So the hope on East 78th Street is to sell the well-preserved houses on a quiet residentialblock off Lexington Avenue to a family or a developer looking to create a single 25-wide mansion by breaking through the wall between the houses.
The new 60-room High Line Hotel, in the west Manhattan neighbourhood of Chelsea, is part of a mixed-use block that is part hotel, part Episcopal seminary and part residential building.
While the center of Erfurt is still picturesque and remains a big draw for tourists, some big block buildings on the city's outskirts that used to be residential apartments now sit empty, many of them boarded up.