The concept of a “carbon footprint” has been widely circulated in the media for the last couple of years—particularly as global warming has become such an urgent topic of discussion for people other than Al Gore. Essentially, a carbon fo…
Workers’ compensation, according to the New York State Workers’ Compensation Board, is insurance that provides cash benefits and/or medical care for workers who are injured or become ill as a direct result of their job. Employers—an…
It is an annual rite of passage for owners of co-ops and condos. Once a year or thereabouts, they gather in a common area—in my co-op in Astoria it was the basement, right off the washers and dryers—and vote for next year’s board. Someti…
In most cities, traditionally, the choicest pieces of real estate are owned by native sons and daughters, people who are from the area. Money comes in from everywhere, but the entrepreneurs making that money are homegrown. Heinz and Carn…
Co-op apartment buildings were originally formed in New York City to allow building residents to buy into and have a say in how their building was administered, as well as who their neighbors were, and what those neighbors were allowed t…
If one aspect of New York has remained constant since the city’s founding, it’s that nothing remains constant. New York’s own Washington Irving, the writer for whom Irving Place is named, groused in his September years that the city he r…
The Big Apple. Paris has just as much romantic cachet. Rome is every bit as frenetic. London has excellent theater, too, and there are also esteemed financial institutions in Zurich and Hong Kong and Frankfurt. Tokyo and Mumbai and Jakar…
In 1939, when the WPA Guide to New York Citywas first published, South Queens, and particularly the area around what would become Rochdale Village, had little to recommend the visitor. "Springfield, Laurelton and Rosedale, at the so…
It's a nightmare scenario. From the 1970s-era disaster movie The Towering Infernoto the very real nightmare of 9/11, the idea of being trapped by a raging fire hundreds of feet in the air is nothing anybody wants to contemplate. High-r…
Apartment buildings, whether cooperatives or condos, are inherently fragile. When that many units share the same plot of land, and the same walls, the same floors, the same elevators and stairways, standpipes and boilers, lobbies and roo…