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High Rise Low Down
is the ultimate insider’s tour of New York City’s most sought-after addresses—the exclusive, closely guarded residences of some of the world’s most famous and powerful people.
Which buildings are most coveted? What secrets do they hold? Penetrating the walls of Fifth Avenue’s high-rise palazzos, Park Avenue’s penthouses, Central Park West’s turreted celebrity fortresses and downtown Manhattan’s dazzling glass towers, the authors offer a glimpse of the people at the top of today’s global social pyramid and their spectacular homes.
Everyone who’s anyone wants to live in these elite buildings—but not everyone gets in. The limited number of “top” apartments and the boards who tightly control them mean multimillionaires and even billionaires are sometimes turned away.
The authors, insiders to this community, reveal the process behind who gets in and who gets shut out. How crucial is the board interview? What do these buildings want to know about you—and how much should you tell? The book explores how myth-shrouded luxury complexes like the San Remo and River House welcomed such high-profile achievers as Henry Kissinger and Rupert Murdoch but closed their gates to the likes of Madonna, Gloria Vanderbilt and former President Richard Nixon.
High Rise Low Down describes the often astonishing mix of characters under one roof:
Chinese bankers, Greek shipping giants, Saudi princes, wine-makers from California, and cosmetic queens from Utah. Many buyers and sellers are world-famous actors, rock stars and television personalities: Robert de Niro, Denzel Washington, Natalie Portman, Sting, Yoko Ono, Jerry Seinfield. The apartments themselves are also famous for having belonged to legends: Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Greta Garbo, Bob Dylan, Mark Twain, Marilyn Monroe.
The stories in this book are vast and varied, full of gripping vignettes. Compelling and touching, sometimes hilarious, you’ll read about professional revenge and family feuds, love and divorce, ruthless ambition and reversal of fortune, murder and suicide.
In the end, High Rise Low Down is a paean to New York: a fiercely heterogeneous, twenty-first century city that is forever reinventing itself.
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