1) After a couple weeks of pretty mockable hunters, we're back to a classic feel-good Hunt. Alfredo is a visiting scholar at NYU, but when his University-subsidized housing runs out, he's forced to find his own place. He begins looking on the Upper East Side so that he'll be able to commute to his new teaching position at Southern Connecticut State University. (Go Owls.) He finds a real estate agent, Morgan, and together they narrow his criteria down to the two most essential factors: his new building can't require a down payment of more than ten percent and it must allow cats. He also needs to find a place quickly. He doesn't want to stay with friends because he fears that his cat, Rafael, will scratch their furniture. (This fear is entirely confirmed by the hilarious picture of Alfredo and Rafael that accompanies the article.) Luckily, he finds a studio for $264,000 and is approved by the co-op board just in time. He buys a lot of furniture from Ikea and Rafael presumably goes to town on it. Yay, happy ending! [The Hunt/'A City Perch for a Reverse Commuter']
2) Famed fashion photographer Lillian Bassman's Upper East Side carriage house is overflowing with artistic history. It served as Bassman's studio until she renounced fashion photography in 1969, burning decades worth of negatives in the house's coal room. After that, she rented the ground-floor studio to Abstract Expressionist Helen Frankenthaler for two decades. Bassman died this February at the age of 94 and, after mulling it over, for months, her two children have decided to put the house on the market for $14.9 million. "We agreed that without our parents here, the feeling of the space isn't the same, that it really was all about their spirits," said her son, Eric. [The Carriage House in the Close-Up]
3) Like many New York City streets, Broome Street has gotten significantly nicer over the last few years. Broome Street however, has managed to retain a lot of its charm and hipness. Many residents of the streets multi-million dollar loft apartments are musicians and artists, and the shopping mostly consists of trendy specialty stores—home-furnishing stores, a Japanese food market, a musical instrument place, a yarn store, etc. If you ever need to buy a couch, a guitar, materials for a sweater, some edamame, and a $2 million apartment in the same afternoon, now you know where to go. [Less Gritty, More Gourmet]