Twenty years ago, Lisa Collier Cool was sleeping in her 14th floor apartment on West 72nd Street in Manhattan when her dog began barking. Not wanting to get up, Lisa tried to go back to sleep, but the dog was adamant and continued. Lis…
Time was when New Yorkers rarely thought twice about disasters except when they watched movies such as “Airport,” “Earthquake,” “War of the Worlds” and “King Kong.” Then came 9/11, and people suddenly had to take the threat of …
Like most companies, co-ops and condos have two important, yet distinct budgets which allow boards and owners to manage the day-to-day and long-term financial requirements of their buildings. The operating budget includes recurring exp…
Nearly every residential building in the city has one—they’re an integral part of all your building systems, a direct line of communication between your residents, your manager, and your board. They’re on-call 24 hours a day, seven day…
If you want to tour some of Manhattan’s most impressive apartment house architechture, a trip to the Upper West side is a no-brainer. There, you can view such buildings as The Osborne, the Beresford and the Van Corlear, all known for t…
David Sack has lived in the West Village John Adams apartment building since 1998. The building is a 21-story, 404-unit, white-brick apartment complex built in 1963 and converted to a cooperative in 1980. When David moved in, he…
Plumbing is one of those things we take for granted yet without it, we might as well be back in the Stone Age. With dozens, hundreds and sometimes thousands of people living in individual co-op and condo complexes, the importance of we…
Do you know what your problem is? More importantly, do you know if it’s actually your problem? In the world of condos and co-ops, understanding who is responsible for what in an apartment or in a building’s common areas isn’t always cle…
There are worse places to be than New York City in the winter — Minneapolis, for example, or Anchorage. Thanks to the North Atlantic current, the Big Apple doesn’t tend to freeze as hard as some other northern cities, but it still gets…