There are a number of reasons for this, but one big driver is international buyers. Amongst the major cities in the world, New York City retains its crown as the most important financial and cultural hotspot, and the bragging rights that a NYC pad affords foreign investors cannot easily be duplicated in other major cities. Thus it is no surprise that Russian buyers are snapping up properties in the city.

Additionally, new visa rules that allow foreigners visas if they invest $500,000 or more in the American economy is encouraging more wealthy immigrants to come to the United States, and what better place to come to than New York City?

The market for luxury properties is quickly becoming a seller’s market, as properties in the Time Warner Center are starting to sell for over $10,000 per square foot. With Central Park at the property’s door as well as a luxury shopping center and midtown just a short jaunt away, there is plenty of reason for this Columbus Circle property to be in high demand with high flyers.

Will property prices continue to rise? The sky is the limit for the city’s skyscrapers, and even as the American economy struggles, the property market in NYC is giving investors ample opportunity to make money in the city’s real estate.

The perfect distance to walk off the extra tacos, three blocks north on 34^th and 3^rd is Babylon Hookah Lounge. With ample outdoor seating and wide open windows for those who want to be inside, this is a gem for winding down. A wide array of flavored choices for your hookah will entice and make for the perfect end to a Murray Hill night.

Clearly NY has some of the best places to spend an evening out. If you would like to learn more about living in New York City then enter your information into the box on your right and a rock star NY real estate agent will get in touch with you asap to tell you everything there is to know about the city and its available apartments!

The plan is in its earliest stages and will not be approved or denied until October. There is one major snag in the project: according to The Post, the deal would involve transforming the Robert Moses playground to the UN and allowing them to build another high rise at 39 stories tall. The new skyscraper would match the current UN building, which has caused some concern amongst Midtown East inhabitants and conservationists (mostly conservationists). While they recognize the need for more green space and love the idea of a new amenity, they don’t want it at “the cost of taking other public land”, referring to the playground. I would like to point out that the current playground is maybe a tenth the size of the proposed esplanade.

There is still a month until we know the fate of the East River, but I would predict approvals to fly through, considering that the East Midtown Coalition for Sensible Development and East End Hockey Association might have a bit of difficulty combating the arguments put forth by the UN and the inhabitants of the area who would like to see a new cycling lane and park on the East River uniting the Upper West and Upper East sides.

Want to know what further developments await Manhattan? Want to see what condos are available in Midtown East? Enter your information in the box to your right and a rock star real estate agent will contact you right away.  Or take a look for yourself at the many listings on our website today!

One such fact that blew me away was the figures; the park took over $100 million in private donations to renovate the space, which has probably increased the property values in the area enough to raise nearly half a billion dollars in property taxes for the city. Such an increase in value demonstrates how a bit of conservation, public investment, and elbow grease can transform a neighborhood.

And it also demonstrates how there is energy in abundance to make such transformations in New York City. It is a typically NYC development: take an old piece of rusting infrastructure and transform it into a new, lush, gorgeous refuge from the urban jungle around it—all the while celebrating the urbanity of the space. Robert Hammond, one of the men who got the project off the ground and has written a story about the experience, told NPR that the project was about celebrating the past as well as creating a new green space in the city: “this was the magic we wanted to save. Like right now, we’re alone. It’s just us, up here [in] this private garden right in the middle of New York.”

Now that private garden is transforming Chelsea and the Meatpacking District along 10^th Avenue.

More work is to be done as the High Line isn’t completely finished, and I’m certain that this is just the start of a number of similar projects throughout the city. The High Line has transformed a derelict freight train line that opened in 1934 into a new park that both celebrates the historical roots of the space and creates a brand new, modern getaway for current residents.

What will be the next High Line in Manhattan? Why not come take a tour of the island for yourself with one of our agents and see for yourself. It’s easy to get in touch with them. Just enter your information into the box on your right and they will get in touch with you ASAP!

The machines are so big and the process is so laborious that the machines themselves are extremely worn by the end of the project–so worn, in fact, that the MTA has decided to bury one of the machines underground and seal it with concrete at the end of the tunnel, which they claim is cheaper than trying to scrap the machine itself. What an interesting site to see for archeologists in a few thousand years.

Metropolitan Museum of Art

For those looking for a cultural experience, there’s always a New York City museum that offers changing exhibitions to surprise and wow the visitor. New York City has some of the greatest museums in the world and they’re only a short distance from just about any neighborhood.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is easily one of the best known places to see a diverse display of artwork from all over the world. Sections in the museum include Asian, African, and British art amongst others. Currently, the museum is offering exhibits for the summer and fall.

One specific exhibit on display from now until August 14th is Pastel Portraits: Images of 18th-Century Europe. According to the site, “By 1750, almost 2,500 professional artists and amateurs were working in pastel in Paris alone. Portraits in pastel were commissioned by all ranks of society, but most enthusiastically by the royal family, members of the court, and the wealthy middle classes.”

Museum of the City of New York

At the Museum of the City of New York, now through October 30th, visitors can view The American Style: Colonial Revival and the Modern Metropolis which offers a look at furniture, decorative pieces, and photographs of items from the 1890s until today. This exhibit may offer some ideas for those looking to find decorating ideas for their new home. Other ongoing and summer exhibits are also on display now at the Museum of the City of New York.

For those interested in learning more about world religions, the Rubin Museum of Art is showcasing Pilgrimage and Faith which explores three major faiths: Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam and their journey of pilgrimages, growth, and spirituality. This neighborhood offers this exhibit until October and is close to Union Square and all of the restaurants and bars of Chelsea.

The High Life. 2010. China. Directed by Zhao Dayong

Interested in contemporary art? nothing beats the MoMA. An ongoing exhibit for those interested in Asian Film is ContemporAsian which presents Asian films that may be off the beaten path. To find out more about this genre; this is the exhibit to see! This is Asian culture at its best and if you’re lucky, maybe your new condo won’t be too far away.

Whitney Museum of American Art

Another modern art lovers dream museum is the Whitney Museum of American Art. Right now, this East Side favorite has an exhibit of their founding collection. They always offer the latest and most unique American art around. The show called Breaking Ground: The Whitney’s Founding Collection features heiress Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney’s starting collection and objects from around the 30s when the museum opened its doors. This is sure to be a look into some of New York’s finest art.

Wherever you are in New York City, the cultural epicenter is sure to have something for your taste. As you make your way around the City, be sure to contact us when you decide which neighborhood you love the best so you can find a new place to call home! Call 877-852-6636 to speak with a representative today!

Stephen Sondheim (Illustration by Noah Diamond)

No art form is more associated with New York than the Broadway musical. Blossoming on and around the Big Street a century ago, what we now call musical theatre began as a synthesis of traditions – European operetta, African-American jazz, and the predominantly Jewish and Irish ethnic humor of vaudeville. Musicals through the 1920s were dynamic but trivial. The following decade, certain innovators occasionally brought substance to the form, notably Oscar Hammerstein (Show Boat) and Marc Blitzstein (The Cradle Will Rock). The watershed Broadway event of the forties was Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! Though antique by today’s standards, it influenced everything which followed. Musicals, we learned in the second half of the twentieth century, can command a range of topics and moods equal to that of plays, films, and novels. No artist has exemplified the maturity of musical theatre more than quintessential New Yorker Stephen Sondheim.

Sondheim was born in the stately San Remo apartment tower on Central Park West. His interest in musicals was catalyzed by family friend Oscar Hammerstein, who became Sondheim’s mentor and champion. Sondheim’s earliest professional successes were as lyricist only (on West Side Story and Gypsy). His first efforts as a Broadway composer were ignored, but he soon came into his own through a series of collaborations with Hal Prince. The groundbreaking Company (1970) was followed over the next decade by Follies, A Little Night Music, Pacific Overtures, Sweeney Todd, and Merrily We Roll Along – each a unique and challenging masterpiece, resolutely expanding the possibilities of musical storytelling.

After 1980, Sondheim adapted to a changing Broadway climate, testing shows through non-profit workshops. The key Sondheim collaborator since Merrily has been James Lapine, with whom Sondheim wrote Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods, and Passion. Independently of Lapine, Sondheim has reunited with Pacific Overtures librettist John Weidman for Assassins and Road Show. Besides these projects, the last two decades have seen an astounding number of Sondheim revivals; a film version of Sweeney Todd; numerous revues, concerts, and tributes; and the publication of Sondheim’s annotated lyrics (volume two is due this fall).

Sondheim has always insisted that he writes not to express his own feelings, but to express the feelings of the characters. Still, about half of Sondheim’s musicals take place in New York, and over the years he has been responsible for some of the most exciting and evocative songs ever written about our city. That list is topped by Company’s “Another Hundred People,” a song with all the nervous urgency of life in Manhattan, where “another hundred people just got off of the train / And came up through the ground.” Sondheim’s journeyman effort, Saturday Night (written in 1955 but not produced until 1998), includes a lovely New York number called “What More Do I Need,” in which the heroine explains, “once I hated this city / Now it can’t get me down / Slushy, humid and gritty / What a pretty town!” While writing Merrily We Roll Along, Sondheim indulged in a bit of self-parody, arming the composer and lyricist who are Merrily’s protagonists with a variation on “What More Do I Need”: “Who wants to live in New York? / Who wants the worry, the noise, the dirt, the heat? / Who wants the garbage cans clanging in the street? / Suddenly I do!”

Today, at the age of 80, Sondheim remains vigorously creative. In addition to a sustained victory lap of honors and celebrations, and his published lyrics, he’s said to be “nibbling” at ideas for new musicals while collaborating on revivals, concert events, and the current London premiere of Road Show. This summer, a filmed version of the New York Philharmonic’s excellent 2011 production of Company has been screened in movie theatres; the Kennedy Center’s acclaimed revival of Follies is scheduled to open on Broadway in August; and the City Center’s 2010 Encores series will include Merrily We Roll Along. On any given night, the music of Stephen Sondheim is being performed somewhere in the city. That’s one of the ways you know it’s New York.

For decades, Stephen Sondheim has lived in the lovely and serene neighborhood of Turtle Bay, on Manhattan’s east side. Turtle Bay has long been favored by celebrities seeking privacy, among them Sondheim, Katherine Hepburn, and Bob Dylan. Register with us to view some of our available Turtle Bay properties which include 400 East 52nd Street, 303 East 49th Street, and 255 East 49th Street. Call (877) 852-6636 to speak with one of our representatives.

Willem Beeckman was a Dutch scholar and translator who arrived on these shores in the seventeenth century, when New York was New Amsterdam and Manhattan was the woods. Beeckman rose to prominence in the colony’s government, putting down family roots in the sleepy grasslands on the island’s east side. Eventually, the location of the Beeckman estate evolved into a two-block stretch of cosmopolitan paradise known as Beekman Place. Occupying the blocks between East 49^th Street and East 51^st Street, just east of First Avenue, it’s one of the loveliest corners of midtown.

The jewel of Beekman Place is 1 Beekman Place, an elegant sixteen-story apartment building designed by two firms (Sloan & Robertson and Corbett, Harrison, & MacMurray) and completed in 1929. The capital was procured by David Milton, who married into the Rockefeller family and helped make this one of the city’s most prestigious addresses for decades.

Although the street view of 1 Beekman Place is suitably impressive, its true face is turned toward the East River. Seen from a boat on the river, or from Roosevelt Island, the building becomes a startling vision of urban majesty, described by The City Review as “an asymmetrical mass of balconies and bay windows that is not beautiful but as awesome as any castle’s battlements.”

The proximity of Beekman Place to the United Nations headquarters makes it a desirable neighborhood for those who work in international relations, and its classical grandeur has inspired countless mentions in the world of fiction and fantasy. Many a starry-eyed immigré has been drawn to the area due to the fictional Beekman Place address of Auntie Mame, the lead character in Patrick Dennis’s novels (and their subsequent stage and screen adaptations).

One Beekman Place is a cooperative, and it includes more than eighty units, some of which are currently available. Visit our listing for 1 Beekman Place at New York Condo Domain, or call (877) 852-6636 to speak with a representative.

I hope you enjoy this view of the fireworks from Rockefeller Center in Midtown, home to NBC Studios and a host of restaurants and cafes in the ground floor. It’s an overlooked and wonderful spot to hang out any time of the year, but the Top of the Rock observatory offers some spectacular views for July 4th and New Year’s.

Of course, inhabitants of Manhattan got a wonderful view too, and those lucky enough to have a balcony or outdoor terrace were able to see the Hudson light up with splendor, as it always does this time of the year. Interested in your own view of the city lights? Have a look at our services or give us a call at 1-877-852-6636.

How would you like to live in a three-room bungalow on a roof garden, on the west side of midtown Manhattan? But wait – the place has bath, steam, and hot water, and it’s partly furnished. And not only that – it’s also 1923, which is the chronological equivalent of the best neighborhood in town. Best of all, it’s a steal at $55 per month. Call Columbus 3901, and tell them you saw it in the New York Evening Telegram.

But if a piddling little roof garden isn’t good enough for you, perhaps you’d rather have all of Central Park. The Hotel Pasadena may be just the thing for you. Conveniently situated on the corner of 61^st Street and Broadway, this cosmopolitan dream come true offers one and two-room suites (though someone will have to explain what a one-room suite is) for as little as $23 weekly or $100 monthly.

With prices like that, who wouldn’t want to stay in 1923? I see here in the December 29 New York Evening Telegram that one could sublet an “elegant” new seven-room apartment for the reasonable price of $5,500 yearly. It’s on 37^th and Seventh, where at 2011 prices you’d be lucky to find something for $5,500 monthly.

Or if it’s commercial real estate you’re after, you might consider getting in touch with A.H. O’Brien to discuss leasing an office, a small suite, or even an entire floor of this ultra-modern office building in the heart of the theatrical district – the southwest corner of 48^th and the Big Street. O’Brien’s ad doesn’t list prices, but you may rest assured that it would be a bargain – especially compared to 2011, with the same site occupied by a slightly more imposing (and far less charming) structure:

On the other hand, you may be looking to escape from the city entirely. Frankly, we have no idea why anyone would want to do this, but if you do, it would be hard to top this offer, publicized with a full-page ad in the New York Evening Post, August 9, 1943:

That’s right – if you’re willing to make the trek out to Long Island, you can have a plot of land comparable in size to five city lots, for only $99 – that’s $20 down and one dollar per week for seventy-nine weeks. There’s only one catch – you’ll have to build your own house. Want the luxury without the strain? Call 877-852-6636 to speak with a representative today!