The 5 Ugliest Buildings on the Upper East Side

We took your suggestions and came up with the Upper East Side"s worst eyesores By [Megan Finnegan Bungeroth] and [Sean Creamer](http://nypress.com/?s=Sean+Creamer) Every neighborhood has a few. Even on the generally well-maintained Upper East Side, some buildings, whether from construction, neglect or outright abandonment, cause neighbors to flinch when they see them. We asked local residents and community leaders to spot the worst eyesores in the neighborhood. 302 E. 95th St. This building is located on 95th Street right off of Second Avenue, nestled between a parking garage and an apartment building with a home restoration store on ground level. The dismal condition of the structure can be seen in the rotting windowsills, the fading bricks and the rusting steel sheets that cover the windows. A particularly hairy detail is that there is an old scaffold that acts as an awning to a makeshift neighborhood dumpster. The sidewalk under the scaffold is laden with a collection of broken glass, broken furniture, piles of garbage bags and several water bottles filled with urine. This, apparently, is because 2nd Avenue Subway construction has blocked the Department of Sanitation"s access to the sidewalks. One of the buildings that has been using this space as a landfill is the Carnegie East House at 1844 2nd Ave. John Maloney, the facility manager of the building, said that theirs was not the only building instructed to do this, and that even people from 93rd and 94th streets have begun unloading their trash at the site. â??The building is pretty quiet, but from time to time I do see broken bottles, so someone has to be hanging out there at night, said Jessica Taylor, an area resident for two years and a bartender at the Merrion Square Bar and Restaurant. The building has been unused for over 10 years, according to some residents" accounts. Beth Markowitz, who works for Merlot Management, manages the building situated right next door to the shanty and said, â??the building has been abandoned for God knows how long. She said that besides being unsightly, the building has hurt property values and has become a host to rodents. Although the building lies in a state of disrepair, it does have an owner, according to Eric Bederman of the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development. The building is under the ownership ofˆ  Daniel Polychroniades, who resides in Jackson Heights while his property sits unoccupied, collecting trash and posing a danger to the public, according to Bederman. â??We did put up scaffolding per an emergency declaration from the Department of Buildings because cracking in the brick and mortar of the facade posed a hazard to pedestrians on the sidewalk below, Bederman said in an email. The building has 12 complaints that date back to 1995, five of which concern the structural integrity of the building, according to the Department of Buildings" database. Considering the current state of the building"s facade, it is not hard to see why Polychroniades has allowed the building to stew, with no end in sight to its vacant and decrepit state. 1493 1st Ave. Rising from the depths of sub-par building care oblivion is a storefront that sits on the corner of 1st Avenue at East 78th Street,ˆ  a tenant and building owner"s worst nightmare. The building stands alone with a dark red facade that is fading in some places and looms above an empty storefront filled to the brim with a rag-tag assortment of items. On the side of the building where tenants enter, there is graffiti tagged across the wall and a boarded-up window at ground level. Aside from a multitude of beer and cigarette advertisements displayed behind shuttered windows, safety cones and several other traffic items that have made the desolate shop their home. According to the Department of Buildings, the structure is listed under the ownership of Hiyee Realty Corp or Katherine Chou for other complaints. They were not available for comment. Although the shop sits vacant, the residential apartments above it have been a constant source of complaint for residents. Over the years, the property owner has had a penchant for working on the building sans permits, prompting over 30 complaints ranging from the basic working without a permit to the extreme of having a deteriorating facade with bricks fall off the building. Even attempting to fix an issue has led to complaints, such as the one filed due to inadequate scaffolding to protect pedestrians from falling debris. Besides the complaints, there have been several hazardous-level violations issued by the Environmental Control Board concerning the rotting of the exterior of the building and malfunctions of the boiler, although of all eight violations, only one actually penalized the owners. The combination of a lack of commercial renters and a lax approach to building codes has landed this potential real estate gold mine in a bind, thus leaving it in the limbo of eyesores from hell. 249 and 251 E. 62nd St. and 1183 2nd Ave. To the naked eye, the only thing these properties have in common are their proximity and their ugliness. 249 and 251 E. 62nd St. sit empty and crumbling on an otherwise pristine block, where a townhouse directly across the street recently sold for $3.85 million. The garden plots outside the ground floor windows are piled with dirt, sticks and trash, and the doorways are used as receptacles for beer bottles and other garbage. Around the corner, 1183 2nd Ave. retains the remnants of a forgotten storefront, with the apartments above sitting in empty squalor. Between the properties is an occupied building and an vacant lot. â??[These] two buildings have had unsightly scaffolding for a great long time, said local resident and Community Board 8 member Barry Schneider. â??And around the corner, on the west side of Second Avenue, is a vacant lot with a decrepit fence. These sites have been eyesores for several years now. All three of these blighted buildings are actually owned by the same company, Moluka Enterprises. Little information can be found about the owner, but residents speculate that the owner is simply sitting on the properties, waiting to demolish them. In the meantime, they continue to diminish the aesthetics of the neighborhood and receive Department of Buildings and Environmental Control Board violations. When inspectors responded to the latest violation at 1183 2nd Ave. in 2010, they found â??cardboard boxes filled with combustible material from floor to ceiling, ceiling missing tiles throughout, on the second floor. There are several hazardous violations recorded for 251 E. 62nd St. and complaints dating back to 1990, when a resident complained of falling debris. For now, most of the violations appear to be answered, but the buildings continue to sit, unused and in danger of only getting worse. 154 E. 64th St. Sometimes an eyesore is in the eye of the beholder. This property has been singled out by some as a hideous monstrosity, while others call it a welcome addition of charm to the neighborhood. â??The window sills are coming off the window frames, the wires are illegal, the storefront is illegal, the awnings are illegal, said Susan Mindel, a neighbor and member of the East 64th Street Lexington to Third Avenue Neighbors Association. â??The door is painted aqua. Mindel said that the owner of the pink-hued building that has been the source of her block"s ire for years also owns the space that rents to the diner Eat Here Now, and that at one time the owner allowed the restaurant to use sidewalk space illegally and is generally lax in adhering to city guidelines. â??We"ve tried to get him to update his property; he"s not interested, said Mindel. â??There"s wiring all over the façade; that"s not legal. Plus, all the paint"s peeling. On a recent weekday, Upper East Side resident Gloria Abrams was walking by the townhouse. When asked what she thought of the building, she called it â??lovely. â??I"d like to see it remain, she said. â??It fits with what"s around it. Another passerby, Charles Scribner, regarded the building with more disdain. â??Let me put it this way's if it were to be taken down, my disappointment would be under control, he said. Commenting on the â??rather Mediterranean color and pointing out the parts that seems to be crumbling away, he said, â??It just needs a facelift.