Building Explosion / Collapse: E. 62 @ Madison / Park

[lofter1]

NY1 / Channel 4 are reporting that a 3-story building has collapsed on E. 62nd between Madison / Park.

Initial event took place around 8:30 AM.

Fire / Explosion is being reported reported. Numerous emergency responders are on the scene.

Live Chopper 4 is now showing large amounts of smoke from the scene.

4-5 ambulances are lined up along Park Avenue.

[lofter1]

Reports say the building is 36 E. 62nd St.

Links Club Inc. - 212-838-8181 - 36 E 62nd St (Madison & Park)

It is described as a "Social Club".

[lofter1]

It is now being reported that it is 32 E. 62nd.

Jul 10, 2006 9:14 am US/Eastern

Manhattan Building Explodes

A three-story building at 32 East 62nd Street in Manhattan exploded this morning and is burning.

Fire department officials are calling this a "major incident," as the fire has gone to a second alarm. They have closed surrounding streets.

http://img.viacomlocalnetworks.com/images_image_282165854 LIVE: Manhattan Building Collapse (http://javascript<b></b>:void(0))

There are reports of multiple people trapped inside the building, but there are no confirmed injuries at the moment. FDNY workers are now climbing over the rubble of the collapsed building to try to get to those who are reportedly trapped underneath.

The FDNY Collapse Response Unit has arrived on the scene and will join the search.

The first calls came into 9-1-1 at around 8:50 a.m.

Adjoining buildings have also caught fire.

Heavy black smoke is visible for miles.

[ManhattanKnight]

4th alarm called at 9:28 am.

[lofter1]

Confusion here ...

DOB (http://a810-bisweb.nyc.gov/bisweb/PropertyProfileOverviewServlet?bin=1040861&requestid=2) says that 32 E. 62nd is a 15 story apartment building and on the corner of Madison.

Reports continue to describe the building involved as a 3-story building.

[lofter1]

http://wcbstv.com/topstories/local_story_191090936.html

http://img.viacomlocalnetworks.com/images_sizedimage_191090252/lg
Firefighters battled the blaze and began a search for survivors under the rubble pile.
CBS

http://img.viacomlocalnetworks.com/images_sizedimage_191091249/lg
The blast sent a tower of smoke over New York City.
CBS

http://img.viacomlocalnetworks.com/images_sizedimage_191091653/lg
CBS

[lofter1]

4 Alarms have now been called

It is now reported as 34 E. 62nd ...

DOB (http://a810-bisweb.nyc.gov/bisweb/JobDetailsServlet?requestid=6&allisn=0000042125&allboroughname=&allnumbhous=&allstrt) describes this as a 4 story building with doctor office on 1st floor and has 3 residential units.

BARTHA, NICHOLAS MD
Medical
description: internal, emergency medicine
address:
34 East 62nd Street
New York, NY 10021

[infoshare]

Thanks for the news.....:eek: :eek:

[lofter1]

Reports now that Con Ed was investigating the smell of gas in the area just before the explosion ...

From CNN:

Building collapses, burns in New York (http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/07/10/building.collapse/index.html)

http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2006/US/07/10/building.collapse/newt1.nycbldgclps.03.wnyw.jpg

An explosion and fire leveled a residential building on New York's Upper East Side this morning, fire officials and witnesses told CNN. At least one person was transported to the hospital, New York firefighters said. CNN's Larry King, who had been in his hotel room nearby, described the explosion as sounding like a bomb and feeling like an earthquake. "I've never heard a sound like that," King said.

[pianoman11686]

Funny...I can't see any smoke, and I'm only about 10 blocks away. I can see 4 or 5 choppers hovering over the site though.

[lofter1]

Looks on TV like the smoke is moving E / NE ...

[ManhattanKnight]

5th alarm transmitted at 10:14 am.

[Kris]

34 East 62nd Street:

http://www.curbed.com/archives/2006_07_34e62.jpg

http://www.curbed.com/archives/2006/07/10/breaking_34_east_62nd_before_the_fall.php

[Zerlina]

Hello to everybody!
I've heard about the explosion on tv... and I was so scared after what happened to the twins towers... :(
However I think it's a big and dangerous incident... please... what about people inside the building???:(

[MidtownGuy]

Last thing I heard was that there are 11 people injured.

[ManhattanKnight]

Fortunately, Manhattan townhouses rarely explode. This is the last one that comes to mind: The Weathermen Bomb Factory (http://www.newyorkcitywalk.com/html/images_weathermen.html).

[pianoman11686]

Quick update from what I've read so far:

Authorities have determined it was a gas explosion. Only one person, a doctor, was inside the building at the time. He was in critical condition when the firefighters got there. 4 other civilians, and 6 firefighters have been injured. Authorities got a call from the doctor's wife after the incident, who told them that he had recently been contemplating suicide after their divorce, and was going to have to sell the building in the near future.

[Zerlina]

So... this doctor could have tried the suicide and determined the gas explosione... what do you think about it?:(

[pianoman11686]

Too early to speculate. What we do know is that around 10 o'clock, a little more than an hour after the explosion, the doctor was speaking to firefighters on his cell phone to help them locate him in the rubble. So at least during that moment, he did not want to die.

Some pictures courtesy of the New York Times:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/07/10/us/10collapse_slide1.jpg

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/07/10/nyregion/10collapse_slide2.jpg

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/07/10/nyregion/10collapse_slide3.jpg

http://graphics10.nytimes.com/images/2006/07/10/nyregion/10collapse_slide4.jpg

http://graphics10.nytimes.com/images/2006/07/10/nyregion/10collapse_slide5.jpg

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/07/10/nyregion/10collapse_slide6.jpg

[Ninjahedge]

At least he does not have to sell the house!

:(

Bad, I know, but I could not resist. The suicide thing fits pretty well though. The thing about suicide is though, that the human survival instinct is pretty strong. It has a way of kicking in pretty quickly if the deed is not done instantly.

Some exceptions apply, but I think that there were probably quite a few that had second thoughts after jumping, or ODing or whatever. We just do not hear too much about that after the fact...

[krulltime]

Suicide attempt probed in NYC collapse


http://www.curbed.com/archives/2006_07_buildingcollapse.jpg


By ADAM GOLDMAN
Associated Press Writer
July 10, 2006

NEW YORK (AP) -- A four-story building on Manhattan's Upper East Side collapsed into a pile of rubble Monday after a thunderous explosion that hurled fireballs skyward and left an upscale block littered with bricks, broken glass and splintered wood.

Authorities said the blast was caused by gas, and they were investigating whether it was the result of a suicide attempt by the building's owner, a doctor who was going through a bitter divorce. The doctor, Nicholas Bartha, 66, and a passer-by were severely hurt; at least 13 other people had minor injuries.

Bartha recently sent out a rambling e-mail to his wife in which he contemplated suicide, a police official with direct knowledge of the case told The Associated Press. The note read in part, "You will be transformed from gold digger to ash and rubble digger." The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.

The injured included five civilians and 10 firefighters. Bartha was pulled from the rubble after talking with authorities from his phone while buried in the wreckage, Fire Chief Nicholas Scoppetta said. Bartha and one passer-by suffered severe injuries; the others had minor injuries.

Bartha recently lost a $4 million judgment in the divorce case, and court records chronicle a nasty dispute that spanned five years.

In a petition filed this year, Cordula Bartha asked that deputies remove Nicholas Bartha from the residence. "I have no doubt that (he) will ensconce himself in the marital residence and refuse to leave it after the auction is held. He has said many times that he intends to 'die in my house.'"

A message seeking comment from the lawyer for Nicholas Bartha was not immediately returned. Attorneys for 64-year-old Cordula Bartha issued a statement: "Ms. Bartha cannot at this time withstand the additional burden of the media microscope on this personal tragedy. Ms. Bartha and her family are deeply saddened and terribly upset by today's occurrence."

Heavy black smoke rose high above the 19th-century building, just a few blocks from Central Park. Debris was strewn everywhere. Four of the injured were pedestrians, and some were found covered in blood on the street.

"This could have been an even worse disaster than it already is," Scoppetta said.

Power company Con Edison said its crews had been responding to complaints from a gas customer at an adjacent building at the time of the blast.

Yaakov Kermaier, 36, a resident in a building next door, said he was outside when he heard "a deafening boom. I saw the whole building explode in front of me.

"Everybody started running, nobody knew what was coming next," he said. His nanny and newborn escaped from their next-door apartment unharmed.

The building housed two doctors' offices. Authorities said a nurse who was supposed to open one of the offices arrived late, narrowly missing the explosion.

Bartha was apparently the only person who lived in the building, Scoppetta said.

Thad Milonas, 57, was operating a coffee cart across from the building when he said the ground shook and the building came down. He said he helped two bleeding women from the scene.

"In a few seconds, finished," he said. "The whole building collapsed."

TV host Larry King, who had been in a hotel room nearby, described the explosion to CNN as sounding like a bomb and feeling like an earthquake.

"I've never heard a sound like that," King said.

The building is an upscale neighborhood where the 2000 Census put the median home price at $1 million. On one corner of the street is the high-end Luca Luca clothing store, and across the street is the French retailer Hermes.


http://hosted.ap.org/photos/D/DEUNYSR10507101813-big.jpg
Firefighters are seen directing fire hoses on to the remains of a collapsed
building on New York's Upper East Side, as others are seen on an adjacent
building, Monday, July 10, 2006. An explosion rocked the four story building
earlier this morning, causing a fire and eventually a total collapse, injuring
at least five civilians and six firefighters.


http://hosted.ap.org/photos/F/FRANNYSR10607101810-big.jpg
This photo shows an aerial view of the location of a collapsed building on
New York's Upper East Side, Monday, July 10, 2006.


© 2006 The Associated Press.

[Peakrate212]

Okay, why are we not bitching about the lost landmark of today on East 63rd?

Okay Doctor, you want to kill yourself, fine. But, did you have to take the building with you?

Suggestion for next time: pills



http://www.curbed.com/archives/2006_07_34e62.jpg

[alonzo-ny]

huh

[pianoman11686]

Was it really landmarked?

[lofter1]

Landmarked? Yep -- part of the Upper East Side Historic District: http://www.nyc.gov/html/lpc/downloads/pdf/maps/upper_e_side.pdf

Pills wouldn't seem to do the trick (go to this thread (http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showpost.php?p=108634&postcount=21) for full story):
investigating whether it was the result of a suicide attempt by the building's owner, a doctor who was going through a bitter divorce. The doctor, Nicholas Bartha, 66, and a passer-by were severely hurt; at least 13 other people had minor injuries.

Bartha recently sent out a rambling e-mail to his wife in which he contemplated suicide, a police official with direct knowledge of the case told The Associated Press. The note read in part, "You will be transformed from gold digger to ash and rubble digger."

[pianoman11686]

Hmm, those are some really strong words. I don't like to jump to conclusions based on this kind of preliminary evidence, although that e-mail is about as literal as it gets. I still can't help but think that the explosion itself was an accident. How could someone act so recklessly, especially a doctor? Perhaps he was just trying to get gas poisoning, and a spark did the rest.

[Peakrate212]

didnt mean to be harsh.....but, the building was being contested in the divorce and a sale was being forced.

[Peakrate212]

I am thinking a modern interpretation of a townhouse for the site..

[ZippyTheChimp]

So, he botched his suicide.

I wonder how competent a doctor he was.

[lofter1]

google (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22BARTHA%2C+NICHOLAS+MD%22) shows he was an internist / emergency physician.

and he's listed as a nyc doctor who speaks hungarian.

[pianoman11686]

Well, he must have been at least somewhat competent. An article said his divorce settlement was $4 million, so he probably amassed a small little fortune over his lifetime.

I hate turning a tragic event like this into a topic for business but...anyone know who owns this land and if the previous building was fully built out to its air rights?

[BrooklynRider]

A suicide that could've killed hundreds. Obviously the guy needs help, but what an idiot. He's a doctor. He could just go in the back room and take every pill on the shelves.

[BrooklynRider]

I hate turning a tragic event like this into a topic for business but...anyone know who owns this land and if the previous building was fully built out to its air rights?

LMFAO:D

[milleniumcab]

I don't know but does any divorce, as messy as it may be, justify suicide.. And he survived... The only thing he accomplished was a traffic nightmare..:mad:

[ablarc]

The only thing he accomplished was a traffic nightmare..:mad:
Spoken like a true cabbie. ;)

[macreator]

...and After

http://www.curbed.com/archives/2006_07_buildingcollapse.jpg

(via Curbed (http://www.curbed.com))

[macreator]

I've got to call this guy on selfishness. I mean any one of us could have been walking by outside.

Surely a doctor would know that burning oneself isn't exactly the most painless way to kill oneself.

[Peteynyc1]

Just walked by there 10 minutes ago. There is still about 8 news trucks on the corner of 62nd and Park and the copters are still hovering overhead.

I bet that piece of property just off Madison is worth almost as much empty as with the old building existing standing. I wonder what the city will charge against the estate for the cleanup, seeing how this is quickly looking like no accident.

[ZippyTheChimp]

Lol!

[ablarc]

After he recovers, will they put the good doctor in jail?

[Clarknt67]

I've got to call this guy on selfishness. I mean any one of us could have been walking by outside.

Surely a doctor would know that burning oneself isn't exactly the most painless way to kill oneself.
Most suicides are an irrational, crazy act. Trying to make sense of it afterwards, is a fool's error.
After he recovers, will they put the good doctor in jail?
Well there's a good chance he could be held accountable for a variety of crimes, including the injuries he caused, property he damaged (demolition without a liscence?). His lawyer's most likely will try to argue some form of diminished capacity (insanity).

[ablarc]

What amazes me is that he survived. What was the extent of his injury?

[ZippyTheChimp]

It seems that the house was a key component of the doctor's life.

July 11, 2006

The Doctor

House That Blew Up Was a Dream and Then a Nightmare

By CARA BUCKLEY

The graceful town house on East 62nd Street was more than a home to Nicholas Bartha. It was the culmination of his life’s work, proof that he had realized the classic immigrant’s dream.

Dr. Bartha, burned and barely conscious, was pulled from the ruins yesterday morning after the house was nearly leveled by a gas explosion, raining bricks on one of the city’s wealthiest streets and sending up thick columns of black smoke. Even before the fires were extinguished, police began focusing on Dr. Bartha as the most likely person to have caused the blast.

Just as his historic town house, a landmark used more than half a century ago by American spies, was no ordinary building, Dr. Bartha, 66, was embroiled in a marital split that by all accounts was no ordinary divorce. But he would have done anything to keep that house, including stay married, his lawyer said.

He lost one key battle last year when a court ruled that his wife deserved a share of the building, a decision he fought.

Then, in April, he was ordered to sell it so he could pay his wife more than $4 million. In court papers, she said he had repeatedly vowed in ominous tones that he would die in that house and that she would never get it.

Now there is no house.

“He wanted to stay married,” said Ira E. Garr, Dr. Bartha’s lawyer until last year. “He wanted to maintain the status quo so he could continue to live in this house,” he said, adding, “He wanted nothing other than to remain in this house for the rest of his life.”

Dr. Bartha was Romanian, and met his wife, Cordula Hahn, a native of the Netherlands, in 1973. He was studying medicine at the University of Rome, and she had just earned a doctorate in German literature. In 1974, they moved to the United States, and lived with Dr. Bartha’s parents in Rego Park, Queens.

Ms. Hahn took a job in the cultural section with the Netherlands Consulate General in New York while he studied for and passed exams enabling him to practice medicine in the United States. The couple were married early in 1977 and soon after had two daughters, Serena and Johanna. His wife stayed home to raise the children while he worked in hospital emergency rooms, where he developed a reputation for being a dour man with a gruff bedside manner.

“He only talked about work, a workaholic doctor,” said Dr. Paul Mantia, who shared an office with Dr. Bartha.

In 1980, Dr. Bartha first saw what would prove to be the love of his life, the four-story town house at 34 East 62nd Street, between Park and Madison Avenues.

According to divorce papers, he and his parents, Ethel and John Bartha, bought the house for $395,000, after cobbling together $199,699 in cash. Dr. Bartha, his young family and his parents moved into the house in 1986.

Dr. Bartha’s joy over the purchase was intense and immediate, Mr. Garr said. For him, it symbolized validation, proof of success.

“He told me, ‘I stood at the corner of 59th Street and Fifth Avenue and looked north, and said, “This is it. This is where I want to live the rest of my life,” ’ ” Mr. Garr said.

Dr. Bartha may have found his dream house, but his home life was far from idyllic.

As he worked, he grew increasingly estranged from his wife and daughters, his lawyer said. Silence pervaded the home. “There was two years of noncommunication,” Mr. Garr said. “They were like two ships in the night.”

In October 2001, his wife, who has resumed the use of her family name, filed for divorce and moved with her daughters to a small apartment in Washington Heights.

The divorce papers described a bizarre, markedly unhappy home life. Dr. Bartha put up “swastika-adorned articles” around the house, according to a court decision, “intentionally traumatizing” her because she is of Jewish descent and was born in “Nazi-occupied” Holland. Dr. Bartha became enraged when she took them down, according to the papers, which also said he ignored his wife as she was treated for breast cancer.

A judge granted her the divorce. He was ordered to pay $1.23 million, plus alimony of $2,000 per month for three years. But the referee in the case held that the couple’s home, then valued at $5 million, was not marital property and that Ms. Hahn had no claim to the home.

Then Dr. Bartha appealed the decision, a move that would ultimately cost him his house. He wanted to stay married, and would have had to sell or mortgage the house to pay the $1.2 million the court said he owed.

“He didn’t love her,” Mr. Garr said. “He was emotionally and constitutionally opposed to divorce. He was a man who worked all the time and couldn’t stand being alone.”

Early in 2005, the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court held that the town house was marital property. It was an unusual decision that the New York Law Journal noted on its front page, partly because the appellate court determined that the home was community property “regardless of the form in which the title is held.”

After the decision, Mr. Garr tried repeatedly to contact his client through letters and phone calls but failed “He disappeared,” Mr. Garr said.

Steadily, Dr. Bartha seemed to be swallowed by his own despondency. He had already begun a series of suicide attempts, according to an official, who would not speak for attribution because the investigation is under way.

In one instance, three or four years ago, the official said, Dr. Bartha barricaded himself inside his office and filled it with insecticide, and his secretary found him after breaking down the door. Once, within the last year, his partner found him in the basement, passed out with the gas on, the official said.

Finally, Dr. Bartha’s beloved town house slipped from his grasp.

In August 2005, Ms. Hahn received a judgment of $3.6 million, plus a property credit and lawyer’s fees, according to court papers. The total of all money judgments in the matrimonial action against Dr. Bartha came to more than $4 million. Ms. Hahn had complained in court papers that he “has fought me every step of the way in the divorce action,” and said she did not expect that he would satisfy the money judgments. The only way to ensure that he complied, she said, was to have the house sold.

“I have no doubt that respondent will ensconce himself in the marital residence and refuse to leave it after the auction is held,” she said. “He has said many times that he intends to ‘die in my house.’ ”

In April this year, Justice Joan B. Lobis of State Supreme Court ordered that his 75 percent interest in the house be sold at auction. The court also ordered that the sheriff evict him from the house no more than 10 days after the auction, and that the sheriff remove three pieces of property — two antique armoires and an antique desk — and turn it over to Ms. Hahn. The furniture belonged to her family, according to the order.

On Friday, a sheriff’s deputy arrived at the house with eviction papers, said Dr. Mantia, who shared his office. If Dr. Bartha was upset, he did not show it, Dr. Mantia said.

“He’s been up and down for two years since this divorce started,” Dr. Mantia said. “Sure, he was trying to commit suicide.”

Reporting for this article was contributed by Sewell Chan, Jim Dwyer, Anemona Hartocollis, Jo Craven McGinty, Mick Meenan, Aron Pilhofer and William K. Rashbaum.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

[ablarc]

They could make a movie out of this.

Nicholas Cage in the lead role? Meryl Streep as the wife?

[lofter1]

anyone know who owns this land and if the previous building was fully built out to its air rights?

Owned by the good doctor himself (per DOB (http://a810-bisweb.nyc.gov/bisweb/PropertyProfileOverviewServlet?bin=1040861&requestid=2))

Existing (FAR as Built): 2.46
Max allowed FAR: 4
SF under FAR: 3,092

CURBED (http://www.curbed.com/archives/2006/07/10/breaking_34_east_62nd_before_the_fall.php)

http://www.curbed.com/archives/2006_07_e62report.jpg

[lofter1]

What was the extent of his injury?

I've heard burns over 80% of his body with large chance of non-survival ...

NY 1 (http://www.ny1.com/ny1/content/index.jsp?stid=1&aid=60876)

Dr. Nicholas Bartha, who police say was the lone occupant of the building, was buried in the rubble and badly burned ...

According to hospital officials, Bartha and another unidentified person suffered serious injuries ...

[lofter1]

They could make a movie out of this.

Nicholas Cage in the lead role? Meryl Streep as the wife?

Or Ben Kingsley and Annette Bening, both brilliant in the Jean Harris HBO movie Mrs._Harris (http://www.hbo.com/films/mrsharris/) , recently nominated (http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/news/recent_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002800882) for 12 Emmys (including best movie, best actor, best actress, 2 for best supporting actress -- Cloris Leachman & Ellen Burstyn -- together again, as in the brilliant The Last Picture Show (http://www.filmsite.org/lastp.html) )

[Ninjahedge]

He flubbed his death.

I wonder if this is an example of the "psycological torture" his ex was subjected to while they were married.

How thoughtless of him to be depressed around her! How will she afford that $168K parking space by the Lincoln tunnel now??!?

[ManhattanKnight]

^Or, Larry, Moe and Curly's production of Gotterdamerung.

[Schadenfrau]

Are you joking, Ninjahedge? Damn.

He served that old shrew right, what with her having the nerve to be offended by his Nazism and all. He should have blown up 1,000 houses and injured a million more people!

At the very least, this worthless bastard could have tried to die without taking anyone else with him.

[lofter1]

But you're missing his point: He didn't want the ex to get the house or cash from same.

Any logic beyond that went out the window (so to say)

[Ninjahedge]

Um, tell me...

How is the property tax assessed value on this, now estimated $10M place, how is it rated at $279,840?!?!

You wonder why taxes are a problem?

[Ninjahedge]

Are you joking, Ninjahedge? Damn.

He served that old shrew right, what with her having the nerve to be offended by his Nazism and all. He should have blown up 1,000 houses and injured a million more people!

At the very least, this worthless bastard could have tried to die without taking anyone else with him.

He wanted the house Shade.

How could he force the house to take sleeping pills?

[Ninjahedge]

PS Shade, all they said on the morning news was that she was entitled to more cash because of "psycological torture".

That was what I was going on, not the accusation (true or not) of schwastika "decorations".

[pianoman11686]

Brownstone part of an elite group

The obliterated brownstone at 34 E. 62nd St. belonged to an elite group of buildings protected by the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission.
In May 1981, the city designated the four-story neo-Greco-style building a landmark within the upper East Side historic district.

The original owners, L.D. Russell and J.B. Wray, erected the stone-facade home in 1881-1882.

Whoever replaces the building must get approval from the commission and create a structure that resembles the original brownstone, according to commission Chairman Robert Tierney.

"You couldn't come in and put a 20-story building in there. [A replacement] would be likely the same size," said Tierney, who visited the site of destruction yesterday.

The building, which Dr.Nicholas Bartha and his family moved into in 1980, was believed to be worth up to $9 million.

Copyright 2006 The New York Daily News

[Schadenfrau]

I dare anyone to read Nicholas Bartha's e-mail and feel a shred of sympathy for him. (I'm posting the Fox News link only because Gov. Pataki and Arnold Schwarzenegger haven't been so kind as to make their copies public):


"Cordula with this you disinherited your children. Now Johanna and Serena have good reason to sign the straphanger and rent stabilization petitions and write letters to Sheldon Silver regarding rent stabilization...

...She was supposed to educate her children I do not think that a COOK and a SEAMSTRESS is a very good result. Cordula had only one responsibility and she failed! "

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,202916,00.html

[lofter1]

Wow ^ some e-mail.

Talk about getting back at colleagues before you go!

[pianoman11686]

Wow. If that doesn't offer some insight into someone's personal problems, I don't know what does. So many subjects were touched on - difficulties at work, deep-seeded political and ethnic grievances, injustice with the legal system, Dutch immorality, communism, FDR, and of course, the family problems. This guy had a lot of things on his mind, and it seems like everything around him bothered him. I'm not quite ready to place all the blame on him, but I'm close to it. He even included this at the end of his letter:

"P.S.#2. Ms Cindy Sheehan is desecrating her son's memory. I do not think she ever cared for her son the wishes of her family or her husband who is divorcing her. She disrespects his son's decision to go two times to fight in Iraq where he died trying to save another fighter. You are exploiting him and destroying his values. She is an opportunist trying to be famous on the back of her son."

[Schadenfrau]

Old man even managed to work in the word "dissed" to his diatribe.

I do feel badly for his family. I can't believe that a parent would be so cruel as to say things like that, especially to Fox News and George Pataki.

[Zerlina]

Okay Doctor, you want to kill yourself, fine. But, did you have to take the building with you?

Suggestion for next time: pills





Peakrate... I understand what you mean... but I don't understand the way you say it... if a man decides to die, he must be desperate...

[pianoman11686]

For anyone who hasn't read a copy of the doctor's e-mail, or at least an article that talks about it, it's very clear that he had tried to commit suicide on multiple previous occasions using more common methods (gas poisoning, insecticide, etc). This time, he not only wanted to die, but he also wanted to completely destroy the townhouse, so that his wife would not get it.

[TomAuch]

Brownstone part of an elite group

The obliterated brownstone at 34 E. 62nd St. belonged to an elite group of buildings protected by the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission.
In May 1981, the city designated the four-story neo-Greco-style building a landmark within the upper East Side historic district.

The original owners, L.D. Russell and J.B. Wray, erected the stone-facade home in 1881-1882.

Whoever replaces the building must get approval from the commission and create a structure that resembles the original brownstone, according to commission Chairman Robert Tierney.

"You couldn't come in and put a 20-story building in there. [A replacement] would be likely the same size," said Tierney, who visited the site of destruction yesterday.

The building, which Dr.Nicholas Bartha and his family moved into in 1980, was believed to be worth up to $9 million.

Copyright 2006 The New York Daily News

Make Bartha foot the bill for part of its reconstruction. This guy is an insane douchebag.

[ablarc]

Make Bartha foot the bill for part of its reconstruction.
Part? How about all? But let him keep the building after it's rebuilt. This whole thing has had to do with the fact that he loved the building more than anything else. Let him have his ol' building.

[ZippyTheChimp]

Peakrate... I understand what you mean... but I don't understand the way you say it... if a man decides to die, he must be desperate...That fact seems to be missed in some of what I'm reading.

[ryan]

I hope your vacation was good.

wow. Thanks for the link, schadenfrau.

[Schadenfrau]

Part? How about all? But let him keep the building after it's rebuilt. This whole thing has had to do with the fact that he loved the building more than anything else. Let him have his ol' building.

Why exactly should he be allowed to keep the building? People who are convincted of destroying buildings are sentenced to prison, not rewarded.

Bartha knowingly destroyed this property with reckless disregard for human life. He's old enough and smart enough to know that a gas explosion doesn't result in a cloud of pixie dust.

He even appeared to be attempting to murder his office manager in the explosion:

http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=traffic&id=4356433

If he cancelled his appointments, why wouldn't he tell the woman not to come into work, unless he had no regard for her life?

Frankly, I'm amazed that so many people are going so easy on this guy. If he had been an Islamic militant, he would be getting none of your sympathy. The end result is the same.

[pianoman11686]

Signs of Tampering Seen in Town House’s Gas Line

By JOHN HOLUSHA

Published: July 11, 2006

Police and fire investigators digging through the remains of a four-story town house that exploded on Monday indicated that a gas line leading into the house had been tampered with before the blast, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said today.

Investigators said that the line had been modified so a hose could be attached to it and that the hose had been stretched to the rear of the house, at 34 East 62nd Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

The owner of the house, Dr. Nicholas Bartha, remained hospitalized today, as officials tried to determine whether he was connected to the tampering. One televised report said he was in a medically induced coma today as he was being treated for burns and other injuries suffered in the explosion and fire.

If Dr. Bartha is charged with arson or negligence in connection with the explosion, any insurance coverage there was on the building would likely not pay for the damages , a spokesperson for an industry trade association said today.

Loretta Worters, vice president for communications at the Insurance Information Institute, said, “If the explosion was caused by a criminal act like arson or negligence the policy would be void.”

She said the incident “raises a host of insurances issues” because people could sue the building owner for physical injuries and damage to their property. She said insurance adjusters typically work with police and fire investigators to determine the policy holder’s state of mind, looking for financial or marital problems.

Dr. Bartha and his former wife, Cordula, went through a bitter divorce and a dispute over ownership of the town house dragged on for years. In April, Dr. Bartha was ordered to sell the building so he could pay his ex-wife more than $4 million.

In a rambling e-mail message Dr. Bartha sent to various individuals and organizations less than two hours before the blast, he noted that he had worked as a machinist at a company in Queens shortly after immigrating to this country in 1965. He later attended medical school in Rome, graduating in 1974 and doing his internship and residency in New York.

The disjointed, erratically punctuated e-mail message went to his ex-wife, with copies sent to Gov. George E. Pataki and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, and to the Fox News personalities Sean Hannity and Brit Hume, among others.

In the message, he told her: “You always wanted me to sell the house. I always told you, ‘I will leave the house only if I am dead’ You ridiculed me. You should have taken it seriously.”

He also wrote, “When you read this lines your life will change forever. You deserve it. You will be transformed from gold digger to ash and rubbish digger.”

He sent the message at 7:30 a.m. Twenty-one minutes later, Con Edison received a call from employees of the private club next door, the Links Club — organized early in the 20th century to promote golf — saying they smelled gas. Michael S. Clendenin, a spokesman for Con Edison, said it sent a mechanic, who arrived at 8:20.

Mr. Clendenin said the mechanic called in at 8:45 to report the explosion. The mechanic was not injured.

The blast caused damage to nearby buildings, blowing out windows and inundating the area with smoke. But today most residents had moved back into their apartments in the Cumberland building, on the corner of 62nd Street and Madison Avenue, although some units were badly damaged and 13 are still cordoned off by the authorities.

The blast knocked out air conditioning for the six stores in the Cumberland along a hot retail block on Madison Avenue.

“I’m angry that we have to deal with this situation,” said Tom Gecaj, the director of security for Lockes Diamands, one of the stores. “I’m angry that a person initiated this situation. We are the last on the chain.”

Jean Pierre David, the manager of the Links Club, located on the other side of the destroyed building, said the damage to his structure was minimal. “The roof has been bashed in a bit, but there is no major damage. It’s going to be just a few days to get it back into order.”

Some of the windows in the building were blown out by the blast and were covered by sheeting today.

Alan Rogers, who operates the Land’s End store in the Cumberland said the sudden evacuation of residents of the building came as a shock. “It was very tough on some of the elderly people,” he said. “Some were in their night dresses. It was very distressing.”

Miguel Roig, 50, a doorman at the Cumberland, said the explosion had caved in the door to the building’s garage, trapping 10 cars inside.

East 62nd Street remained closed between Madison and Park Avenues, as heavy equipment dug into the rubble remaining on the building and trucks hauled it away. Firefighters remained at the scene, hoses at the ready in case any remaining hot spots were uncovered.

Although a host of legal and possibly estate issues remain to be resolved, land on the Upper East Side is very valuable and the parcel will almost certainly be redeveloped.

Given the 20 by 100 foot size of the lot and the fact that it is in a historic district, whatever is built at 34 East 62nd Street will probably look a lot like the building that was there before the Monday explosion, said Robert B. Tierney, chairman of the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission.

“We would look at the size of the lot, would be a self-imposed limit on the scale and massing on any replacement.,” he said “Then we would look at what was there before and ask what would be appropriate for a historic district. And it would probably something like what was there.”

[pianoman11686]

Well, at least Tierney and Landmarks are on top of this one. Looks like the best way to get some kind of valuable input from them is to bring a piece of property into the media spotlight. Maybe not by the same unorthodox method, but somehow...

So does anyone know what happens to the property? If Bartha survives, he'll probably get sued by several people for damages. If he's convicted of arson, he'll have no money from insurance to pay everyone off. Does the city assume ownership? Do the insurance companies (as some kind of collateral)? Or does Cordula, who will then sell it to the highest bidder.

I still find it amazing that no one died in this, and that only Bartha sustained serious injuries. I wonder why, though, he didn't try to keep his office manager away that morning. It seems like he did a good job in keeping the entire building empty, with that one big exception. I don't even recall her being mentioned in his e-mail.

This whole episode has almost a Shakespearian kind of tragic undertone - the rambling soliloquy, the suicide attempt, the alcoholic wife/mother, the innocent and perplexed office manager. Even the names are vaguely reminiscent of one his plays. I have a feeling there are still some surprises in store, before this all gets resolved.

[ablarc]

Yeah, Shakespearean. That's what I thought too. Tragically enmeshed; no way out. But Cordula's no Cordelia.

[infoshare]

This whole episode has almost a Shakespearian kind of tragic undertone - the rambling soliloquy, the suicide attempt, the alcoholic wife/mother, the innocent and perplexed office manager. Even the names are vaguely reminiscent of one his plays. I have a feeling there are still some surprises in store, before this all gets resolved.

Yes, I have read the entire article in the post: to say the least, he certainly has a fascinating life history. I think you are correct in that there are suprises yet (deus ex mechina) to come.

[pianoman11686]

Yeah, Shakespearean. That's what I thought too. Tragically enmeshed; no way out. But Cordula's no Cordelia.

But could Bartha be King Lear? Or maybe even Brutus?

I don't know. Sadly, I don't remember too much of Shakespeare.:)

[ablarc]

But could Bartha be King Lear? Or maybe even Brutus?
A mix of the two, but leaning towards Brutus, perhaps the most sympathetic murderer in Shakespeare.

Incidentally, classic Shakespearean/Greek tragedy fairly recently sprouted an unexpected manifestation in Eastwood's Mystic River. Highly recommended.

[ZippyTheChimp]

I see it as Operatic. There's a triangle here.

The House as Netta?

ManhattanKnight's Stooges would have worked better if the doctor was only dazed and singed, and not severely injured. Think Moe after the dynamite goes off.

[lofter1]

http://www.nypost.com/img/front071206.gif (http://www.nypost.com/news/news.htm)


HONEY, I BLEW UP THE HOUSE

DR. BOOM'S WIFE SAYS: 'IT'S TRAGIC'

NY POST (http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/honey__i_blew_up_the_house_regionalnews_tom_liddy. htm)
By TOM LIDDY

July 12, 2006 -- The shell-shocked woman whose bitter divorce exploded in an Upper East Side fireball said yesterday she was devastated by her wacko ex-husband's apparent decision to blow up the four-story townhouse they once shared.

A grim-faced Cordula Hahn told The Post she was struggling with Dr. Nicholas Bartha's scorched-earth response to their split.

"It's tragic," Hahn said as she left the Washington Heights apartment she has called home since the divorce. "It's tough," she said, adding that she is doing "as well as can be expected."

Hahn's ex-husband, Dr. Nicholas Bartha, remained in critical condition yesterday, a day after he allegedly used a rigged gas line to destroy the building that housed his office and home. It was a suspected spiteful suicide bid designed to keep the property out of Hahn's hands.

A stressed-out Hahn declined to discuss her husband further, relying instead on her lawyer, Polly Passonneau.

Passonneau, in an e-mail to the Associated Press, said her client was not a "gold digger," as described by Bartha in a vituperative e-mail delivered shortly before the blast.

"He unfortunately did not want to give her one penny, so he kept fighting," Passonneau said. "He is living with the consequences of his own behavior."
The only relative who has apparently visited the ailing Bartha at New York Hospital is his daughter, Serena. She was spotted yesterday leaving the center, her fists clenched and appearing shaken.

"I'm not talking," she curtly told reporters before fleeing.

Meanwhile yesterday, investigators released new details about how Bartha blew up his landmark, 19th-century East 62nd Street building and spread debris and chaos throughout the tony neighborhood.

Police and fire officials said Bartha rigged a pipe to tap into the building's main gas line, a connection he controlled with a brass radiator valve.

The doctored pipe was connected to a flexible hose investigators believe was snaked into the basement, where the blast ripped through the townhouse shortly before 9 a.m. Monday.

Sources said Bartha, 66, likely chose that method of tampering because it gave him more control over the deadly gas - and access to a larger gas line.

"By turning that valve, it would provide a free flow of gas into the basement, flooding [it]," said Louis Garcia, the city's chief fire marshal. "We are saying it was intentional."

Officials said Con Ed inspected the gas line June 8 and discovered a leak but no rigged connection. Service was shut off until repairs were made.

The morning of the explosion, Con Ed was called to the building next door after a resident reported smelling gas. The worker was there when the townhouse exploded.

Additional reporting by Leonard Greene, Murray Weiss, Jennifer Fermino, Jana Winter & Mathew Charles

Copyright 2006 NYP Holdings, Inc.

[ablarc]

I see it as Operatic. There's a triangle here.

The House as Netta?
Or maybe Gilda?

[lofter1]

PROPERTY'S VALUE SET TO BOOM

http://www.nypost.com/photos/news071206005.jpg
Photo: Robert Miller
GAS BLAST: Serena Bartha leaves the hospital last night
after visiting her father, Dr. Nicholas Bartha, whom the FDNY
believes rigged the gas main to blow up his town house.

NY POST (http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/propertys_value_set_to_boom_regionalnews_jeane_mac intosh_and_braden_keil.htm)
By JEANE MacINTOSH and BRADEN KEIL

July 12, 2006 -- The gas blast that leveled Dr. Nicholas Bartha's landmarked Upper East Side townhouse didn't lower the property's value - and may even have increased it, real-estate experts told The Post.

"The value is not in the building, but the land on which it sits - especially in that area," said Corcoran Group CEO Pamela Liebman.

Another broker, who asked not to be named, said the site, minus the four-story brownstone "is a developer's dream" because there's no need to pay for demolition or to go through the costly and time-consuming process of evicting tenants.

He added that it also could be more desirable because a developer wouldn't have as many landmark issues to contend with - although the new building's façade would have to be a reasonable facsimile of the original.

Another real-estate source, who has visited the house that Bartha allegedly destroyed rather than give up, said that beyond the exterior, the 96-year-old, 4,931-square-foot house at 34 E. 62nd St. "wasn't all that terrific."

"Someone would have bought the place and gutted it," he said.

So how much is the property worth?

Most experts put the value, with or without the intact four-story brownstone, at between $7 million and $9 million.

The average price of a townhouse on the Upper East Side is $7 million, real-estate experts said. But because Bartha's lot is slightly wider - 20 feet, rather than 18 feet - it could bring more.

Appraiser Jonathan Miller, who valued the property at $4 million in 2002 - during the Barthas' contentious divorce proceedings - agreed that similar-sized townhouses in the area are "worth nearly twice as much today."

And, with a new 8,000-square-foot house built on the site, it could sell for about $15 million, real-estate agent Toni Simon of Halstead Properties told Bloomberg News.

Copyright 2006 NYP Holdings, Inc.

[lofter1]

RAVISHING BEAUTY RAVAGED BY BLAST

http://www.nypost.com/photos/news071206004a.jpg
Photo: Courtesy Staten Island Advance
RAIN OF TERROR: Jennifer Panicali was splattered
with debris from the blast.

NY POST (http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/ravishing_beauty_ravaged_by_blast_regionalnews_mur ray_weiss__tom_liddy_and_marsha_kranes.htm)
By MURRAY WEISS, TOM LIDDY and MARSHA KRANES

July 12, 2006 -- Recent college grad Jennifer Panicali was just walking to her job in Central Park Monday morning when all of a sudden she was catapulted into the street - a torrent of glass shards and debris raining down on her.

The fallout from the massive gas explosion - allegedly set off by Dr. Nicholas Bartha to flatten his East 62nd Street townhouse in a suicidal bid for revenge against his ex-wife - hit the young Parks Department worker like a ton of bricks.

It took doctors at New York Presbyterian Medical Center three hours to remove the glass, wood and stone fragments imbedded in the more than 100 wounds to the 22-year-old Staten Islander's body.

"It's sad. She's in a lot of pain," said her uncle, Bruce D'Alessandro.

After her surgery Monday night, the retired cop said Panicali's devastated parents "spent the whole night in the hospital with her."

By morning, her condition was listed as stable and she was the only blast victim, other than the critically injured Bartha, to remain hospitalized.

"This has been a difficult and stressful situation for my daughter and our entire family," Panicali's dad, Eugene, said in a statement released by the Parks Department.

"We thank God that she is alive and recuperating."

The beautiful Hunter College honors graduate was walking past Bartha's townhouse at 8:40 a.m. when the deafening explosion pancaked the four-story structure in just seconds and began spewing flames, smoke and debris onto the normally quiet landmark block.

A nearby video surveillance camera that recorded the horrific explosion showed Panicali as she was heading to her summer job at department headquarters just two blocks away in Central Park.

Police officials who viewed the tape said Panicali is first seen walking along, without an apparent care in the world - and then, seconds later, she's shown being propelled into the street, enveloped in a 9/11-like dust cloud.

And just seconds after that, she's seen covered with cuts, blood and soot.

"It's very upsetting. It's unfortunate that she was at the wrong place at the wrong time," Hunter College urban affairs Professor Joseph Viteretti said after learning what had befallen his former research assistant.

He said Panicali, who graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude in June, worked for him last year on a book about education and religion.

"She has it all," he said. "She was as good as any graduate student I've ever had."

Panicali, a media studies major who minored in English, "is very bright, very motivated . . . She's one of those students who's going to accomplish something - and she's also a very nice person to work with," he said.

Neighbors in the Port Richmond section of Staten Island described her as "a good girl."

"I watched her grow up," said Giosue DiDonna. "She's very nice, very quiet, never any trouble."

Neighbor John Azcuy said Panicali had a lot of friends.

"Her family is very religious, very low key, very private," he said.

Additional reporting by Rich Calder and Jana Winter

Copyright 2006 NYP Holdings, Inc.

[ManhattanKnight]

So does anyone know what happens to the property?

No one possibly can know that, given all the litigation that's likely to follow. But the persons most likely to emerge "whole" from this mess are Cordula and the daughters. Cordula was never going to "get the house." But she has a ~$4 million money judgment against the doctor that was scheduled to be satisfied out of the proceeds of the sheriff's sale of his interest in the property. As a general rule, the first-in-time, first-in-line rule determines the order in which judgment creditors are paid. So, it's likely that persons injured by the blast who successfully sue the doctor will receive nothing until Cordula's share has been paid.

The doctor owns 75% of the property; the rest belongs to the daughters. Assuming that the property (with or without the house) is worth $10 million, $3.5 million would be available for creditors other than Cordula. But since the IRS gets paid before Cordula, the actual number would be lower.

BTW, I wouldn't accept at face value those assertions that insurance companies will owe no one anything if it's proven that the doctor deliberately or accidentally blew up the house. It's probably not that simple.

[ablarc]

Sad. The problem with tragedy in real life: innocence gets in the line of fire.

[lofter1]

Doctor Suspected in Town House Collapse Dies


http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/07/10/nyregion/11doctor.large1.jpghttp://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/misc/spacer.gifhttp://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/misc/spacer.gifChip East/Reuters
Dr. Nicholas Bartha is pulled from his town house.

NY TIMES (http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/nyregion/AP-Building-Collapse.html?hp&ex=1153108800&en=5d8477fd571eaf23&ei=5094&partner=homepage)
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
July 16, 2006
Filed at 7:58 a.m. ET

NEW YORK (AP) -- The doctor suspected of blowing up his town house rather than allowing his ex-wife to benefit from its sale has died, nearly a week after suffering critical injuries in the blast, a hospital spokeswoman said Sunday.

Dr. Nicholas Bartha, 66, died late Saturday, said Mary Halston, an administrator at New York Presbyterian Hospital.

Police had been unable to speak to Bartha after the July 10 explosion because of his condition, but authorities have said they were investigating whether he might have caused it rather than sell the town house as part of a divorce judgment favoring his ex-wife.

Bartha's ex-wife, Cordula Bartha, told police she received an e-mail from him shortly before the explosion warning that she would be ''transformed from gold digger to ash and rubbish digger.''

''I always told you I will leave the house only if I am dead,'' the e-mail said.
Investigators have confirmed that someone tampered with a gas line leading into the home's basement, allowing vapors to flow for hours until it caused the building to blow up.

The physician, who lived and worked in the four-story landmark on Manhattan's upscale Upper East Side, was the lone occupant during the blast. It leveled the building and left the block covered in bricks, broken glass and splintered wood. At least 14 other people were injured, including 10 firefighters, authorities said.

Rescuers pulled the doctor from the rubble after hearing his calls. He was in critical condition at the Weill Cornell campus of New York Presbyterian Hospital until he died.

The town house and land were worth nearly $6.4 million, according to the city's finance department. The property was to be sold at auction in October to pay a $4 million judgment against Bartha, though his ex-wife had predicted he wouldn't leave without a fight.

''He has said many times that he intends to 'die in my house,''' Cordula Bartha said in a petition filed last year.

The doctor was responsible for other implied threats against his ex-wife, according to court records.

A 2005 appellate court opinion said the doctor had ''intentionally traumatized'' Cordula Bartha, a Jew who was born in Nazi-occupied Holland, by posting ''swastika-adorned articles and notes'' around their home. The opinion also said Bartha had ''ignored her need for support and assistance while she was undergoing surgery and treatment for breast cancer.''

The man's next-door neighbors sued him Friday, claiming the explosion damaged their cooperative apartment and forced them to leave it. They also named the Consolidated Edison utility as a defendant, accusing it of failing to have proper safety devices.

Con Ed has said it does not comment on pending litigation.

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press

[ablarc]

Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:

But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:

For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

--Matthew 6:19-21.

[lofter1]

Debris Is Gone, but Legal Issues Remain to Sift Through

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/07/22/nyregion/22blast600.jpg
Sara Krulwich/The New York Times
A worker puts up a fence around the site of a gas explosion that destroyed
an Upper East Side town house

NY TIMES (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/22/nyregion/22explode.html?_r=1&oref=slogin)
By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS
July 22, 2006

When Nicholas Bartha’s townhouse on East 62nd Street blew up — in what investigators think was his suicidal attempt to punish his ex-wife for divorcing him — the explosion created a legal mess as big as the pile of rubble the blast left behind.

As Dr. Bartha, 66, was buried at Cypress Hills Cemetery in Queens on Wednesday, in a quiet family ceremony, lawyers for the family, the injured, the neighbors and New York City began sorting out various claims to the property.

So far, no will has surfaced, and Dr. Bartha’s former lawyer, Ira E. Garr, and the referee in his divorce, Marilyn Dershowitz, speculated that he was too disorganized to leave a will behind, or that if he did, it was destroyed along with his house and its other contents.

If no will emerges, legal experts said, his adult children, Serena and Johanna, inherit everything. The two daughters together owned 25 percent of the house already, while Dr. Bartha owned the rest. His ex-wife, Cordula Hahn, will become one of many creditors, seeking to collect the $4 million judgment she won during divorce proceedings.

Other creditors could include the city, which paid for cleanup, people injured by the blast and neighbors whose apartments were damaged.

“It’s very complicated,” Donna Bennick, Ms. Hahn’s lawyer, said of the disposition of the estate. “I’m trying to unravel it myself.”

Since it appears that the mother and daughters have a good relationship, it seems unlikely that the daughters would contest their mother’s claim to any proceeds from the property, lawyers said.

“So all roads ultimately lead to Rome,” Charles F. Crames, an estate and trust lawyer in Manhattan, said this week.

It was a court judgment ordering Dr. Bartha to be evicted and the house to be sold as a way of satisfying his ex-wife’s claim that seemed to precipitate what may have been Dr. Bartha’s decision to destroy the house.

Investigators said a gas line had been tampered with before the blast. Dr. Bartha was the only person in the house when it exploded on the morning of July 10. He was plucked from the rubble and died in the hospital five days later.

Property was an emotional issue for Dr. Bartha. In a rambling, often incoherent e-mail message sent to his ex-wife before the explosion, he said one of his earliest memories was of hiding in a cave in his native Romania during World War II. In a tale of wounded family pride, he told how his father owned a gold mine, which was nationalized after the war. The family lost its home in the village of Rosia Montana, Romania, he wrote, and his mother was obsessed with getting it back, to no avail.

Dr. Bartha’s parents bought the town house at 34 East 62nd Street in 1980 for $395,000, according to court records, but did not move in until 1986. Ms. Dershowitz said the price of the house was low for the time because it was occupied by tenants who had to move out before the Barthas could move in.

In his final e-mail message, Dr. Bartha indicated that he did not want his daughters to inherit the house.

Berating his ex-wife, apparently over the divorce, he wrote, “Cordula with this you disinherited your children.”

“The ultimate irony would be that she gets to administer the estate,” Harold A. Mayerson, former chairman of the Matrimonial Law Committee for the New York City Bar Association, said of Ms. Hahn.

If a will is found that cuts the daughters out of the estate, they could conceivably contest it by challenging his mental competency at the time he made the will, lawyers said.

“You have a right to disinherit a child,” Mr. Crames said. “However, if there is no will, no matter how bad your attitude toward your children, your spouse inherits first, and then your children. In this case, there is no spouse, because they were divorced.”

Dr. Bartha has nephews, who unsuccessfully tried to claim a share of the house from Dr. Bartha’s mother after she died, according to court papers.

Phone messages left for one of the nephews, Thomas Bartha, were not returned.

Eric Proshansky, a lawyer for New York City, said the city was considering filing a claim for cleanup costs, but had not calculated how much that would be. The city’s claim would go first in line, followed by the ex-wife’s.

The property, worth $6 million when the house was standing, is probably worth about $7 million as a hole in the ground, said Guthrie Garvin, a broker who is director of sales from East 60th to East 76th Street for Massey Knakal, a brokerage firm.

He said the property would probably be sold for a town house. “There is a great appetite for town houses in that area,” he said. “With the price of town houses in that area, you’re right in prime territory.”

While the ghoulish history of the property might scare off some buyers, Mr. Garvin said, there is always someone undeterred, attracted by the chance to build a dream house. “That’s the kind of area where you’re going to have a very sophisticated buyer and somebody who’s going to do a top-of-the-line renovation,” he said.

Dr. Bartha’s former lawyer, Mr. Garr, said the doctor had little or no assets apart from the house and perhaps some retirement funds.

Ms. Dershowitz, the divorce referee, said that Dr. Bartha had aspired to be a cardiologist but had never qualified as one. Instead, he had worked all his career as an emergency room doctor. She said he had lived very frugally, cooking with a microwave and a hot plate.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

[ablarc]

The property, worth $6 million when the house was standing, is probably worth about $7 million as a hole in the ground, said Guthrie Garvin, a broker...
If he'd known this, the doctor might not have done it.

[pianoman11686]

Even still, a lot of the money from the sale will probably be lost to the parties who end up suing for damages - the City, the young woman who was injured, and all of the neighboring residents whose apartments were charred.

[lofter1]

Nice "good bye" gift for his two daughters, eh?

Unfortunately for them, as co-owners thy're going to be dealing with this for years.

In his final e-mail message, Dr. Bartha indicated that he did not want his daughters to inherit the house.

Instead he made sure that they inherited the BS he'd made of his life :eek:

[Schadenfrau]

I still can't believe that man was so full of hatred that he made disgusting comments about his own children in his suicide note. Those two women deserve as much money and peace as they can get.

[ManhattanKnight]

Life goes on . . .

http://brownharrisstevens.com/detail.aspx?id=510720

[pianoman11686]

GIMME SHELTER

BRADEN KEIL'S WEEKLY GOSSIP

http://www.nypost.com/photos/re08312006051.jpg
HOLEY MOLY: The sale of the land where Bartha's townhouse once stood is delayed.

August 31, 2006 -- BLOWN AWAY

A Manhattan Supreme Court judge has issued an order prohibiting the sale of Dr. Nicholas Bartha's townhouse, or what's left of it, at 34 E. 62nd St.

The leveled property of the deceased doctor, who is believed to have blown up the mansion July 10 to keep it out of his ex-wife's hands - after he was served with eviction papers - was put on the market two weeks ago for $8 million.

The broker for the property issued the following statement:

"A New York State Supreme Court Judge has issued a temporary "stay" of the sale of the 34 E. 62nd St. property. We will be advised when the stay is lifted. Brown Harris Stevens has no further comment."

Formerly the site of a prewar four-story townhouse, the listing by the Brown Harris Stevens brokerage firm touted the 20-foot-by-100-foot lot as an "opportunity to build your dream house" on a "quiet, lovely tree-lined street." At least it was, before a thunderous explosion rocked the exclusive block that morning, leaving the street littered with debris.

Bartha's daughter Maria is the executor and the defendant in the case. There's no word on who brought the suit. But there is a lawsuit pending by Jennifer Panicali, the Staten Island woman who was injured in the blast as she was walking by.

Panicali's suit seeks unspecified damages for the "severe and disfiguring physical" and "long-lasting emotional and psychological" injuries she suffered in the explosion.

The doctor died from his injuries several days later after vowing in an e-mail, "I will leave the house only if I am dead."

Bartha blew up the house mistakenly believing that it would decrease the value of the property.

Copyright 2006 NYP Holdings, Inc.

[Ninjahedge]

Yes, but if that woman succeeds in her lawsuit, it COULD decrease the value of the property by quite a bit.

I do believe that she s entitled to all medical expenses paid by her insurance, and probably a nice stipend. But mental trauma from it?

Come on!!!!!!

I guess she will never be able to walk in front of a brownstone again? :p

[lofter1]

But she just might ending up owning this lot ...

[Ninjahedge]

Iron:

I think she deserves a full floor apartment in the new building built on this lot, to do with, or sell, as she chooses.

[krulltime]

PSSST! We hear that...


By Braden Keil
September 28, 2006

The leveled Upper East Side property of Dr. Nicholas Bartha has bombed on the auction block.

Sources say the 100-foot-by-20-foot plot of land on East 62nd Street is still up for grabs, after sealed bids received on Tuesday failed to produce a buyer.

Brown Harris Stevens would not comment on who was involved or how much was bid for the lot that has an $8 million asking price.

One report has the Links Club, located next door, rumored to be interested in buying the property. Another story quoted a broker as saying it wasn't likely that the Landmarks Preservation Commission, which holds sway over whatever gets built on the lot, would approve of a Richard Meier-style steel-and-glass contemporary design. But a high-ranking member of the commission wouldn't rule out a Meier design.


Copyright 2006NYP Holdings, Inc.

[ablarc]

But a high-ranking member of the commission wouldn't rule out a Meier design.
So these commissions have ranks?

[ManhattanKnight]

February 11, 2007
Big Deal

Now That the Dust Has Settled ...

By JOSH BARBABEL

JANNA BULLOCK, a Russian-born real estate developer, just spent $8.3 million to buy a prime vacant lot on East 62nd Street with just a small image problem: it is the site of the explosion that destroyed a town house last year in the ultimate real estate war. The house’s owner, Dr. Nicholas Bartha, died of injuries he received when he set off a gas explosion to prevent his wife from getting the property in divorce proceedings.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/02/11/realestate/deal.190.2.450.jpg

Some buyers might hire a feng shui consultant to re-energize the space or bring in exorcists to banish any demons lurking in the soil. Instead, Ms. Bullock is focusing her energies on turning the site into a force for good: the ultimate green town house, complete with a cistern to fill the pool and a geothermal heating and cooling system created by channeling 1,500 feet down into the earth.

“I don’t want to have any association with the tragedy — to me it is an empty lot,” said Ms. Bullock, who renovates Upper East Side town houses and larger mixed-use developments in Russia.

Her broker, C. B. Whyte of Stribling & Associates, put it this way: “Memories are short. Things happen every day in New York. How often can you get a brand-new house built on the Upper East Side?”

In short, while Dr. Bartha’s death and the demise of a classic town house in a landmark district were a tragedy, one person’s mistake is another’s design opportunity. While the final plans have not been set and must be approved by the Landmarks Preservation Commission, the project architect, Preston T. Phillips of Bridgehampton, N.Y., is thinking about a “much more dramatic and modernist facade,” faced with glass and pale limestone to echo details of the Links Club next door.

The plans call for a building 20 feet wide covering 8,000 square feet on 5 floors. A collection system on the roof and in the rear courtyard would channel rainwater to an underground cistern to feed a courtyard waterfall and a 12-by-36-foot swimming pool in the basement.

The East 62nd Street house near Madison Avenue is Ms. Bullock’s fifth East Side town-house project. She began renovating apartments as a hobby and said that she had now turned it into an 18-hour-a-day obsession. She bought one town house, the former home of The New York Observer, for $9.5 million in January 2005 and sold it 11 months later, after renovation, for $18.5 million. She is about to put a second 25-foot limestone town house on East 67th on the market for $35 million.

Along the way, she has mastered some marketing techniques to bring cachet to her projects. She turned over two of her properties undergoing renovation for use as charity designer showcases and has agreed to provide a third, at 14 East 82nd Street, for use as the Kips Bay Decorator Show House in April.
Dr. Bartha blew up his house last year to avoid eviction and a forced sale to provide his wife with $4 million in court-ordered payments. But it turned out the empty lot was worth far more than a vacant house. Ms. Bullock said that she expected to spend well over $5 million to put up the new house and planned to offer it for about $25 million when it was completed in about 18 months.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

[ZippyTheChimp]

geothermal heating and cooling system created by channeling 1,500 feet down into the earth.

Wouldn't want to mix gas and the poltergeist.

[pianoman11686]

$30 Million Is Eyed as Price of Eco-Abode

BY GABRIELLE BIRKNER - Staff Reporter of the Sun
June 7, 2007
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/56023

The owner of the Upper East Side lot where a suicidal doctor blew up his townhouse will seek city approval to put up an "eco-friendly" residence that she expects to sell for as much as $30 million.

Plans for the site would be submitted later this month to the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission, a representative for the owner and developer, Janna Bullock of the Russian Investment Group, said. Earlier this year, Ms. Bullock paid $8.3 million for the property, on which she plans to build a single-family home featuring a modern-style stone façade, an all-glass elevator, a Japanese-style courtyard garden, a landscaped roof, and a subterranean swimming pool.

In July 2006, a 66-year-old physician in the middle of a messy divorce, Nicholas Bartha, leveled his brownstone by tampering with its gas line, police said. Bartha died from injuries sustained during the explosion, which also hurt several passers-by.

In the still empty lot, now littered with garbage and debris, Ms. Bullock intends to erect a five-story, 8,000-square-foot townhouse that meets the sustainability and energy efficiency standards of the U.S. Green Building Council.

The Upper East Side has been home to some hard-fought landmark battles, most recently developer Aby Rosen's plan to build a 30-story glass addition on top of the Parke Bernet Gallery on 77th Street and Madison Avenue, which was eventually defeated.

The executive director of the Friends of the Upper East Side Historic Districts, Seri Worden, said the preservation group she heads is looking forward to engaging the architects on the townhouse proposal. "We welcome modern interventions, as long as it's done appropriately for a historic district," Ms. Worden, who has yet to see the plans for the site, said.

A construction manager on the project, Hans Linderoth, said the developer's plan includes a rainwater storage tank and a geothermal pump for heating and cooling the home. "It's targeted at well-educated professionals — sophisticated people who are very conscious about what sustainable design is," he said of prospective buyers.

The proposal calls for an exterior crafted of tan stone, a color and material that Mr. Linderoth said conforms to the block and the neighborhood. "We hope this is going to become a new landmark that people identify with," he said. "It's so rare that you have an opportunity to build a new brownstone in the city."

Jed Garfield, a real estate broker with a boutique firm specializing in New York City townhouses, Leslie J. Garfield, said Upper East Side homes south of 72nd Street and west of Park Avenue are some of the city's most expensive properties. It is not unrealistic for such a townhouse to fetch as much as $30 million in the current market, he said.

"I think it's the proximity to Midtown and the notion that you could walk to the office without breaking a sweat, not that anyone who lives in that neighborhood does," Mr. Garfield said. "And if you're living near Ronald Perelman and Edgar Bronfman Jr." — the billionaire businessman and the beverage scion, respectively — "you're in rarefied company, and that has value to a consumer."

As the lot is situated in the Upper East Side Historic District, the realization of Ms. Bullock's project is contingent on the approval of the landmarks commission. For new construction within historic districts, the commission looks for height and massing consistent with other buildings on similar-size lots, its spokeswoman, Elisabeth de Bourbon, said. "The scale, the materials, and details should have some relationship to buildings in the historic district, and that relationship can be abstract or literal," she said.

The Bridgehampton-based firm of Preston T. Phillips, in conjunction with Abelow Sherman Architects LLC of New York, designed the proposed townhouse, and Severud Associates and P.A. Collins P.E. Consulting Engineers, both of New York, are the project's structural and mechanical engineers, respectively, Mr. Linderoth said.

Representatives of those firms met informally with members of the landmarks commission in recent weeks, Mr. Linderoth said. Once the plans are filed with the commission, it could be six weeks before the project is discussed at a public hearing.

Ms. Bullock, who grew up in St. Petersburg, Russia, develops residential and commercial sites in New York and Russia. Her Russian Investment Group is also developing a "green" townhouse on East 82nd Street, near Fifth Avenue.

© 2007 The New York Sun, One SL, LLC.

[lofter1]

Plan for Site of ’06 Blast on East Side Is Criticized

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/08/18/nyregion/render190.jpg
3 Dimensional Technology
A rendering of the plan for a house
at 34 East 62nd Street.

NY TIMES (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/18/nyregion/18townhouse.html?ref=nyregion)
By DAVID W. DUNLAP
August 18, 2006

The Links Club usually whispers. This week, it growled.

“These design plans bear no resemblance to any building feature on our block,” said John S. Pyne, the president of the private club, referring to the understated block of East 62nd Street between Madison and Park Avenues. (You will not find the club’s name on the door at No. 36, just ornamental L’s and C’s in the window grilles.) Mr. Pyne was referring to plans for a contemporary, limestone-clad, five-story, single-family town house next door to the Links.

“We do not think that the design of 34 East 62nd is appropriate to our block,” Mr. Pyne said in a letter to the Landmarks Preservation Commission, “and I would argue rather subjectively that the personality does not fit either.”

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/08/18/nyregion/house650.jpg
Gabriele Stabile for The New York Times
The Links Club building, left, which was cited in 1917 for “traditional elegance,”
next to the planned site of a modern town house.

The vacant lot where the town house would rise was occupied by a Victorian-era brownstone that blew up on July 10, 2006. The owner, Dr. Nicholas Bartha, was suspected of causing the explosion by tampering with the gas line as an act of vengeance against his former wife. He was badly injured in the blast and died five days later.

Rather than try to recreate a 19th-century brownstone, the new owner of the property, Janna Bullock, a real estate developer, and her architect, Preston T. Phillips, have proposed a wholly modern approach. It was considered on Tuesday in a hearing by the landmarks commission, whose finding of appropriateness will be needed for any project on the site, which is within the Upper East Side Historic District.

Robert B. Tierney, the chairman of the commission, said in an interview yesterday that the commission sought refinements in the design. In a separate interview, Mr. Phillips said his office was already exploring modifications, which he hopes to present to the commission next month.

But Mr. Tierney was clearly not closing the door on the general idea.

“I think in very specific — and perhaps limited — circumstances, in a historic district of this kind or other historic districts, a striking contemporary/modern approach or solution is and can be found appropriate; more than appropriate, that it should be encouraged.”

He added that he was confident that the historic district would get “a landmark for the future,” that people would see as being “of its time, of the 21st century.”

The 91-year-old Links Club, Community Board 8 and several leading preservation groups are less sure. Playing an advisory role, the Upper East Side community board voted 27 to 5 last month to disapprove the plan on the ground that it is “not in keeping” with the historic district.

Specific elements that came in for criticism at the landmarks commission hearing included the windowless central bay, which “gives the false appearance of housing an elevator shaft or an emergency stairway,” said Roger P. Lang of the New York Landmarks Conservancy.
A canopy over the fifth-floor balcony was described in a statement by the Historic Districts Council as a feature that “looms over the rest of the building like a high-dive platform.”

The Friends of the Upper East Side Historic Districts said in a statement that it was most troubled by the “treatment of the entryway as a shadowed void, instead of a more clearly identified and celebrated element as seen on most buildings in the historic district.”

Actually, the treatment of the entryway was intended to complement that of the Links Club, which is also recessed, said Mr. Phillips, the architect. The town house would be set back five feet from the property line in deference to the club, he said, and its fifth floor would be set back more than eight feet so as not to hem in the club’s adjoining mansard roof.

Though the town house interiors are outside the commission’s charge, the floor plans that were shown on Tuesday gave some sense of how extravagant Ms. Bullock means the place to be, with four bedrooms, an indoor swimming pool, a rooftop garden, a waterfall in the backyard, a conservatory, a wine cave, a spa and a butler’s pantry.

Last month, Ms. Bullock said the house might go on the market for $30 million to $40 million.

Mr. Phillips said the project would seek certification under Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) guidelines. Water in the waterfall would be recirculated from rain-collecting cisterns. Geothermal wells would be drilled to provide natural heat. Building materials would be shipped no farther than 500 miles. That led the architects to Ontario in search of limestone.

But limestone is just the problem for the red-brick Links Club. “The use of limestone is jarring and overbearing,” Mr. Pyne, the club president, said in his letter to the commission. He cited a 1917 article in The Architectural Record in which the clubhouse design, by Cross & Cross, was described as appealing to those “who like the effects of quiet breeding, traditional elegance, of considered good taste.”

Last year’s deadly and dramatic explosion still hangs over the project, though it is usually referred to obliquely. But Mr. Tierney saw a certain advantage in inheriting a vacant lot. “The decks are clear,” he said, “for a fresh look at the space and the building.”

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

[lofter1]

My favorite line in the article ^^^ in regard to the Links Club building:


... the clubhouse design, by Cross & Cross, was described as appealing to those “who like the effects of quiet breeding, traditional elegance, of considered good taste.”


Conjures up some interesting and disturbing images :eek: ...

[lofter1]

The website for Architect Preston T. Phillips (http://www.prestontphillips.com/index.html) has no info on this project.

From the Historic Districts Council website (http://www.hdc.org/testimonyaug1407.htm) regarding the LPC Hearing @ 8.14.07:

34 East 62nd Street - Upper East Side Historic District

Hearing Date: 8/14/2007
LPC Docket Number: 080312
Manhattan, Block: 1376, Lot: 48

A vacant lot. Application is to construct a five-story building.

HDC Testimony

This application for a five-story building is unlike the typical new construction proposal for an empty lot or to replace a building deemed non-contributing. Until the unfortunate events of last year, on this lot stood a landmarked building, the oldest on its block, a contributing part of the district. Last July, the New York Times quoted Chairman Tierney commenting on possible new construction, “We would look at what was there before and ask what would be appropriate for a historic district and it would probably be something like what was there.”

While the massing of the proposed new building is appropriate, little else in the design is. Overall it is too asymmetrical and too sculptural, making no gesture to the scale and rhythm of details of other structures on the block. Two details that are particularly jarring are the projecting cement slab, that looms over the rest of the building like a high-dive platform, and the blank, recessed entryway with a door on the sidewall giving it a cold appearance. Overall, there is too much contrast between the very self-conscious design of this building and its neighbors.

This block of the Upper East Side Historic District has suffered a loss. The approval of this application would compound that loss and set a bad precedent. This vacant lot does not provide a blank canvas for new construction; it invites a design that is sensitive to its surroundings in a landmarked historic district.

LPC Determination: Incomplete

[Fabrizio]

"Specific elements that came in for criticism at the landmarks commission hearing included the windowless central bay, which “gives the false appearance of housing an elevator shaft or an emergency stairway,” said Roger P. Lang of the New York Landmarks Conservancy."

Or how about a funeral home. Medical labs?

The rendering looks like a parody of a certain kind of mid-century avant-garde modernism.

Just awful.

Make it brilliant ...or go ahead and copy the past (but in this case, try 1925 instead of 1965).


--

[MikeW]

At this point, this thread should probably be moved to the real estate forum.

[brianac]

October 16, 2007, 5:11 pm A Victorian, Blown Up, Can Be a Modern Town House

By David W. Dunlap (http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/author/ddunlap/)

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/10/16/nyregion/16dunlap.190.jpg
A rendering of the modern town house planned at 34 East 62nd Street that was first submitted to the Landmarks Preservation Commission in August.

The Landmarks Preservation Commission (http://www.nyc.gov/html/lpc/html/home/home.shtml) gave its blessing today — with some reservations — to plans for a modern town house at 34 East 62nd Street that would replace the Victorian-era brownstone that exploded in the summer of 2006. The vote was 8 to 2, said Elisabeth de Bourbon, a commission spokeswoman.
“The new building relates well to the streetscape and district through its proposed materials, scale, hierarchy and organization of facade elements,” said Robert B. Tierney, the commission chairman. He and seven other commission members favored the plan, by the architect Preston P. Phillips.
Roberta Brandes Gratz and Stephen F. Byrns opposed it. “It’s a missed opportunity for good, modern design that isn’t hostile,” Ms. Gratz said. And Mr. Byrns called the plan overly aggressive.

Mr. Phillips modified the ground floor since he first presented the plan in August, reducing the size of the planter that adjoins the Links Club next door and rotating the front-entrance doorway so that it will face the street.
Dr. Nicholas Bartha, 66, who owned the original brownstone, was suspected of causing the blast (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/22/nyregion/22explode.html) that destroyed it on July 10, 2006, by tampering with the gas line as an act of vengeance against his former wife.
He died of injuries from the explosion. The property is now owned by Janna Bullock, a real estate developer.
The commission designated the building a landmark in 1981. The original brownstone, part of the Upper East Side Historic District, was completed in 1882.

[brianac]

At this point, this thread should probably be moved to the real estate forum.

I agree. Or perhaps NY architecture ??????

[lofter1]

Or perhaps to "Proof that the NYC Landmarks Commission Can Be Bought" :confused:

[Fabrizio]

Ugh... that rendering. The place looks haunted.

It could be home to an updated Addams family.

Gomez is an architect, designs mausoleums. Morticia is a cosmetician at a funeral home.

[brianac]

Or perhaps to "Proof that the NYC Landmarks Commission Can Be Bought" :confused:

You're right. How they could allow this anywhere let alone the UES.

[Ninjahedge]

I guess the way it "fit in with the streetscape" was with the money that was thrown into the "eyes" of the commission.

This building does not fit at all. Not even in color! they make NO attempt to merge it with the surrounding buildings, its geometry is strictly post-modernistic, there is little classical detail or craftsmanship.

It is a typical design for any neighborhood that is looking to refurb, not one that looks to preserve.

[ablarc]

Would be better if it were mirror-imaged, but generally agree with Tierney on this.

[brianac]

They did not need much persuading to pass this.
The amendments to the original plan are laughable

Mr. Phillips modified the ground floor since he first presented the plan in August, reducing the size of the planter that adjoins the Links Club next door and rotating the front-entrance doorway so that it will face the street.

[Ninjahedge]

MUCH better.

A WORLD of difference.

Where is the planter again? :confused:

[brianac]

How could they choose this architect to design a town house on the UES.

I mean, just look what he has in his portfolio.

http://www.prestontphillips.com/portfolio.htm

[Ninjahedge]

This blends PERFECTLY with the surroundings!!!

http://www.prestontphillips.com/_borders/Prestons.jpg

[ablarc]

This blends PERFECTLY with the surroundings!!!
Does it have to? Does the Farnsworth House?

[antinimby]

The new design is just too Brutalistic. I don't like it at all.

Why don't they just require the new owner to replace it with a close replica of the one that was destroyed?

[brianac]

This guy would have been OK. (Gracie Mansion)

[brianac]

The new design is just too Brutalistic. I don't like it at all.

Why don't they just require the new owner to replace it with a close replica of the one that was destroyed?

Say hello to the owner.

http://www.newyorksocialdiary.com/listpopup.php?tid=275

[ManhattanKnight]

Compare this solution to what the LPC approved to replace a much more notorious bombed-out house in an historic district -- the "Weathermen's Townhouse" (18 West 11th Street):

http://img516.imageshack.us/img516/1685/weathermantownhousedn6.jpg

http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/65/weathermantownhouseaug9.jpg

BACKGROUND:

July 23, 1981

A CITY TOWN HOUSE, RISEN FROM ASHES

By DUDLEY CLENDINEN

THE brick town house on West 11th Street in Greenwich Village is a close match for its 140-year-old neighbors, but there are differences: On the middle floors, its front wall angles in and out, and in the windowed prow of the second-floor library, overlooking the sidewalk, there stands a toy bear from London named Paddington.

In clear bright weather, when light floods through the large windows and courses off the cleanly molded diagonal walls and angles of the lofted house inside, the bear wears dark glasses. When the weather is wet outside, he wears a yellow hat and slicker and bluechecked tennis shoes. At Christmas he is dressed as Santa Claus, and he has a drawerful of other changes to suit the weather, or the whimsy of the moment.

The children of the neighborhood write him loving notes. And the grown-ups leave funny presents in the mailbox for this amusing little bear, whose presence marks the end to a decade of grim and contentious history.

On March 6, 1970, a series of thundering explosions rose from the basement of the previous house, an elegant brick four-story Greek Revival structure built in 1844. As the smashed interior was engulfed in fire, flames and black smoke boiled through the front windows where Paddington now stands, darkening and flickering through the graceful street. Three people inside were killed by the blasts, and two young women ran out of the house and disappeared.

One of the women was Cathlyn P. Wilkerson. Her father, James P. Wilkerson, who owned the house, was on vacation in the Caribbean, and Miss Wilkerson and her friends, members of the Weather Underground, a radical group pledged to political terrorism, had been using the house to manufacture bombs.

When the rubble had been cleared away, and the gaping hole repaired in the wall of the house where the actor Dustin Hoffman lived next door, the entrance to the lot was boarded up. For a few years, on the anniversary of the explosion, someone set fresh flowers against the weathering planks of the wooden wall.

After a painful battle, Hugh Hardy, of the architectural firm Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer, won the approval of the Landmarks Preservation Commission in May 1971 to build a new two-family house that, except for the controversial angled front, would look much like its neighbors. But when the costs of both construction and mortgage money went up and real estate values in the city slumped, Mr. Hardy and his partners gave up their plans.

''In effect,'' he said, ''the neighborhood was red-lined or blackballed, or whatever banks do.'' A savings bank official, he recalled, told him, ''Look, kid, why don't you build that nice house in Westchester? We've got plenty of mortgage money up there.''

For a decade, the site remained empty and overgrown, a reminder of some ugly history, and of a case the police had never closed. Not until July 1980 did Miss Wilkerson emerge from hiding to plead guilty to unlawful possession of dynamite. Not until the previous December was a new house finally completed on the site where her friends had died. As Miss Wilkerson went to jail, Norma and David Langworthy embarked on a new life at her old address and installed the bear Paddington in the window.

''All our friends retire and go to the Virgin Islands or somewhere,'' Mrs. Langworthy said. Sitting on a snugly angled wooden terrace at the back of the house, four floors up in the shade of the trees, she looked out over the leafy bricked glen of adjacent gardens below and laughed her sunny laugh. ''We always said, 'We're going back to our favorite island - Manhattan.' '' It took them almost 40 years.

In the spring of 1943, David Langworthy was a young graduate of the Yale Drama School. Separated by pneumonia from the Army after a year's service, he was back in New York, where he had worked for Donald Oneslager, the set designer, before joining up. Norma, a graduate of the drama school of what was then called Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh, was dancing in a Broadway production of ''Lend an Ear,'' with Gene Kelly.

''They danced pretty good,'' Mr. Langworthy said, smiling at his wife. ''But their singing was terrible.'' In the basement apartment he rented at a few doors down, he proposed. They were married that year at St. Patrick's Cathedral, but soon moved to Philadelphia. It was the war. His engineer father had founded a business that made airplane parts. and needed him, Mr. Langworthy said, a little wryly. ''I told Norma that very soon we'd be back in New York living on West 11th Street.''

But children intervened, four of them, and the business grew. The dancer became a mother, the set designer an executive. They built a big house of contemporary design. Struck by lightning, it burned. They built another, and commissioned the sculptor Henry Mitchell to produce a bronze phoenix rising from the ashes.

In New York for a business meeting in October 1976, not long before retiring from the metals company, they visited West 11th Street again, saw the vacant lot, and quickly bought it for $80,000 from the Hardys and Patricia and Francis Mason, who had paid $75,000 for it six years before when they planned to share a two-family house there. The fact that the Landmarks Preservation Commission had already approved Mr. Hardy's exterior design, Mr. Langworthy said, ''was just icing on the cake.''

To see how the Langworthys liked to live, Mr. Hardy spent a day and night with them in Philadelphia. They gave him a penciled list, 18 lines long, of what they wanted in a house, and Mr. Hardy and his partners set to work redesigning the interior: a big office and workroom, big baths and dressing rooms, a guest bedroom, open kitchen and dining room, living room with fireplace, an elevator, dumbwaiter, a library and a separate suite of rooms in the basement for visiting children and grandchildren and, later on, in the Langworthys' old age, for a live-in couple.

Behind the angled exterior, the dream took shape. Hung around a broad open staircase are a series of rooms that unfold in continuous fascination to the eye, like an escalator working on both the horizontal and vertical planes.

But once more, the Landmarks Commission stood between design and execution. A new chairman decided -''to our horror,'' Mrs. Langworthy recalls - that the angled exterior would have to pass muster again. There followed a series of neighborhood and commission meetings of high dunder and dispute, as some neighbors insisted that the angles would disrupt the architectural coherence of the street. One older woman, crippled by a broken hip, rented an ambulance to deliver her in opposition to the plan.

''It was awful,'' said Mr. Hardy. Finally, at the decisive commission meeting, Mrs. Langworthy recalls, the chairman, Beverly Moss Spatt, said, ''Mrs. Langworthy, what would you do if we told you you couldn't build that house?''

''I thought, 'Oh God, I don't know' -and I started to cry,'' she said. The commission voted unanimously for the plan. The Langworthys, in retirement, are devoted to the arts, to travel, to the pursuit of gentle fun. With them in place, the house on West 11th Street has become a house of light and whimsy, with Paddington as its symbol. One friend, whose husband is a trustee of Carnegie-Mellon, like Mrs. Langworthy, has even designed and sewn him a coat of arms.

It shows a small bear, looking for all the world like Winnie the Pooh, rising like a phoenix from a bed of flames.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

[Ninjahedge]

Does it have to? Does the Farnsworth House?


When a house is being commissioned to be designed, and one of the requirements being put on the table is integration and preservation of the neighborhood motif, then picking an architect who builds large kindergarden like blue pyramids out in the woods for his personal residence is not one that springs immediately to mind.

If you are building for Epcot Center, maybe. Chuck-E-Cheese? Yes. Classic brownstone, HELL NO!