{"id":301965,"date":"2021-07-18T00:49:08","date_gmt":"2021-07-17T21:49:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/inside-the-fight-to-resurrect-nycs-pioneering-windermere-building\/"},"modified":"2021-07-18T00:49:08","modified_gmt":"2021-07-17T21:49:08","slug":"inside-the-fight-to-resurrect-nycs-pioneering-windermere-building","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/inside-the-fight-to-resurrect-nycs-pioneering-windermere-building\/","title":{"rendered":"#Inside the fight to resurrect NYC’s pioneering Windermere building"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Inside the fight to resurrect NYC’s pioneering Windermere building<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n

The Windermere building, which was home to a new breed of pioneering \u201cbachelor girls\u201d in the early 1900s, may finally rise again after decades of disrepair and neglect \u2014 thanks to some women who\u2019ve fought for 40 years to save it.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomeone I know drove by it the other day and told me, \u2018Hey, there\u2019s a new building up where the Windermere was,\u2019\u201d said former Legal Services attorney Deborah Rand, who began helping tenants fight evictions in 1980. \u201cI said, \u2018No that\u2019s still the Windermere. It\u2019s finally been fixed up.\u2019 He didn\u2019t even recognize it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u00a0Queen Anne-style Windermere, one of the oldest large apartment houses in the city, dominates the southwest corner of 57th Street and Ninth Avenue in Hell\u2019s Kitchen. One historian called it \u201can exuberant display of textured, corbelled, and polychromatic brickwork.\u201d<\/p>\n

For years, it was \u00a0a place where the first Carrie Bradshaws in Manhattan got not just a room, but an apartment of their own.<\/p>\n

Women had been entering the workforce in record numbers in the late 1800s but single, independent females were stuck living in boarding houses or charity-run facilities, according to Michael D. Caratzas,<\/a> a historian with the Landmarks Preservation Commission.<\/p>\n

But at the turn of the century, the Windermere \u2014 helped along with its superintendent, a father to two daughters who were writers \u2014 offered something new.<\/p>\n

Many of the women who lived there worked as salesgirls or secretaries, while others were in the arts, and all lived \u201cunsupervised, with a latchkey and without a chaperone.\u201d One, a writer, lived for awhile in a rooftop room.<\/p>\n

\"A
A new owner plans to turn the Windermere into a luxe hotel and retail space.<\/figcaption>
J.C.Rice<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A 1898 article in The New York Times described the Windermere as \u201csacred to the New Woman.\u201d<\/p>\n

Decades later, though, the building became the site of epic landlord-tenant battles, and it had deteriorated into a house of horrors when the last tenants left in 2008.<\/p>\n

Though the Windermere was declared a city landmark in 2005, it\u2019s been vacant since 2007. It\u2019s one of the only Manhattan apartment houses of its kind \u2014 especially one sitting on such a prime location \u2014 to fall into such lengthy disuse.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s never lost its hold on some former tenants, as well as lawyers and activists, who fought for \u00a0it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt draws you in, people get obsessed with it,\u201d Rand told the Post. \u201cThere\u2019s a drama there every minute.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt might be my favorite building,\u201d Gale Brewer, the Manhattan borough president, told The Post. <\/p>\n

She was working for City Council member Ruth Messinger in 1980 when she got a call from Rand saying some tenants at the Windermere had been illegally locked out. Brewer called the police.<\/p>\n

\"Lawyer
Lawyer Deborah Rand (left) and former Windermere resident Capp<\/a>y Haskin were determined to give the building a fighting chance to return to glory.<\/p>\n<\/figcaption>
Helayne Seidman<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWhat a mess,\u201d she recalled. \u201cI first went in there in 1980 and it looked like a demilitarized zone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brewer represented the Hell\u2019s Kitchen area from 2002-2013 and worked to save the Windermere all that time. Last week she sent out a letter in support of the zoning permit needed for the new vision for the Windermere, which would reimagine it as a boutique hotel with retail and restaurant space. <\/p>\n

\u201c[The building\u2019s] been through so much. It has such a spirit from those first women who lived there back when it was built,\u201d Brewer said. \u201cI can\u2019t wait to see it reborn.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Windermere was built in 1881, just before other storied buildings of the same era \u2014 like the Gramercy (1883), the Osborne (1883) and the Dakota (1884) \u2014 but lacked the same staying power.<\/p>\n

When it opened, the structure contained 39 apartments, each with five or six bedrooms complete with engraved marble fireplaces and mirrored parlor walls, according to a report from 2002<\/a>. Amenities included liveried servants, hydraulic elevators and a telephone service.<\/p>\n

When the area lost its luster after the turn of the century, the bachelor girls moved out and a grittier, artsier crowd moved in. Actors Steve McQueen and \u201cLive and Let Die\u201d villain Yaphet Kotto lived there in the 1960s. Part of the Windermere became a dingy SRO.<\/p>\n

Cappy Haskin, now 74, moved into a small, two-bedroom apartment in 1970.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were a real mix of people,\u201d Haskin, a former computer programmer, told The Post. \u201cThere was a Romanian violinist in a beret, there was a Puerto Rican woman, there was a seamstress from Chile. It was a bit of a rough area then. We called it \u2018Port Authority North.\u2019 But we were all good people who paid our rent.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The building took a sharp downward spiral in 1980, almost exactly a century after it opened.<\/p>\n

Rand first met residents, most of whom lived in the SRO part of the building, when they came to her in desperation that year. She handled at least 100 of their cases, helping to get many eviction cases tossed out.<\/p>\n

Then-owner Alan B. Weissman was trying to get rid of tenants so he could sell the place, and the Windermere became the site of some of the worst landlord-tenant harassment in the city\u2019s history.<\/p>\n

There were assaults and death threats, and one tenant\u2019s apartment was broken into four times. Once, according to the 1983 indictments, \u00a0\u201ccleaning fluids were poured over his books, clothing and bed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWeissman started to send people into the building to threaten people,\u201d Rand told The Post. \u201cIt got violent. They knocked on doors and went inside. They moved pimps and prostitutes and drug dealers in. It was terrifying. A lot of the people were vulnerable and elderly. They\u2019d tell them that if they didn\u2019t move out, they\u2019d be in danger, that something bad was going to happen to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The managing agents and superintendent went to jail<\/a> after being charged with conspiracy to force tenants to move, as well as burglary, coercion and attempted grand larceny.<\/p>\n

Haskin was part of a group ordered by the city to leave in 1983.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were forced out \u2026 as the building was deemed in danger of imminent collapse,\u201d Haskin said. \u201cWe were given one week to pack \u2014 daytime only \u2014\u00a0and couldn\u2019t sleep there. At the end of the week, on an evening, police cars were at the building with flashing lights and barricades. It was awful.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

You can never forget it [the Windermere]. It stayed in my heart.<\/p>\n

Former tenant Cappy Haskin<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n

She and some former neighbors then spent a decade fighting to return before giving up. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou can never forget it,\u201d Haskin said of the Windermere. \u201cIt\u2019s stayed in my heart. I was naive at the time. I thought that since we were good tenants, it would all work out but I was wrong. None of that made any difference. We had to leave and it was more traumatic than I realized at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1986, the building was sold to an eccentric Japanese businessman who reportedly saw the Windermere from a tour bus and bought it without stepping foot inside. The landlord allowed the building to fall apart in an apparent bid to clear out tenants. <\/p>\n

The once-grand building turned into a pigeon excrement-dotted dump covered in netting and scaffolding. After 1996, just a handful of tenants remained, living without electricity. They gathered drinking water from the sidewalk hydrant. <\/p>\n

Even after leaving Legal Services in 1987 to work as an attorney for the city, Rand continued to advocate for Windermere tenants for the next three decades. <\/p>\n

With a push from former Windermere tenants, the building was designated a landmark in 2005, thus foiling any plans to demolish it. <\/p>\n

In 2007, the city ordered the last remaining tenants, all of whom who had been there for about 40 years, to vacate because the building had become a fire hazard.<\/p>\n

Rand, working on behalf of the city along with the tenants\u2019 attorneys, went to court to force the landlord to make necessary repairs so tenants could return to their homes. A long trial ensued, Rand said, and the court ordered the landlord to make the repairs. <\/p>\n

But before the tenants could move back in, the owner decided to sell. As as a condition of the sale, the tenants got $500,000 each to give up the right to return to the Windermere. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The city, meanwhile, netted $1 million in fine money for all the violation of the landmark preservation laws.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was bittersweet,\u201d Rand said. \u201cI started by trying to keep all the tenants in the building and that had always been my wish.\u201d<\/p>\n

FEW people have seen the current state of the Windermere\u2019s interior. Among them is Moshe \u201cMark\u201d Tress of Lakewood, NJ, who bought the place for $13 million from the absentee Japanese owner in 2009.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a mess when I got it,\u201d Tress told The Post. \u201cThere was no running water and it was a hazard inside and out. It felt like walking through a combination of a haunted house and a fun house.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tress has restored the exterior to its former grandeur with a multi-million dollar facelift of the rich red-brick facade. Three ornamental pillars of special granite were transported from Scotland to match the original decoration.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a big, rich part of New York City yesteryear,\u201d Tress said. \u201cIt\u2019s a gem in the rough and it\u2019s back.\u201d<\/p>\n

The plan is to turn the Windermere into a 175-room boutique hotel with retail on the first floor. Tress expects to get a permit to add one story that will allow for a rooftop restaurant.<\/p>\n

Tress \u201cgot an incredible deal,\u201d said someone familiar with the situation. The building will probably be worth between $100 and $150 million when fully renovated.<\/p>\n

Brewer is supporting the application, now in the process of a uniform land use review process,<\/p>\n

No matter what, the new incarnation of the Windermere will include 20 units of affordable housing \u2014\u00a0required by the Landmarks Preservation Commission to compensate for the past tenant harassment.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt made me feel good that we saw it through,\u201d Haskin said. \u201cThe building survived. It was a fight not in vain. It\u2019s pretty awful not to have a home. But something good came out of all that suffering.\u201d\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#Inside the fight to resurrect NYC’s pioneering Windermere building” The Windermere building, which was home to a new breed of pioneering \u201cbachelor girls\u201d in the early 1900s, may finally rise again after decades of disrepair and neglect \u2014 thanks to some women who\u2019ve fought for 40 years to save it. \u201cSomeone I know drove by…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":301966,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/07\/Building-Hopes-Windermere.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[112110,75634,76203,4952,71226,71609],"class_list":["post-301965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-7-17-21","tag-carrie-bradshaw","tag-landlord-tenant-disputes","tag-manhattan","tag-real-estate","tag-womens-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301965\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/301966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}