THE HOLDOUT (1958)
******************************************************************************************************************************** Brownstone Detectives investigates the history of our clients’ homes. The story you are about to read was composed from research conducted in the course of one of those investigations. Do you know the history of YOUR house? ******************************************************************************************************************************** NEW YORK — The Michels family is too steeped in its materia medica and too deeply rooted in its neighborhood to give up its oM-tashioned pharmacy to make way for anything like a 75 nullion dollar office building. Not even for $400,000. The Michels family owns a narrow five-story brownstone building at 620 Lexington Ave. A 42-story office building is going up on both sides and in back of the little brownstone. Negotiators for Vincent Astor, who owns the controlling interest in the Astor Plaza project, have bean trying for five years to induce the family to vacate the pharmacy they own on the ground floor and sell the building for $400,000. Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Michels and their son, Myron, are all registered pharmacists and long-time residents of the neighborhood. And they don’t want to move. But their holdout is just a roadblock in the path to progress in the eyes of the financiers, engineers, architects and contractors erecting the office building. The Michels brownstone is the only building remaining on the square block between Park and Lexington Avenues and 53rd and 54th streets. “We want to stay right here,” Mrs. Michels, a tiny, gray-haired woman, said yesterday. “We told the Astors we would sell the property if they make […]
