows. Standing there together, the broker reminds you and your companion that the listing describes this as a ‘basement activity room,’ which you silently acknowledge is an apt description.

A second example:               This place is on John Street in the heart of the Financial District. In a past life, the building housed the offices of various firms that primarily valued its proximity to Wall Street. A middle-aged real estate agent named Connie meets you in a lobby whose high, cavernous ceilings and lack of sunlight reminds you of the interiors of gothic cathedrals. Connie points out a pair of fascist looking brass eagles, perched on a ledge above the reception desk, and a large, dimly lit art deco mural whose symbolism is only half intelligible: a bunch of gears and clock hands and buildings and a man dressed in overalls who’s carrying a golden hammer. ‘It’s all original to the building,’ Connie explains, ‘Now let me show you the mailboxes.’ Connie is particularly proud of/enamored with the newly installed package delivery system. She leads you and your companion over to a small screen which displays a hundred or so tiny squares arranged in a grid. ‘When you come in you look at this screen. If the box corresponding to your apartment number is green, that means you’ve got a package waiting for you at reception.’ Connie then motions for you to follow her to an imposing bank of elevators made with floor-to-ceiling black marble. ‘There’s six elevators,’ Connie observes. One of the six elevators carries your party to the twelfth floor. When you step out, you’re surprised by the narrowness of the carpeted hallways, whose wallpaper and cheap looking sconces remind you of various Holiday and Hampton Inns. On one wall you notice and point out a beautifully time-patinated brass chute with a small envelope-sized slot in it marked POST. Your attention to detail makes Connie smile. ‘That’s how they used to send mail when these were offices. Just stuff it down the chute. Woooosh!‘ The apartment is number 12J. As you’re led inside, the first thing you notice is how much smaller the space looks and feels in person compared to how the photos made it look online. The digital kitchen had looked spacious and modern. Whereas, in-person, its defining characteristic is a problematic relationship between an abundance of wide cabinets with wide doors and severe lack of clearance. There are other problems. The large windows that wrap around the living room turn out to be old and single-paned, letting in a noticeable draft. The sliver of bare concrete, reached through a sliding glass door, that was listed as ‘A cozy balcony with spectacular city views,’ is, in fact, a death trap due to an overhead row of ancient and rotting tiles that you can see, from a nearby pile of shattered ceramic fragments, have a tendency to fall off at unsuspected intervals. The bathroom is small and mildewed. The bedroom is only slightly bigger than the bathroom and has a different, but equally off-putting smell. ‘Isn’t it quaint?’ Connie asks rhetorically. She continues, ‘I’ve been telling people it’s kind of like an urban cottage in the sky. Perfect for one or two people, or even a young couple with a newborn.’ To which you reply with assenting nods and smiles. When Connie says that it’s now time to go and see ‘the amenities,’ you imagine maybe a workout room with a broken treadmill and an unused rack of cheap weights. But when the elevator doors open onto the second floor you’re confronted with what looks and smells and sounds like a spa at a 5-star resort. ‘Over here we’ve got the larger of the two gyms,’ Connie says, pointing to a large glassed in space filled with top of the line stationary bikes, ellipticals, treadmills, stair climbers, rowing machines and something that looks like a hyperbaric chamber. ‘Then over here we’ve got both Swedish and Finnish-style saunas, depending on your preference. Through those glass doors over there you’ve got a nice pool to swim laps in, which has different set times for men’s, women’s and co-ed swimming. And here, coming up on the left, is the weight-lifting gym, which was actually designed by the company that did the Yankees training facilities.’ The weight room is impressive, all the more so because its sole current occupant is a man tossing and catching a medicine ball, who looks like he could be a Yankee. Finally, Connie ushers you and your companion down a lavender scented corridor to a door made of smoked glass. ‘Now for the pièce de résistance,’ Connie whispers. When she opens the door, you see a large jacuzzi made out of some kind of entirely transparent material. ‘Impressive, isn’t it?’ Connie asks, ‘Now look down.’ The floor around the jacuzzi is made of clear glass and juts out so that the jacuzzi is directly over the main entrance to the building. Connie giggles. ‘The designer’s original idea was for everything in here—the jacuzzi and the floor—to be see-through so that as people were coming into the building, they would look up and see the people in the jacuzzi.’ Connie pauses for a moment to let this image sink in. ‘As you might imagine, some of the residents found this slightly… problematic, so they eventually covered up the part directly under the jacuzzi.’ Connie encourages you and your companion to bend down and observe where what looks like two large sheets of frost-mimicking decals have been hastily stuck over the glass directly below the jacuzzi. Back in the lavender scented corridor, Connie announces that this is the end of the tour. ‘I really think this is all a steal at $1.8 million,’ she says by way of goodbye. You are inclined to agree with her.

_{May 2025                                        New York City}

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