MANHATTAN

Called the “Father of Soho,” Lithuanian-born American artist George Maciunas was a visionary. In the late 1960s, he stopped the city from running a highway through (and razing) the neighborhood south of Manhattan’s Houston Street by buying dilapidated loft buildings, converting them to co-ops, and then selling them as places where artists could live and work.

Now, one of those buildings — a loft co-op at 537 Broadway — has gotten a major facelift. And just in time, too.

By all accounts, the original Schwab House was a beauty to behold. An extravagant, 75-room mansion located on Riverside Drive between West 73rd and West 74th Streets, it was constructed for steel magnate Charles M. Schwab and has been called “the grandest and most ambitious house ever built on the island of Manhattan.” It combined details from three French Renaissance châteaux and took four years to build at a cost of $6 million. After Schwab’s death, however, the building fell on hard times. It was demolished and replaced in 1951 by a 17-story, 633-unit building that was also called the Schwab House. It went co-op in 1984.

Now, in a small way, some of its predecessor’s grandeur may be returning to the property. 

The limestone base, decorative fireplaces and beamed ceilings of 51 Fifth Avenue recall a bygone era of ease and elegance. It's little wonder, then, that the 1928 building was chosen to represent the home of the characters on the hit 1990s sitcom Mad About You. For those with longer memories for distinguished luminaries, former New York Governor Al Smith moved to 51 Fifth after losing the presidential election to Herbert Hoover, and lived there until the 1940s.

Last year, luminance of a different sort was on the mind of one building employee. At night, the superintendent, Zoltan Papp, would watch the sun go down from his office at the 89-unit Greenwich Village cooperative. Then the floodlights in the backyard would come on — and stay on all night, casting chiaroscuro shadows in the empty outdoor space until a timer switched them off at dawn.

Sugar Hill evokes mixed feelings in Albelisa Kemp, a project manager at Rand Architecture & Engineering. “It’s a beautiful district; there’s some really amazing stonework,” she says, while admitting to some disappointment: the historic district, located in the northern part of the Hamilton Heights section of Harlem, has also unfortunately seen a lot of deterioration over the years.

An exception to that trend is 470 Convent Avenue. The six-story, Beaux-Arts brick building is undergoing a façade, roof and window renovation. “The building is an icon,” board president Michael Davu says, noting that it was designed by architects Gross & Kleinberger and constructed in 1911. “People come to the neighborhood from everywhere, so we get a lot of foot traffic,” he adds. The property has eight commercial stores on an avenue that is otherwise almost all residential.

At  Morgan Court, a 22-story condominium in the Murray Hill section of Manhattan, a balky old generator stood sentry in a courtyard for decades. It provided some power to the building during the August 2003 blackout but then failed to function during routine maintenance checks. The condo board sporadically talked about fixing or replacing it but never did.

Then, the big storm hit.

Recent news affecting co-op / condo buyers, sellers, boards and residents. This week, the saga of Oceana may be nearing its end, as a judge halts construction on view-destroying boardwalk restrooms. Elsewhere, a condominium's residents get displaced by fire, Co-op City mulls Cablevision, and there's some legislative movement, finally, to thwart scammers who pretend to be disabled so they can have pets in no-pet buildings. Plus, Carly Simon sells her co-op, we've tips for co-op admission interviews — hopefully not like this one from Saturday Night Live — and apps, not fobs, may be the keys of the future.

Recent news affecting co-op / condo buyers, sellers, boards and residents. This week, condo-board president Joan Rivers scores a court victory over a deadbeat resident, and residents around One57 no longer have to keep relocating because of that freaking construction crane. New York City's getting greener with new electronic-waste recycling bins for your garbage room. Plus: news on tiny apartments, colossal condos and, for boards, the latest on Airbnb hoteling and what's new in combined heat and power (CHP) generators.

A five-year capital plan is an important tool co-op boards and condominium associations need in order to move their building forward in a cohesive, strategic way that optimizes the resources at hand. Trouble is, once you put something in writing, your shareholders and unit-owners don't always understand that real life sometimes gets in the way: The economy plunges, and banks won't give you the loan you need; you want to install a gym, but heavy snow and unseen longtime damage makes your garage roof cave in. You know how it goes. So with residents ready to pounce, should you share the plan with the shareholders/unit-owners?

Recent news affecting co-op / condo buyers, sellers, boards and residents. This week, police erroneously force a doorman to let a delinquent owner into her condo apartment — while almost simultaneously, a judge is ruling that she pay up first. Add the fact this occurred at the condominium where Joan Rivers is board president only goes to show that no matter who you are, board members (as another comedian put it) get no respect, I tell ya. Except here, of course, and for boards we've news of a lawsuit against an insurance agent who procured inadequate flood coverage, efforts to keep an alleged hoarder away and that graffiti on the side of your building? It may be worth six figures.

At a 26-unit co-op in Tribeca that he manages, Timothy C. Grogan, president of Grogan & Associates, reviews the construction contract when a buyer does a board-approved apartment alteration, makes sure the security deposit is paid, and checks that all insurance and Department of Buildings filings are in order and that periodic inspections by the building's engineer or architect are performed on time. For this, he's paid a $450 fee by the shareholder whose apartment was under renovation. Should he be?