Funny Real Estate Story

Posted on June 30, 2011 by BeatingUpwind

My mother-in-law was trying to sell her house in Toronto earlier this year (it’s currently off the market). She’s Catholic and she heard that if you bury a statue of St. Joseph in your yard, your house will sell. So she went to the local Catholic paraphernalia store (or whatever they call it) and asked for a statue of St. Joseph. They asked her what kind she’d like and she said whatever was least expensive since she was just going to bury it in her yard. The store clerk indicated this was pretty common and got her the statue.

She goes home and buries the statue in the front garden and the next day the house next to her sells. She’s thinking, “wow, this really works but I had St. Joseph’s back to that house, so I should reposition it so St. Joseph’s back is to my house”. She re-buries the statue and a week later the house across the street from her sells.

She still hasn’t sold her house, but St. Joseph is 2 for 2… Maybe she should get a neighbor to bury the statue for her next time.

Was 123rd Street The Protestant Block?

Posted on June 30, 2011 by BeatingUpwind

Back in the day when townhouses like ours were built (late 1800s) the ones in Harlem were built primarily for German Jews and Harlem was a predominantly Jewish neighborhood up until around 1910 or 1920.

What’s struck me as interesting is that our block has two churches – one at the corner of Lenox, and another mid-block – but neither were Jewish – they were both originally Protestant.

Closest to us, about halfway between Lenox Ave and Adam Clayton Powell Jr Blvd, is the Greater Metropolitan Baptist Church at 147 West 123rd St. It was originally built in 1897 as the German-American St. Paul Lutheran Church of Harlem and designed in the Gothic style by architects Ernest W. Schneider and Harry Herter. The German nature of the church fits the neighborhood, but instead of being Jewish it was Lutheran.

Further down the block at the corner of 123rd and Lenox Ave. is the Ephesus Seventh Day Adventist Church. The origins of its building are pretty interesting… It was originally built in 1887 (the architect was John Rochester Thomas) by a Dutch Reformed congregation that could trace it’s roots back to 1660 when they were the Harlem Reformed Low Dutch Church. The church changed it’s name over the years to the First Collegiate Church of Harlem. As the population of Harlem was exploding the congregation, which was then located in East Harlem, decided it needed to open another church in the area, so they built the Second Collegiate Dutch Church at 123 and Lenox and the pastor and 150 wealthy members moved to the new church leaving the poor members over in East Harlem at the old church. The old church, now Elmendorf Reformed Church, is still located over at 121 and 3rd Avenue and is the oldest functioning religious institution in Harlem.

While today we may not care whether someone is Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, etc. back then religion was a much bigger deal. In those days there were “nativists” who saw themselves as “original New Yorkers” – they were all Protestant and rather fiercely anti-Catholic. Today we don’t really understand why the Irish and Italians were so discriminated against, but a big part of it was religion – they were Catholics coming into a Protestant-controlled country. People organized themselves based on religion.

Religion was also important for Jews. There was a big split between the German Jews and the Eastern European Jews. Like their Christian countrymen, German Jews were reformed. German Jews had more money than their Eastern European counterparts and their social service agencies simultaneously took care of Jewish kids and pressured them to become more Americanized (i.e. less orthodox).

Religion was so incredibly important back then you sorta have to assume that with two Protestant churches on one block in a neighborhood dominated by Synagogues, our block was most likely a Protestant block. As I have more time I’ll see if I can’t map the original religious affiliations of other churches in Central Harlem…

Violent Crime In Harlem

Posted on June 29, 2011 by BeatingUpwind

The Mount Morris Park Community Improvement Association’s meeting last week with the NYPD, the District Attorney’s Office, and representatives from local methadone clinics was enlightening… The main speaker was Deputy Inspector Rodney Harrison – who is in charge of the 28th Precinct.

As I mentioned in another blog post, there was a murder on our block the week before. Apparently there has also been a couple gun incidents at 120th and 7th Avenue (ACP) where there seems to be an on-going dispute between two drug dealers centered – though no one was actually shot. In addition, in East Harlem there have been 4 shootings in the past 4 weeks, one involving the death of a 15 year old. While that seems like a lot, apparently violent crime is actually down in the 28th Precinct year-to-date, but the 28th Precinct doesn’t cover East Harlem. This is the area covered by the 28th Precinct…

I learned a lot about the neighborhood at the meeting. One of the first items of discussion were the methadone clinics on 124th between Lenox and 7th Avenue (yes, clinics – plural). Two of the clinics were represented at the meeting, and apparently there is a third clinic (Harlem United) on that same block, but they declined to attend the meeting. That’s just that one block. There are other clinics throughout the neighborhood and an even greater concentration of clinics in East Harlem. The methadone clinics are a problem – not so much in terms of violent crime, but in terms of trash and loitering. However, the clinics that were at the meeting talked about how they do patrols from 123rd to 126th several times a day and any of their patients who are seen repeatedly loitering are thrown out of the treatment programs.

Still, where there are drug addicts there’s going to be drug dealing, and where there’s drug dealing there’s usually violent crime. Compounding the problem – once the addicts are thrown out of the program the clinics can’t do anything about them. At that point it becomes a police issue. Deputy Inspector Harrison was incredible in that respect – he gave out his personal cell phone number and e-mail address and told people to call/text/email him when they saw things. While 911 and 311 are great – going directly to the precinct is more effective. The police have zero tolerance for loitering – the exception being people hanging out in front of their own buildings.

One important point was made – do not get confrontational with loiterers (or anyone for that matter) – let the police take care of it. You never know who has a knife or a gun on them – it’s just not worth it.

When it comes to serious/violent crime the vast majority of it happens in the lower part of the precinct – around Lenox Ave – between the park and roughly 116. I know someone who lives on 113th between Lenox and St. Nick (a Russian guy who’s a friend of my nephew) and his experience with the neighborhood is completely different from mine – he talks about how rough and dangerous it is. Deputy Inspector Harrison mentioned that 114th Street was one of the most dangerous streets in the precinct. In fact he suggested that when people walk around the neighborhood they avoid problem spots like 114th Street, and the corner of 120th & 7th Ave.

When asked what the community could do there were a number of things…

First, be the eyes and ears of the police – when you see something, call the precinct.

Second, install cameras – they make a big difference – crimes are solved much faster when there’s a video available. It costs homeowners about $1,000 per camera. Given that most of us are investing over $1M in our places, it’s a very small price to pay to have a camera or two (or in our case 5 or 6). The cameras the police use are targeted to areas with lots of tourists and lots of violent crime. Inspector Harrison called the cameras “million dollar cameras” – I’m not sure that they actually cost $1M, but they aren’t cheap – so there aren’t many of them around. There are cameras on 125th Street and a few other areas, but getting more of them is difficult. However, the precinct actually has a crime prevention officer who will help you choose and position cameras you buy. His name is Vic Peña – call the precinct and ask for him.

Third, petition politicians for more police and more money for the precinct. Because crime has been going down the City has felt justified in cutting the number of police in Harlem, but when there are fewer police the crime rate goes back up (as is happening in East Harlem). The City does give support when a precinct is having a spike in crime. The 28th is getting help from the narcotics unit for 120th & 7th Ave, and the precinct in East Harlem is getting reinforcements. We live in Washington Heights at the moment and there’s increased police presence here as well because of all the rapes. But the precinct needs more than that. More funding means they can do more outreach programs to teens in an effort to prevent the crime from happening in the first place.

One other thing Inspector Harrison talked about was that iPhone and iPads are particularly popular with criminals right now. He’s finding that criminals aren’t mugging people for money – they just grab your iPhone and run. The simple way to avoid this problem is to try to not use your iPhone/Android much when you’re on the street. If you need to use it, be aware of your surroundings.

In the end there’s violent crime everywhere and violent crime is generally down in Harlem. It’s really not that unsafe. With a few basic precautions (like avoiding problem areas, not being confrontational, reducing the use of your iPhone on the street, and not being involved in drugs) you can feel pretty safe in Harlem.

IMHO, what Harlem needs most to prevent crime are residents who simply don’t put up with crime. If criminals know people will cooperate with the police and if they know there are cameras that will see what they do – they’ll move to another area.

Parlor Stairs, Lightwell/Footing & Roof Deck Taking Shape

Posted on June 27, 2011 by BeatingUpwind

Things are still progressing a little slowly, but nevertheless a few things moved forward in the past week…

The Roof Deck Area

The roof deck is starting to almost look complete. Soon the only thing that will be missing are the windows/door (and some lighting). It’s sorta calming to have something that’s almost “done”.

Pretty much all the stucco is done. The new bluestone cap stones are in place (and look great). We were wondering what color the roof should be. There are a number “cool roof” options, but seeing the stone and the stucco we’re agreed the roof should be a light grey. The stucco is actually more yellow than it looks in the picture – somehow the bluestone really brings out the yellow in it. So the gray will keep the color palette fairly simple.

The Back Porch Footing / Cellar Lightwell

Another thing that went in quickly and is looking semi-complete is the footing for the rear deck, which is also the lightwell for the cellar windows…

As you can see, the rear deck off the parlor isn’t very big – just 4 feet deep – enough for a couple chairs, but real entertaining will happen in the garden.

I was a little worried about the lightwell/footing affecting the view from inside, but it’s not bad – all the dirt in the picture below will be graded level and we’ll keep the plants in that area pretty low so the tenant should still get decent light.

The closer you get to the window the more sky you get, so what you see in the picture is a worst case scenario, though the window framing will take a fair amount of the space you see now.

Owners’ Unit Stairs

The other thing which has progressed are the stairs in our unit. It’s actually a bit of a long story… At one point we wanted a closet opposite the stairs, so the stairs had to be configured differently than they were above, and to get enough height to have a powder room under the stairs the stairs intruded into the kitchen. Then we got rid of the closet in order to have a more open feel on the parlor floor (we’ll just use coat hooks) and we didn’t really think about the fact that that would let us change the configuration of the stairs.

The architect had said at one point that he wanted the stair fabricator to do shop drawings. He sarcastically said “if you don’t do them you’re going to wind up refabricating things when there are problems”. The contractor and stair fabricator took that as a viable option (it’s amazing how much the contractor does and has to redo when it conflicts with something else – it’s just how they work). Long story short the architect later insisted on shop drawings and offered to do them himself, but the fabricator started working before the shop drawings were done. Then the architect realized there was a headroom clearance problem where the stairs intruded into the kitchen so he told them things needed to change. The next day the fabricator went and started installing what he had already come up with, which of course was a problem. Luckily they had agreed to redo things if there were problems so he had to cart away the first set of stairs and come up with a new set.

Now the stairs are configured just like all the other stairs in our unit, though they’re slightly steeper to get clearance under the stairs for the powder room. You can see below that the stairs actually come into the space quite a bit (ignore the wood stairs – they’re just temporary construction stairs). We’re going to go with a pretty minimal railing to keep things open and airy and somewhat loft-like.

The first batch of stairs the fabricator brought were primed. Dan wanted raw metal with a gun metal blue finish on it, so that’s what’s going in this time. They should look pretty spectacular when they’re done. We’ve always known that they were the primary design element in our unit since they dominate and define a very vertical space (4 stories + up to a roof deck).

We’re away this week (in Toronto). When we come home we hope the first flight of stairs will be done, and progress will have been made on the roof. There’s also a host of other things that the guys can work on – it’ll be interesting to see what else gets done.

We’re finally getting sprinkler plans in this week. Initially we thought we could put them on the domestic water supply and get away with 29 heads. Now we’re up to 38 heads so we need a dedicated sprinkler filing. We also need to finalize the window order and get the deposit to the window company. (It never ends – even when we’re on vacation we’re doing house stuff)…

5 Stories & Big Bedrooms = More Expensive Sprinklers

Posted on June 23, 2011 by BeatingUpwind

There’s been a lot of uncertainty for us when it came to sprinklers…

At first we were hoping we didn’t need them (’cause we were trying to stay on budget). But we were told we do need them.
Then we were hoping that we only needed to sprinkler egress areas. But we were told we had to sprinkler the entire building (minus closets and bathrooms). But that’s probably a good thing – I’ll sleep better knowing it will be easier to get out in a fire.
Then we were hoping we could save some money by using CPVC (it’s legal for townhouses), but the plumber isn’t comfortable with CPVC – so he’s going to use black pipe.
Then we were hoping we could get by with 30 or fewer sprinkler heads since 30 and under can run off the domestic water supply. The architect was pretty confident we could do everything in 29 heads, but he cautioned he wasn’t an sprinkler guy and so he couldn’t guarantee it. But when a mechanical engineer went over the plans he decided we needed 37 heads.

So how did we get to 37 heads?

First, 5 stories = more space and more rooms to sprinkler. The top floor alone has 6 heads on it.

Second, we opted for having big bedrooms and smaller bathrooms (all of our bedrooms are over 200 sq. ft.) Turns out they’re bigger than can be covered with a single sprinkler head. If we were an office building it wouldn’t be a problem. The issue is that residential buildings tend to have a lot more flammable items along the walls – art, wall coverings, furniture, etc. That means residential sprinkler systems are required to soak the walls, not just the floors (as is typical in office buildings). The architect suggested extended coverage heads that throw water over a bigger area, but the mechanical engineer determined that we didn’t have enough water pressure for those types of heads.

Cost-wise it turns out that our water connection was no good, so we have to do a new connection to the water main anyway. So going over 30 heads won’t be that much more expensive than what we would have had to do anyway. But I’m sure we’ll be seeing a change order for the extra heads…

BTW, I realized talking to some people a while back that some people don’t realize that sprinklers don’t have to be ugly any more. New sprinklers are usually just little discs on the ceiling like in the picture to the right.

Next the plumber has to figure out how he’s running the sprinkler pipes. We’re supposed to have recessed/concealed heads, but I’m not sure where the sprinkler pipe is going to go – there are drain pipes in the way in some places and dropping the ceiling isn’t an option in some places where we’re already at 8′ ceiling height. So the sprinkler drama isn’t quite over yet…