As best we and the police have been able to determine, nobody knew her. Her body apparently lay there for several days until it was spotted by members of a construction crew on a taller building nearby. The discovery was jarring because the Apthorp, built in 1908, has long been synonymous with gracious living, its name hovering alongside those of the Ansonia, the Dakota and the Belnord in the pantheon of luxurious residences on the Upper West Side. Countless television and movie scenes have been filmed in and around its manicured courtyard, a sort of lush urban valley surrounded by 12-story mountains of stone. There are 189 apartments, and it is unclear how many are occupied by people who view the building's managers as sinister and conspiratorial.
Some tenants say they have no problem with the management.
Lawyers for the building say the malcontents are a tiny, albeit truculent, band, all of whom are on the verge of legal, justified evictions and are desperate to stave off that reality. Winogradoff disagreed, producing a list of nearly two dozen tenants involved in litigation since 1993. That year may not be insignificant, because in 1993 and 1994, new state and city laws produced rent regulation provisions, commonly known as luxury decontrol, that gave landlords a new way to deregulate apartments that were vacated and changing hands. But however many opponents there are at the Apthorp, residents who do not count themselves among the opposition say that it has managed to kick up enough dust to suffuse the building with unease and suspicion. You're very aware of it.