Some people pass almost unnoticed through life, only to become legends once they%26#8217;re gone %26#151; symbols of New York%26#8217;s mythic past when all the neighborhoods had character, all the rents were low and all the landlords knew their tenants%26#8217; names. Bill Gottlieb died in 1999, but residents of Greenwich Village talk about him to this day, retelling tales that get more colorful with each passing year. A rumpled, elusive fellow who would walk the streets carrying shopping bags stuffed with cash and documents, Gottlieb spent decades quietly amassing an empire of run-down tenements, abandoned warehouses and weedy vacant lots. The properties cost Gottlieb little, but they could now be worth as much as a billion dollars altogether as the grimy neighborhoods where he shopped for bargains have long since given way to a landscape of luxury lofts and pet-grooming salons. Gottlieb%26#8217;s approach to real estate was to buy a building and hold on to it at minimal expense, instituting a sort of nonaggression pact with his tenants: he wouldn%26#8217;t ask for much rent if they didn%26#8217;t complain about broken doorbells or wheezing boilers. So as the waterfront underwent its own transformation, the Keller Hotel just sat there, a dilapidated Renaissance Revival vestige.By the time of Gottlieb%26#8217;s death, there were no more indigents residing at the Keller. When the leather bar shut down, the building was boarded up. It became one of those haunted structures surrounded by urban vitality that cause puzzled passers-by to stop and stare. The Keller sits on a stretch of West Street between 1 Morton Square (where the Olsen twins own a penthouse) and three diaphanous buildings designed by the famed architect Richard Meier. %26#8220;It%26#8217;s this horrible eyesore, and yet I have to think that it has to be one of the most valuable pieces of real estate in the neighborhood,%26#8221; says John Attalienti, a financial consultant who lives next door at 130 Barrow Street. %26#8220;I mean, unobstructed river views.%26#8221;New York%26#8217;s professional speculators have also noticed. They all want a piece of Gottlieb%26#8217;s portfolio, which amounts to more than 100 buildings spread across a three-mile swath of Manhattan: from Henry Street on the Lower East Side, where his estate owns a six-story tenement with a storefront Pentecostal church, to the velvet-roped environs of the meatpacking district, where it is landlord to numerous nightspots. Some of Gottlieb%26#8217;s eclectic holdings are architecturally notable, like a few carriage houses along the cobblestone lanes of the West Village and the Northern Dispensary on Waverly Place, a wedge-shaped landmark where Edgar Allen Poe reputedly once received treatment for a head cold. Others, like a tiny corner parking lot on Prince Street, are the sort of blank spaces that make imaginative real estate developers giddy. %26#8220;What a great treasure trove of undeveloped sites,%26#8221; says Alf Naman, who builds residential projects downtown. %26#8220;Those are properties I%26#8217;ve coveted for years.%26#8221;Even after Gottlieb%26#8217;s death, however, his heirs wouldn%26#8217;t listen to offers. %26#8220;They told me that to them, %26#8216;sell%26#8217; is a four-letter word,%26#8221; says Cary Tamarkin, an architect and developer. Historic preservationists have appreciated that intransigence; over the years, they came to see Bill Gottlieb as a sort of cheapskate savior, whose hands-off management style saved many buildings from insensitive renovations or outright demolition. Christine Quinn, the speaker of the City Council, once said that Gottlieb was possibly %26#8220;the biggest preservationist in the history of the West Side.%26#8221; But he was also a secretive businessman, careful to conceal his true intentions, and that inscrutability seems to run in his family.In 2004, five years after Gottlieb%26#8217;s death, with no fanfare or public announcement, workmen began showing up at the Keller Hotel. They would come and go at odd hours, sometimes in the middle of the night. Neighbors noticed they spent a lot of time inside a garage adjacent to the hotel. A building permit taped to the Keller%26#8217;s door said it was being renovated as a 20-unit apartment building. At long last, it seemed, the Gottlieb family was getting into development. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Next Page %26#x00bb;Andrew Rice is a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine.
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