Anthony Weiner. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

by Adel Manoukian

Anthony Weiner and his wife, Huma Abedin moved into a $3.3 million Manhattan apartment on Park Avenue owned by a wealthy Democratic donor Jack Rosen, according to NY Post reports.

After leaving the congressional seat that earned Weiner $174,000 a year due to his notorious sexting scandal, the couple made the drastic upgrade from their 875-square foot two-bedroom condo in Forest Hills worth $430,000 to their new 2,210 square-foot, four-bedroom, 3.5-bathroom home.

Weiner is jobless and Abedin makes about $155,000 a year as a top aide to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton so many are surprised that the couple can afford the rent on the place located at 254 Park Avenue South at East 20th Street. Real-estate experts say that the couple pays at least $12,000 to $14,000 per month while a Democratic fund-raising source speculates to the NY Post that the couple may be living there gratis, as Rosen is a close friend of the Clintons. Rosen has given money into Bill and Hillary Clinton’s election campaigns for years, even flying the Clintons in his private plane. He has also contributed thousands of dollars to Weiner’s financial reserves.

Abedin’s job forces her to face restrictions on receiving gifts and must disclose any financial dealings so her decision-making is not swayed by private interests. But an official who knows the couple denies the notion that Rosen would try to affect Abedin who could then influence Clinton.

Niki de Saint Phalle’s “Les Trois Graces Fontaine” (“The Three Graces”), 1999.

by Marsha McCreadie

When the Oracle asked Niki de Saint Phalle which it would be, “perfection of the life or perfection of the art,” she said, “Screw Yeats. I’ll take both.”

For the most part, this is what artist-sculptor Saint Phalle did and what she got. An installation of nine of her sculptures, mainly representing her fanciful gigantisms phase and the final colorful chapter of her work, is on public display on Park Avenue in the 50s this summer and much of the upcoming fall. The occasion—really the celebration—is the 10th anniversary of Saint Phalle’s death.

For New Yorkers, whether sticky in the city or in and out of town, the outdoors season is right, the colors bright, the spirits high. The generously sized figures, thighs and bosoms to rival Botero’s, include some of her most well-known works (no, not “Hon,” or “She,” the huge prone pregnant body into whose cavernous vagina the public can walk—that one is permanently on display in Sweden and would take up half a subway stop) that include “Les Baigneurs” (“The Bathers”) from 1983, made of polyester resin, and the highly comic “Les Trois Graces Fontaine” from 1999, poly ceramic, stained, mirrored glass figures in pop art bathing suits, camping it up. Probably not what Greek classicists had in mind, but joyful as all get-out.

These represent her signature Nana (French slang for “broad” or “chick”) series, originally inspired by the pregnant Clarice Rivers, wife of Larry. Also on display is “Nana on a Dolphin,” as described, making nearby office buildings look very dull indeed.

To Saint Phalle’s credit, she was exploring female archetypes and imagery a few years before it became de rigeur. From a wealthy Franco-American family, she once was a model for French Vogue but became interested in art, even getting kicked out of the exclusive Brearley School for painting fig leaves red, she said, and subsequently becoming an artistic autodidact. Seemingly always part of the movement du jour, it didn’t hurt that she had a talent for getting with the right people, the emerging influences—in the very early 1960s, for instance, hanging with pals like Christo and Jean Tinguely (eventually one of her husbands) when they were practicing the Dada-influenced movement of conceptual art.

She first achieved notoriety for her “shooting paintings,” hidden paint containers shot by pistol to finish the work. You get the idea: random, violence, what is art? How we miss the ’60s!

But she truly hit her stride with the fanciful large sculptures that became her trademark, often used in public gardens such as her Tarot Garden in Tuscany, an enterprise 20 years in the making financed in part by her self-named perfume. Especially appealing to kids, the playful aspects of her surrealistic amusement park-like spaces were seemingly at odds with a temperament that once led to a nervous breakdown.

For New Yorkers right now, the installations are in tune with our temper and taste: Women, sports figures, people of color. If you’re on Park Avenue at 59th Street North, check out Louis Armstrong (polyurethane foam, resin and steel) and Miles Davis at 58th Street North (similar materials), both from Saint Phalle’s Black Heroes series, as well as an homage to Michael Jordan and “Baseball Player” (nod to Tony Wynn).

Nine sculptures by Saint Phalle are on view on Park Avenue from 52nd to 60th Street, July 12-Nov. 15.

For more information, contact the Nohra Haime Gallery, the gallery responsible for the full Saint Phalle retrospective last fall, at 730 5th Ave., 212-888-3550, gallery@nohrahaime.gallery.com.

Looking north along Park Avenue at 79th Street.

Park Avenue may be one of the most recognizable stretches of real estate in the world, and some Upper East Side residents are clamoring to keep it that way. With the recent purchase of two adjoining pre-Civil War properties by a developer and rumors of demolition circling, preservation advocates are reviving a campaign they’ve been pushing for several years to designate a lengthy strip of Park Avenue as a protected landmark district.

“Like the Barbizon that was just designated, Park Avenue is one of these iconic places in New York that most people would assume is designated, and people are always shocked to find out that it is not designated in its entirety, at least the residential part of it,” said Tara Kelly, executive director of Friends of the Upper East Side Historic Districts.

Currently, only the southern portion of Park Avenue is included in the Upper East Side Historic District, from midway between East 61st and 62nd streets up to East 79th Street. Parts of the avenue fall within the Carnegie Hill Historic District, from the north side of East 91st Street to midway between East 93rd and 94th streets, but the stretch in between these areas and north of them remains largely unprotected by landmark designation.

The groups Carnegie Hill Neighbors, Defenders of the Historic Upper East Side and Historic Park Avenue have all joined forces in a campaign to convince the Landmarks Preservation Commission to consider protecting Park Avenue in its entirety from East 62nd to 96th streets, which could mean expanding the Carnegie Hill district as well as creating a new district in the East 80s.

“This is the second go-round,” said Teri Slater, a member of Defenders. “We’re having another meeting with the chair of the Landmarks Commission, because since we [last] spoke, three buildings have been torn down, and now two more buildings are threatened.”

The properties currently under threat of development are 1108 and 1110 Park Ave., which were recently purchased for $16 million and $16.5 million, respectively, by 89 Park Avenue LLC, a holding company connected to Philadelphia-based luxury development company Toll Brothers. The properties both come with air rights and little restrictions on what can be built there, and many assume that the company will construct one of its signature high-end condo towers; their building The Touraine on East 65th Street boasts one- to five-bedroom units, priced from $2.95 million to $20 million.

“They tell a different story of Park Avenue,” said Kelly of the recently purchased properties. “Most people think of these tall buildings that were developed in the teens and twenties, but prior to that [the neighborhood] was middle-class.” While Park Avenue is now a pricey destination, Kelly said, at one time the railroad running through the neighborhood deterred wealthy buyers, and that if some of the buildings from that era aren’t preserved, the history will be too easily forgotten.

“We’re very upset. We don’t know what to do,” Slater said. “It’s probably one of the most iconic boulevards in the world.”

Lo van der Valk, president of the Carnegie Hill Neighbors, has been working to garner support for the landmarking effort and to spread the word about what exactly is at stake.

“One of the strongest arguments for designation is that the buildings within and outside the historically designated portions of Park Avenue are similar in style, scale, and period of construction (centering in the 1920s), and are mostly designed by the same group of distinguished architects of major apartment buildings,” van der Valk wrote in the group’s most recent newsletter.

Representatives from the preservation groups will be meeting with the Landmarks Commission this week to urge them to calendar a hearing to consider designating the missing pieces of the famous street.

“There are a lot of people who think Park Avenue is worth saving, and that’s why we’re working on this the second time around,” said Slater. “I’ve never lived on Park Avenue, I’m never going to live on Park Avenue, I have no desire to live on Park Avenue—but I value it as one of New York City’s assets.”