2025 is here, as is our round-up of the best random factoids that appeared in this newsletter.
January marks six years of the Daily Dirt hitting your inboxes every weeknight. As you probably know, each edition includes “A thing we’ve learned,” a sometimes-related to-real-estate tidbit that I, or my colleagues, have unearthed through reporting or from falling down Internet wormholes.
Thank you for reading, and please continue to send us interesting facts (and of course, story ideas).
Here are the best things we learned in 2024:
New York City was once home to wild pigs. In 1842, Charles Dickens traveled to New York as part of a five-month trip to various U.S. cities. The NYC chapter of the book that resulted from his journey, “American Notes,” described wild pigs roaming Broadway.
Even video games have a real estate connection. Joseph Cayre built his fortune, in part, through the success of MortalKombat, which his company GT Interactive distributed.
Niceville in Florida was once called Boggy Bayou. The town was renamed in the 1920s by a postmaster’s daughter, according to a 1996 story in the Ocala Star-Banner.
The Turritopsis dohrnii or “immortal jellyfish” can revert to its earliest development stage, known as a polyp, when facing danger. This polyp grows multiple clones of the original jellyfish — essentially starting over with younger versions of itself.
The Skyscraper Museum has a building classification system based on square footage and age, rather than height. For example, buildings constructed between 1950 and 2000 are considered “jumbo” if larger than 2 million square feet and “super jumbo” if bigger than 4 million.
The roofline of the visitor center at Poe Park in the Bronx is meant to be reminiscent of raven wings, according to Untapped New York. The center was built in 2011 and designed by Toshiko Mori.
The Order of the Third Bird is a somewhat secretive group of individuals that organize meetings where they “converge, flash-mob style, at museums, stare intensely at a work of art for half an hour, and vanish,” according to the New Yorker. New York is apparently home to various volées, the word to describe local chapters of the group.
The Chuck E. Cheese mascot was originally envisioned as a coyote. Nolan Bushnell, who started the chain restaurants and also co-founded Atari, bought a costume for what was then going to be called Coyote Pizza. He didn’t notice the costume had a tail.
“I’d never seen it below the waist,” he told the New York Times.
Bushnell then wanted to call the business Rick’s Rat Pizza, but luckily someone intervened and pointed out that was a terrible idea.
Former NFL player Greg Senat is now a real estate agent for Corcoran Infinity Properties in Bergen County, Bergen Record reports. Senat was an offensive tackle for the Baltimore Ravens, Cleveland Browns, Dallas Cowboys, Indianapolis Colts, the Kansas City Chiefs and, at the end of his career, the New York Jets. Thank you to Holden Walter-Warner for passing this along!
The development of ranch-style homes with open floor plans is often credited with accelerating the death of the formal dining room, Vox reports. “Taking away walls creates a certain psychological shift,” Melinda Fakuade writes. “The dining ‘room’ no longer exists, so everywhere is the dining room: the living room, the kitchen table, wherever the need or urge strikes.”
Dinosaur Ridge in Colorado is home to more than 300 dinosaur tracks.
Casey, Illinois, is home to a dozen of the world’s largest attractions, including the world’s largest teeter-totter. I tried to persuade my parents to see the world’s largest catsup bottle while they were on a road trip this year, but, sadly, they did not think it was worth stopping for.
Retired boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. launched his own real estate firm, dubbed Vada Properties, Suzannah Cavanaugh reports. The company is based at Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue.
Portland International Airport has a therapy llama and alpaca, according to NPR. Their names, respectively, are Beni and Captain Jack, and their presence at the airport is part of an overall effort to make travel at the airport less stressful.
Closing Time: The best of 2024
Residential: The priciest residential sale of the year was $135 million for a condominium unit at 730 Fifth Avenue in the Plaza District in July.
Commercial: The most expensive commercial closing of 2024 was Jeff Sutton’s sale of 717 Fifth Avenue to Gucci for $963 million in January.
New to the Market: The highest price for a residential property hitting the market was $105 million for an 8,255-square-foot condo unit at 432 Park Avenue in Midtown East. Lila Nejad and Noble Black of Douglas Elliman have the listing.
Breaking Ground: The largest new building application filed was 875,720-square-feet for a 32-story project at 574 Fifth Avenue in Midtown in September. Andrew Cleary of Kohn Pederson Fox filed the permit on behalf of Extell Development.
— Matthew Elo
Daily Closing Time
Residential: The priciest residential sale Thursday was $23 million for a 6,226-square-foot condo at 140 Franklin Street in Tribeca.
Commercial: The most expensive commercial closing of the day was $357 million for a 852,731-square-foot office building at 2 Park Avenue in Midtown South. The Real Deal reported on the sale by Morgan Stanley to Haddad Brands in December.
New to the Market: The highest price for a residential property hitting the market was $5.8 million for a 2,183-square-foot condo at 33 Park Row in the Financial District. The Leonard Steinberg Team at Compass has the listing.
Breaking Ground: The largest new building application filed was 46,237-square-feet for a proposed 8-story, 78-unit residential project at 3743 White Plains Road in Williamsbridge. Nikolai Katz Architect filed the permit on behalf of Shimon Greenfield of SCG Capital.
— Matthew Elo
Thank you to Erik Engquist for contributing things we’ve learned (and many editions of this newsletter) in 2024. And because it is within Larry David’s three-day statute of limitations: Happy New Year!