Quarterly Profiles: Archive

Sally Spa	Steven Bloom
Robert Monahan & Carlyn Del Rosario	Rosary O'Neil
Asami Matsumoto	Shirley Appelson

WINTER 2007:

Sally Spa

Come to Sally Spa for a professional, reasonably priced manicure or pedicure and relax in their luxurious massage chairs. Sally also offers spa services such as massage, body scrub and waxing. Ask for the special 200E resident coupon for VIP discounts (expiring on 02/29/2008) complete with complimentary hot coffee, green tea & Chinese cookies!

SPRING 2007:

Steven Bloom

Though Stephen Bloom grew up in Manhattan, he moved away for college and hadn’t had a home here until he and his partner, David, bought their apartment at 200 East 16th in 2003. Though they also maintain a home in San Francisco, they grew to love our neighborhood (and the availability of on-street parking!) during their frequent visits back East and stays at the W Hotel in Union Square. But what makes their apartment itself so special is the view up Third Avenue. As Stephen puts it, “to see the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building lit up every night, well, it is the quintessential New York view.”

Stephen and David are not only partners in life, but also in work. They have a small but growing business importing wines (mostly Italian), focusing on small producers who make wines with personality and balance that not only have a certain purity about them, but also go well with food. Stephen has learned that “the more that people get to know about wine, the more they seek out diversity beyond the usual Chardonnay and Cabernet."

Recently, Stephen has been trying to encourage this exploration by expanding the selection at the liquor store on our block of Third Avenue. He saw the upgraded storefronts and decided that it would be a good time to approach the proprietors about broadening their offerings. “I tested Mr. Kim and Fidel on a few of our wines and they really liked them, even though they normally carry more ‘standard’ fare,” he says. He’s hoping that interest from our building will persuade the store to branch out even more, so be sure to ask for Tesori Wines the next time you’re down there, and check out Tesori’s website at www.tesoriwines.com. As Stephen reminds us, “there’s more to wine than Trader Joe’s and 2-buck Chuck!”

WINTER 2006:

Robert Monahan & Carlyn Del Rosario

For Robert Monahan and Carlyn Del Rosario, it was love at first sight when they initially visited 200 East 16th on an evening several years ago. They were quickly seduced by the building's nighttime views of the Chrysler and Empire State Buildings, and they have lived happily in apartment 16G for almost three years now. They moved to the Gramercy area from 57th Street and 8th Avenue, but they say they feel much more at home here than in Midtown West. Nobody really lives there Carlyn explained recently. Everybody just passes through on their way to work. They looked at many apartments in the area, but when they finally found 200 East 16th they prepared to move in without even seeing their own unit. Robert explains: We never actually saw this apartment, because this one was being renovated we saw 15G. When their apartment was finished, the only surprise was that it had a different doorknob than the one that opened the apartment a floor below. And that's the thing I loved! Robert added. But that was the only issue- everything else was perfect.

Both Robert and Carlyn work in educationrelated fields. Carlyn is director of creative services for the online division of Scholastic, Inc. book club, and Robert teaches science to grades K through 5. They also happened to have met while in school at SUNY Albany. Carlyn grew up on Long Island and Robert in Queens, where he also teaches, just a short ride away on the L train one of the many things they love about living at 200 East 16th. Also on their list of neighborhood favorites are Stuyvesant Park, the farmers market, and their sense of on-going positive changes around them. We've seen a lot of growth from the time that we moved in to this point. It's amazing how much...everything we've seen has been an improvement. There has been huge growth in the building.

SUMMER 2006:

Rosary O'Neill #8C, Resident Playwright

Playwright Rosary O'Neill has a glorious cackle of a laugh that punctuates her Southern drawl, an accent that reveals she is a fairly recent transplant to this city that she loves. "I'm from New Orleans, Louisiana. I've always had kind of a love affair with New York. For various reasons I didn't come until middle age. For me it's like being reborn, and I came because I had a lot of calamity and a lot of success happen at the same time. My parents died and freed me from a sense of commitment to New Orleans, and I got a senior Fulbright fellowship for five years to Europe." Her plays had already been produced in New Orleans and theaters all over the world, and at the end of her fellowship she decided to seize the opportunity to relocate to theater capital of the world. "To be a playwright, you really have to live in New York City," she explained. Not long after arriving in the city, her play, Degas in New Orleans, received a reading at Ensemble Studio Theatre and then the National Arts Club in Gramercy Park, where she is now considered the resident playwright.

Soon she was looking for a home in the neighborhood: "I fell in love with this Union Square area," she said, "I wanted to live near the National Arts Club and near the park." She heard about an available apartment at 200 E 16th and immediately felt at home in the building after moving in a month ago. "I was honored to be accepted and be part of this distinguished community."

She has just finished a novel, is working on another, and is also working on two screenplays, finding inspiration in the city and the neighborhood's parks and churches. "New York just sort of energizes me, I love it!" she exclaimed with her charming lilt. For more information about her writing, visit rosaryoneillproductions.com.

SUMMER 2005:

Asami Matsumoto, #20B, A Sense of Style

Everyone has noticed the elegant flower arrangements that have greeted us in the lobby for the past year. Those beautiful creations are the work of Asami Matsumoto, from apartment #20B. Asami moved to New York from Japan four years ago, after marrying her husband, Hiroyuki Matsumoto, who has lived in the building for over twenty years. She is happy to be in New York and at 200 East 16 Street: "I think that there are a lot of young people, and my image of the building is that it is very stylish," she says.

Asami was born in Okinawa and lived in Tokyo for nine years before moving to New York. She loved Tokyo, but finds New York to be "a very exciting city." She elaborates: "Everyone seems young — even when people are older here, they are young inside. I love that." Asami has been working with flowers for most of her life — her father is an orchid farmer in Okinawa, and when she lived in Japan she studied ikebana, a Japanese style of flower arranging. Currently she takes classes twice a month in the European style of flower arranging, which she explains allows more freedom of style than ikebana — "the European style is gorgeous, but the Japanese style is simple, and very polite. European style says 'look at me!'" As for the arrangements she makes for the lobby, she employs her own mix of both techniques; "it's my style," she declares

WINTER 2004:

Shirley Appelsson, #4M

Shirley Appelson, who has lived at 200 E 16 for 40 years, knows a little something about originality. From 1981 to 2001, she owned and operated Cat Caterers, one of the city's first cat-sitting companies. Recently, the Quarterly sat down with Shirley to talk about her business and some of her other original experiences.

How did you get started with the cat-sitting business?

A friend of mine who was working in Toronto brought me an article from the Toronto Star about this woman who fed cats. So I turned to a friend who had just left her job and said, "Why don't we do it?" We advertised in Our Town, a local newspaper, and we asked them to do an article about us. We sent letters to all the vets in the area and all the pet shops. And soon it took off.

Did you run the business just in this neighborhood?

On the east side, but really all over town. You would leave in the morning with about 10 or 15 sets of keys and go from apartment to apartment...I know about every apartment in this city, and what I have seen is not to be believed...And I'm also very fortunate — I'm one of the few cat-sitters that didn't end up with 20 cats of my own.

What are your hobbies or other interests?

When I was very, very young, I was an usher on Broadway, starting in 1943. When I write my memoirs I'm going to call it "I Saw the Original." Because I did see the original Oklahoma, South Pacific and the original Finian's Rainbow. And I did it until 1950.

What was this neighborhood like when you first moved here? Has it changed?

Pretty much the same, pleasant. Oh, no. For a long time it was a big drug area, in the '70s or '80s. I still don't drop my mail at the corner here because once there was this person using it as an ashtray, and he set the mailbox on fire. When I saw the fire department taking out the burned mail, I never mailed anything there again. But other than that, I don't think the neighborhood has really changed. It's always been great. It's close to transportation, and it's not scary. And that's all I wanted.