Well it SHOULD be abandoned

When I moved into my apartment in Hell's Kitchen, I noted in my Dec. 8 post that it was directly next to an abandoned, graffiti-clad building with a padlocked chain on the front door and giant posters attached to it up to six feet above the sidewalk.

I lied.

Apparently, I live next to an OCCUPIED graffiti-clad building that's has a brand-new hole in the side, now that someone wrenched open the wooden boards that were used to board it up. The hole is big enough for someone to fit through, but it sure as hell isn't anywhere I'll be going anytime soon.

Well, what can you expect from the second-oldest apartment house in Manhattan?

Apparently, in its heyday, it was all tricked out with marble fireplaces, uniformed "hall boys" to help the tenants, and the latest technology - the hydraulic elevator and the telephone.

I read up on the eight-story building, built in 1881 and named the Windermere, after seeing dozens of firefighters and police officers surrounding it the other day. There were so many of them that they actually had to close a portion of the street (read: right in front of my apartment building) and evacuate the area due to "hazardous conditions" which I later learned was a suspicious gas leak. One of our doorman suggested that someone was trying to blow up the eyesore, which has been in the middle of some serious litigation for years.

Most of the tenants have settled and moved out of the building. I say "most" because apparently, seven tenants still live there. I don't even want to IMAGINE what type of condition they're living in. But apparently court orders are protecting them living in the deteriorating building - one that I have serious doubts that it was ever as glorious as some claim.

Before we decided to move in to our building, I was encouraged by the scaffolding surrounding the neighboring building. But during the course of the blowing-up-the-building conversation that I had with one of our doormen recently, he said the scaffolding has been up for the last decade - probably holding the Windermere together.

And even though the building is a prime piece of Manhattan real estate, it was designated a city landmark in 2005 and isn't going away anytime soon. Damn.