Week in Pictures for Feb. 7

See the slide show

Here is a slide show of photographs from the past week in New York City and the region. Subjects include Super Bowl Boulevard, Chinese New Year and another snowstorm.

This weekend on “The New York Times Close Up,” an inside look at the most compelling articles in Sunday’s Times, Sam Roberts will speak with The Times’s Sam Tanenhaus, Richard Sandomir and Kate Taylor; and the city comptroller Scott Stringer. Tune in at 10 p.m. Saturday or 10 a.m. Sunday on NY1 News to watch.

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Big Ticket | A Grand-Scale Restoration Yields $51 Million

Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times A neo-Georgian (brick at near right) sold by the designer Reed Krakoff.

An imposing Upper East Side mansion that underwent a flamboyant renovation after being gutted by a fire in 2006 and was rumored to be available for $52 million in 2009 has sold, quietly, for $51 million and was the most expensive sale of the week, according to city records.

The 30-foot-wide neo-Georgian home at 113-115 East 70th Street, owned since 2005 by Reed Krakoff, formerly the executive creative director of the $5 billion Coach brand, sits proudly on a prime residential block between Park and Lexington Avenues; elite neighbors include Woody Allen, whose townhouse is across the street. The annual property tax is about $75,000.

Records indicate that the 18,000-square-foot, seven-story brick-and-limestone mansion was built around 1922 for I. Townsend Burden, a cousin of the industrialist James Burden. But by the time Mr. Krakoff acquired it for $17 million, it had lost most of its luster, having been chopped into separate apartments, in a process that necessitated the demolition of its elaborate internal staircase and other period details. The fire occurred while the home was in the preliminary throes of a painstaking renovation presided over by Mr. Krakoff’s wife, Delphine, a French-born interior designer.

Despite the setback, the couple completed the restoration on a grand scale. In a 2011 New Yorker profile of her husband, Delphine Krakoff said their statement-making central staircase was inspired by the Guggenheim’s helical ramp. The article also noted the presence of a powder room with gold snakeskin walls and the ultimate conversation piece, a spherical toilet. On a more classical note, the home has antique European floorboards and 18th-century mantels.

Mr. Krakoff, who left Coach last summer to start an eponymous brand of luxury leather goods and apparel, was identified as the seller in city records. The anonymous buyer used a limited-liability company, 70th Street Acquisition, with an address in Hewlett, N.Y.

There is speculation that Brown Harris Stevens negotiated both sides of the whisper deal, but the brokerage declined to comment. Paula Del Nunzio, a veteran Brown Harris Stevens broker who specializes in mansion and townhouse sales â€" she handled the record-setting $53 million sale of the Harkness Mansion on East 75th Street in 2006 â€" represented Mr. Krakoff in 2007 when he sold his previous Upper East Side townhouse to Roger Waters of Pink Floyd for $14.9 million. Ms. Del Nunzio refused to comment on the $51 million transaction.

What can safely be surmised is that Mr. Krakoff is once again on the hunt for a chic city domicile.

Big Ticket includes closed sales from the previous week, ending Wednesday.

Homeless and Too Tired for Food

Dear Diary:

Bundled against the 27-degree weather, I was standing on the downtown No. 4 train in mid-December about 12:30 p.m. headed to a meeting on Broad Street. As we pulled into 14th Street, a poster on my left with the image of a skier on a chairlift caught my eye. The ad’s tag line, “What will you think about when you don’t have to think about money?” was offered by the New York State Lottery.

The crowd hustled to exit the door ahead of me, and I looked up to see two men, apparently asleep, sprawled across from each other in the short seats at the front of the car. Black and white plastic bags with belongings were under their feet and arms, hung from the handrail above. They wore heavy work boots. Their heads were covered â€" one with a sheet, the other with a jacket â€" providing a semblance of nighttime.

Behind me came a voice entering the rear door: “Folks, I have sandwiches and drinks for the homeless here. If you need something to eat, help yourself. If you can, please make a donation.” Nearly everyone put something in his canister as he walked forward, pulling a cart with neatly wrapped sandwiches and bottles of water.

He made his way to the sleeping riders and, bending down, said in a friendly voice: “Hey fellas, how are you today? Care for some sandwiches?” No response. No movement.

The car was completely quiet, heads down. The man with the sandwich cart got off at City Hall.

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New York Today: Wisdom of the Groundhog

Annie Correal/The New York Times Chuck may know what the weatherman does not.

O.K., granted: So far, Chuck the Groundhog has been right.

Twelve inches of snow has fallen on the city since Chuck saw his shadow at the Staten Island Zoo last Sunday.

But when it comes to long-range forecasting, do you trust a groundhog?

Or a bunch of scientists with radar and satellites and fancy computer models?

Let’s compare their track records.

The National Weather Service’s one-month and three-month forecasts for the Northeast are 25 to 35 percent more accurate than mere historic averages of temperature and precipitation.

“There’s some value added,” said Jon Gottschalck of the service’s Climate Prediction Center. “I hope we do better than the rodent.”

Well.

Chuck has been right 25 of the last 32 years, the Staten Island Zoo said.

That’s 78 percent accuracy. And he’s on a four-year winning streak.

The weather service agrees with Chuck this year, at least for the near term.

For the next week, it’s calling for temperatures 10 degrees below normal.

The week after that, the service predicts significant likelihood of low temperatures and above-average precipitation.

Then the crystal ball gets fuzzy.

“Equal chances” of cold or warm, dry or snowy, their models say.

But as he sleeps in the warmth of his burrow, waiting for the scent of spring to awaken him, Chuck knows.

Here’s what else you need to know for Friday and the weekend.

WEATHER

A little chilly but not bad: sunny with a high of 33.

Skies may look threatening for much of the weekend, and a few flakes may fall.

But so far the two-legged forecasters predict no measurable snow.

COMMUTE

Subways: Check latest status.

Rails: Check L.I.R.R., Metro-North or New Jersey Transit status.

Roads: Check traffic map or radio report on the 1s or the 8s.

Alternate-side parking is suspended, maintaining its perfect record for the week.

Weekend Travel Hassles: Check subway disruptions or list of street closings.

COMING UP TODAY

- At 10 a.m., Mayor de Blasio donates blood. He’s hoping you do, too, as supplies are running low. Here’s how.

- After his post-bloodletting cookie, the mayor makes an announcement at noon, then receives members of Pussy Riot at City Hall in the evening.

- The five borough presidents discuss the city’s future at a breakfast panel at New York Law School at 8:15 a.m. Watch live.

- Learn sales strategies from the experts: Girl Scouts. They offer advice while dealing cookies at Grand Central’s Vanderbilt Hall from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. [Free]

- Elmo dispenses Valentine gifts, cards and furry hugs to military children at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn at 10 a.m.

- Fashion Week is now in full effect. Our colleagues in the Styles section have a helpful guide to today’s action.

- Celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ landing in New York abound. A historical marker will be unveiled at Kennedy Airport at 11:30 a.m. …

- … The exhibit “Ladies and Gentlemen…The Beatles!” is on at the Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center… [Free]

- … and the weekend-long “Fest for Beatles Fans” opens at the Grand Hyatt on East 42nd Street at 5 p.m. [$65 and up]

- A Greenpoint gallery stroll from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. takes in a dozen art spots. [Free]

- For more events, see The New York Times Arts & Entertainment guide.

- And if you’re looking for fun outside New York City this weekend, The Times’s Metropolitan section has suggestions for Westchester, Long Island, New Jersey and Connecticut.

IN THE NEWS

- Snows of opportunity: the city has hired 1,800 temporary shovelers. [New York Times]

- All this snow is also good for showing where new public spaces could be carved out of city streets. [This Old City]

- Two Brooklyn men walked free after serving more than 20 years for murders they did not commit. [New York Times]

- A proposed 250-mile pipeline would move natural gas fracked in other states across upstate New York to New England. [Capital New York]

- Ralph Kiner, feared slugger and beloved broadcast voice of the Mets, died at 91. [New York Times]

- A look back at the 1940s and ’50s, when acres and acres of marijuana grew in New York City. [NY1]

- A new weekly Times column, “Two Good Reasons,” offers rationales for visiting the Gowanus section of Brooklyn.

- Scoreboard: Nets jolt Spurs, 103-89. Rangers fall to Oilers, 2-1. Islanders succumb to Flames, 4-2.

Joseph Burgess and Annie Correal contributed reporting.

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