The Herald Above the Reeds

Tadeusz Strzelecki The male red-winged blackbird, with his powerful call, is one of the most reliable signs of spring.

The call of the red-winged blackbird announces spring while the snow still falls. As black as pitch, with flame orange shoulders, the male perches on tall grasses and leafless branches high above New York’s bleak winter marshes. He is an unlikely herald, but he is one of the most reliable signs of spring. His call â€" a powerful “conk-a-ree-e” â€" trails off and settles over the reeds, embodying the ancient promise that spring will return.

Most years, the first males are trilling from newly established breeding territories by late February or early March, regardless of winter’s stubborn persistence.

Red-winged blackbirds (Agelaius phoeniceus) regularly overwinter in New York, which is an interesting adaptive strategy. Males establish and vigorously defend a territory. They can be observed puffing up their brilliant orange shoulder feathers and fanning their shining black tails to make the most of each loud call. Chase scenes, of one male ridding his territory of another, are not uncommon.

A bird who has managed to survive a mild winter has first pick of territories and gains the advantage of prime real estate. This advantage is measured by the females, who return north only slightly later than their male counterparts.

But not all New York winters are mild. This winter’s polar vortex was followed by numerous unnamed bouts of severe cold. Repeated snowstorms blocked access to food. The decision to stay may have been the final choice for many of these birds.

Adaptively speaking, in years like this it is advantageous not to be the “early bird.” The decision to migrate, or not, is important to the red-winged blackbird as a species; in this way there will always be reproducing adults, even if some perish in late or early severe weather.

Red-winged blackbirds are good examples of sexual dimorphism. The male is aptly named and nearly impossible to misidentify, but the brown, streaky bird next to him may not be the sparrow you suspect. Like sparrows, female red-winged blackbirds are well camouflaged, and at first glance are hard to differentiate except for their larger size and longer bill.

After selecting a protected site within the male’s territory, the female weaves a grass nest that she suspends between the reed stems. She lines its cup with mud and fine, soft grass, and lays three to four glossy eggs, which hatch in a little under two weeks. She is largely responsible for raising the nestlings, but as spring ripens and her chicks mature, she may produce several more nests in succession, with the same male or with competing males.

Red-winged blackbirds are strong fliers, and they flock together as summer cools to autumn. They are not long-distance migrants, generally overwintering in the southern United States, but some will fly as far south as Mexico and Central America.

Still others will stay home, betting on unknowable odds that the winter of 2015 will be milder than its predecessor.

Few Are Expected to Mourn the Loss of a Gilded Age Building

Katie Orlinsky for The New York Times The building at 815 Fifth Avenue, center, is six floors high and 25 feet wide.

The brownstone may be the oldest building on Fifth Avenue â€" a 143-year-old townhouse that witnessed the dawn of the Gilded Age, the completion of Central Park and an unsolved murder. But even the Landmarks Preservation Commission did not raise much objection when a developer proposed demolishing most of it for a highrise.

Renovations over the years have hidden so much of the 19th century Italianate original that once stood at the spot, 815 Fifth Avenue, that a historic district report said the current incarnation had no architectural style.

The new iteration of the building, designed by T.P. Greer Architects, will be 14 stories and sheathed in Indiana limestone. It will blend in more seamlessly with 812 and 817 Fifth, its neighbors on the block between East 62rd and 63th Streets. Work is expected to begin on the building this spring.

The original, and now unoccupied townhouse at 815 Fifth, six floors high and 25 feet wide, was designed by Samuel A. Warner for William N. Raynor and William R. Stewart. It was built as a twin with 814, with construction starting five years after the Civil War, as Boss Tweed consolidated his control of city government and the development of Central Park continued.

A remarkable number of bold-face-names, even before the phrase existed, would come and go from this corner of Manhattan as 815 Fifth traveled through the decades.

By the end of the 1870s, neighbors included a former president of the New York Central Railroad, a partner of the financier (or robber baron, if you prefer) Jay Gould, and a patron of astronomy after whom an asteroid was named.

In 1885, residents of the block unsuccessfully petitioned the city’s Board of Estimate in a not-in-my-front yard protest against the “offensive and unwholesome” Central Park Zoo across the street.

By 1923, as the block became home to taller buildings with full-floor apartments, 815 survived. It was sold by William and Gladys Ziegler to James Stewart Cushman, a Mayflower descendant, and his wife, Vera, a philanthropist. They removed the front stoop and balconies. In 1952, the townhouse was converted to apartments.

Three years later, at 814, the financier Serge Rubinstein was found murdered. The crime remains unsolved. By the early 1960s, 812, 813 and 814 were razed for what became 812 Fifth Avenue, home to former Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller, among others.

No. 815 was purchased several years ago for about $32 million by JHSF Participacoes, a Brazilian development company. Some neighbors groused about the company’s original plans, worrying that the height and design of the proposed building would block their views from upper-floor windows.

Last fall, though, the Landmarks Preservation Commission granted a certificate of appropriateness to demolish most of the existing building and construct a replacement because “it is not one of the buildings for which the Upper East Side Historic District was designated.”

That 1981 designation report describes the building’s present style ignominiously in a word: “none.”

“It had almost nothing left of its original architectural character,” said Timothy P. Greer, the architect of the replacement high-rise. “It was denuded of its original elements. It was sort of an eyesore.”

“Oldest isn’t always best,” he added.

The Week in Pictures for March 7

Slide Show

A slide show of photographs of the past week in New York City and the region includes ice boaters, Ash Wednesday and a fatal fire.

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 Margaret Sullivan, The Times’s public editor; The Times’s Michael Cooper, Corey Kilgannon and Kate Taylor; and the author Terry Golway. Tune in at 10 p.m. Saturday or 10 a.m. Sunday on NY1 News to watch.

Read current New York headlines and follow us on Twitter.

Share Your Moment of New York Redemption

Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times Hurry! The doors are closing!

As I descended the subway staircase at 28th and Broadway just before 8 a.m., I experienced that moment every New Yorker fears: The woman in front of me suddenly ran toward the turnstiles as soon as she reached the bottom of the stairs, suggesting a train was at the platform. I was about to do The Sprint, sure to leave me with either just-made-it glory or just-missed-it agony.

In this case, my haste led to the dreaded “TOO FAST SWIPE AGAIN” that always makes you feel like a rookie. The mistake was costly; I arrived at the doors just after they closed. Defeat.

This had been a week full of cruel twists on my New York routine. On Monday morning, I was struck by a cab in a crosswalk, and while I was uninjured it has made every street-crossing since a little more tense. On Wednesday, the trusty pizza place on my corner shut down.

And now I just missed the train after a valiant sprint. But then, in a moment of reinvigoration, the conductor decided to open the door again, just for me. I couldn’t see his or her neck sticking out, but I blindly waved to the left hoping this person would see me say: I know you didn’t need to do that. Thank you.

There are a lot of these restore-your-faith moments in New York. So we ask you, City Room readers: What unexpected moments or gestures have lifted you up? Have you witnessed a moment of kindness happening to someone else? Let us live through your good fortune by sharing yours in the comments.

Big Ticket | Sophisticated Estate Orphan at $19 Million

Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times 810 Fifth Avenue

A full-floor apartment at the exclusive 810 Fifth Avenue co-op that the billionaire Charles R. Bronfman bought for $21 million in 2010 sold for $19 million and was the most expensive sale of the week, according to city records.

The unit, No. 6, which became a white-glove real estate orphan after the 2011 divorce of Mr. Bronfman and his third wife, Bonnie Roche Bronfman, was composed of 13 rooms that were reduced to nine to create a magisterial south-facing master suite. It has some 40 feet of Central Park frontage and a monthly maintenance fee of $8,902.

The 1926 Renaissance-style limestone building at the corner of 62nd Street was designed by J.E.R. Carpenter to house a select few like Nelson Rockefeller, who owned a triplex penthouse there. In an ode to privacy, it has just 12 apartments on 13 floors, and its board nixes potential buyers who are unprepared to pay cash for the privilege of moving in. At 810 Fifth Avenue, it is perfectly acceptable to be in finance, but not to finance.

Mr. Bronfman, the retired co-chairman of the Seagram Company, had been trying to sell the three-bedroom, four-and-a-half-bath apartment ever since he and Mrs. Bronfman opted for an especially amicable divorce and marked the occasion by throwing a formal bash for a few hundred of their closest friends. Mr. Bronfman told The New York Times that the apartment was very much a casualty of the split: “We decided not to renovate until we decided to stay together,” he said. Obviously, they never got around to personalizing the décor. The initial $25 million asking price was gradually reduced to $19.9 million.

Serena Boardman of Sotheby’s International Realty represented Mr. Bronfman. David E. Goel, the managing general partner of Matrix Capital Management, a hedge fund, was the buyer; Joseph A. Tuana of Tuana Associates negotiated on his behalf.

The runner-up, at $11,847,838.75, was a combination of two sponsor units at 135 East 79th Street, near Lexington Avenue. The buyer, Gerald A. Erickson Jr., a scion of the Holiday Companies, a chain of convenience stores founded by his family in 1928, acquired the so-called Maisonette West, a 4,300-square-foot six-bedroom duplex at the base of the limestone-and-brick condominium, and added No. 2B, the only studio on the offering plan. Carrying costs are $11,168. The Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group handled the deal for the sponsor, the Brodsky Organization; Inez Wade of Stribling & Associates brought the buyer.

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

Coffee Comeuppance

Dear Diary:

Many years ago some of my former law school classmates and I, all of whom had recently been admitted to the New York bar, met for dinner at the now closed Gasner’s Restaurant near City Hall.

When the time came for dessert, in order to impress my companions of how sophisticated I had become (after all, I was now an attorney at law!), I quite pretentiously ordered a demitasse. The waiter shortly returned and to my chagrin served me a regular cup of coffee.

I promptly protested and, in the best stentorian voice that I could muster, told the waiter that I had ordered a demitasse.

Without missing a beat, and to the amusement of all, the waiter responded, “Drink half.”

Somewhat abashed, I duly complied and my demitasse days were over. For good.

Read all recent entries and our updated submissions guidelines. Reach us via email diary@nytimes.com or follow @NYTMetro on Twitter using the hashtag #MetDiary.

New York Today: Art Abounds

Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times Paintings by Etel Adnan at the Whitney Biennial.

Updated 6:56 a.m.

Good Friday morning. The temperature is climbing. But it’s still pretty cold â€" 28 degrees.

Seek solace in art.

The Whitney Biennial, the vaunted survey of American contemporary art, opens tonight.

And it coincides with several sprawling art fairs this weekend:

The Armory Show, the Art Dealers Association of America Art Show and the Independent Art Fair.

When you walk into these shows, the city tends to fade, the black and white of winter blasted away by intense, saturated hues.

But here and there, it pops back into view.

The accordion-like notebooks of the 89-year old Lebanese artist Etel Adnan at the Whitney, for example, feature scenes from the New York City streets.

“They’re cityscapes, an outline of the skyline spread across these folding books known as leporellos,” said her gallerist, Photios Giovanis.

The skyline also appears behind an old Pepsi-Cola sign in Long Island City, in Vera Lutter’s photos at the art dealers’ show.

If you’re looking for a smaller fair with a more local feel (than, say, an airport terminal) there’s Fountain, Spring/Break and the last Brucennial.

The Brucennial, which began in a Brooklyn storefront, features only female artists this year.

For a full roundup, check out Hyperallergic’s guide.

And wherever you go, you’ll do a lot of standing, so aim for a balance between comfort and style.

Spray paint your hiking boots.

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

WEATHER

Warren G. Harding promised a “return to normalcy” in 1920 and got elected president.

We extend the same offer concerning the weather.

Though not for today, when the temperature will stall out in the high 30s, under cloudy skies.

But then: 47 degrees on Saturday! A bit cooler on Sunday, with a little snow.

And another run at moderate temperatures on Monday and especially Tuesday, when it might break 50.

COMMUTE

Subways: Big mess on the 1, 2 and 3: The 1 is replaced by shuttle buses south of Chambers Street. Southbound 2 runs local from 96th to Chambers. Northbound 2 runs on the 5 from Nevins Street to the Bronx. And the 3 is suspended between Atlantic/Barclays and Times Square.

Check latest status.

Rails: Scattered delays on North Jersey Coast Line. O.K. Check L.I.R.R., Metro-North or N.J. Transit status.

Roads: No major delays. Check traffic map or radio report on the 1s or the 8s.

Alternate-side parking is in effect.

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

COMING UP TODAY

- Doughnut holes good, potholes bad: outside a Dunkin’ Donuts in Astoria, officials promote a bill requiring potholes to be fixed within five days. 11 a.m.

- No fair! Brooklynites rally for the same Verrazano Bridge toll discounts the M.T.A. recently granted Staten Islanders. 11:30 a.m. near the bridge.

- Mayor de Blasio talks with parent bloggers at City Hall about universal pre-K and after-school programs. 12:15 p.m.

- The author and technologist Jaron Lanier explains how digital networks have “led our economy into recession and decimated the middle class,” at Cooper Union. 6:30 p.m. [Free]

- A new show of art made from bits of the urban environment, including river flotsam and ceramic shards, at the Arsenal in Central Park. [Free]

- The New York Public Library hosts a Carnaval-themed party at the Schomburg Center in Harlem. 6 p.m. [Free, R.S.V.P.]

- The New York Disabilities Film Festival runs through March 11 at more than two dozen venues. [Admission varies]

IN THE NEWS

- Assemblyman William F. Boyland Jr. of Brooklyn was convicted on federal bribery charges. [New York Times]

- Officials at a school in Brooklyn did, effectively, nothing to stop an 11-year-old girl from being sexually abused by male students for months, the D.O.E. concluded. [Gothamist]

- A man yelling antigay slurs attacked a couple holding hands at the West Fourth Street subway station and broke one man’s nose. [CBS New York]

- Arrests for panhandling and peddling on the subways have tripled under Police Commissioner Bratton. [New York Times]

- Knockout attack: a 23-year-old man was randomly punched from behind in NoLIta. [CBS New York]

- A woman paid a fortune teller on West 51st Street $217,040 to remove a curse. [New York Post]

- A young Arctic harp seal took a winter vacation to the Rockaways and lolled on the beach in apparent good health. [DNAinfo]

- Of course: Two Brooklyn artists are living in a giant hamster wheel. [Animal New York]

- Scoreboard: Oilers douse Islanders, 3-2 in overtime.

THE WEEKEND

Saturday

- Street fair season begins: $25 gets you nibbles from seven high-end food vendors at “Taste of Seventh” on East Seventh Street. [Also Sunday]

- Wagner’s “Die Walkure,” performed in its entirety to piano accompaniment by New York Opera Forum, at the public library on East 96th Street. Noon. [Free]

- Ben Marcus, author of “The Flame Alphabet,” reads from his short-story collection, “Leaving the Sea,” at the main Brooklyn Public Library. 4 p.m. [Free]

- The Flamenco Festival runs through Sunday at New York City Center. [$25 and up]

Sunday

- Get Fido or Fluffy a free rabies shot at Blue Heron Park in Staten Island. 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

- An interactive “autism-friendly” concert with a jazz saxophonist, at Mosholu Montefiore Community Center in the Bronx. 1 p.m. [Free]

- The 1934 Chinese silent film “The Goddess,” about an unmarried mother who turns to prostitution, at the main Brooklyn Public Library, with live music. 1 p.m. [Free]

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

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

AND FINALLY …

Think you know this city?

See you tonight at the Queens Museum’s Panorama of the City of New York.

That’s the scale model of the city that covers an area roughly the size of a baseball diamond.

It contains 895,000 buildings, 100 bridges and landmarks like a 15-inch-tall Empire State Building.

Why tonight?

It’s the Panorama Challenge Trivia Night, at 7 p.m.

If your team identifies the most locations, you will get your name etched on a trophy at the museum.

For now, etch your R.S.V.P.

Joseph Burgess contributed reporting.

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