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December 9, 2018- I have been saying this for years. These new pencil-towers are unsightly garbage erected purely as a way to shelter cash for rich people who need alternative investments and tax shelters. Only the pre-war buildings have thick concrete walls, big floor plans, and high ceilings.
I learned this back in 2005 when a hedge fund friend bought a “good” apartment by Union Square. He could jam with his band and no one bothered him.
Making news is a list compiled by New York socialites that identifies these “good” buildings.
“In a June 1985 essay for Esquire’s “Soul of America issue,” Tom Wolfe spelled out just which residential buildings in Manhattan were considered “good” by the sort of people whose opinions mattered. “These so-called Good Buildings are 42 cooperative apartment houses built more than half a century ago. Thirty-seven of them are located in a small wedge of Manhattan’s Upper East Side known as the Triangle. The rest are along the East River,” Wolfe wrote.
They were characterized by gargantuan prewar floor plans, high ceilings, ample servants’ quarters, gracious entrance galleries, general formality and bourgeois respectability. Not a single building on the West Side made the cut. Even the Dakota, the most splendid-looking apartment building in New York, fell short: because it admitted “popular music celebrities” (John Lennon) and because the West Side was still rather grimy off the park. Most importantly: These buildings — all co-ops — were in demand.”