Monday Bulletin: A Window-Rattling Landlord-Tenant Dispute Unfolds on West 73rd Street; Toby Talbot, UWS Film Pioneer, Dies at 96; A Spooky Walking Tour Comes to the UWS; Meredith Viera’s UWS Penthouse Hits the Market

Today is Monday, October 20th, 2025

The forecast calls for partly cloudy skies, with the possibility of showers early; high 64.

For the rest of the week, expect a mix of sun and clouds, with occasional showers; highs in the 60s.

Notices

Our calendar has lots of local events. Click on the link or the lady in the upper right-hand corner to check.

If you’re not registered to vote, or have changed your address since the last election, and you plan to cast a ballot on November 4th, the city’s Board of Elections must receive your new or updated registration form by this Saturday, October 25th. You can check to see if you’re registered — HERE. If you’re not, or if you’ve changed your address since the last election, you’ll find more information and a link to register/change your address — HERE, plus instructions for filing via mail, email, or fax if you’d prefer a lower-tech method of registering.

In addition to the mayoral race, there are six proposals on the ballot this year, and on Wednesday, October 10th, the New York League of Conservation Voters Education Fund will host a webinar to explain them. Get the link and submit questions — HERE.

The leaves in Central Park are starting to change; you’ll find daily updates on where to see the best autumn colors on the Central Park Conservancy’s fall foliage tracker  —  HERE.

News Roundup

Compiled by Laura Muha

New York Magazine’s Curbed section recently did an in-depth piece on a long-standing dispute between residents of the 100 block of West 73rd Street and the popular Italian restaurant Arte Cafe, which the residents say has been the source of noise so disruptive that it literally shakes their windows.

“The first year we were like, ‘This [restaurant] is so charming,’” one tenant told Curbed. “Then all of a sudden, it’s a bar mitzvah DJ literally rattling the glass in our walls.” That tenant, like most of the others who spoke to the publication, requested anonymity, fearing reprisals from the owner of Arte Cafe, Robert Malta, who, to complicate matters further, owns several adjacent residential buildings — meaning that he’s the landlord of many of the residents who are complaining.

Mediation attempts have failed, and residents showed up en masse with a long list of objections when Cafe Arte recently applied to Community Board 7 for a permit to use the basement space in the adjoining townhouse at 110 West 73rd Street for restaurant seating. The application also asked to use the cellar below it as a prep room. “I’ve been on the board for over 10 years and I’ve never seen this,” CB7 board member Seema Reddy told Curbed. “Plus, these neighbors are terrified because the applicant is also their landlord in most cases — almost all of them said, ‘Here are my 17 complaints, please keep my name anonymous because I’m scared.’ That’s something that we’ve never seen before.” At its October meeting, the board turned down Cafe Arte’s application, but noted that Malta can reapply after addressing building violations.

In related matters, a spokesperson for Arte Cafe recently confirmed to the Rag that the restaurant plans to expand into an adjacent space that until recently was occupied by the Mexican restaurant El Coco (also owned by Malta).

Read the full story — HERE.

Toby Talbot, who with her husband, Dan, helped to introduce art-house and foreign films to audiences in New York City and across the country, died on September 15th of complications of Guillain-Barré syndrome, her daughter Sarah Talbot confirmed last week to The New York Times. Talbot was 96.

For more than 60 years, Talbot and her husband ran movie houses on the UWS, starting with The New Yorker Theater at Broadway and West 88th Street, which they leased on a whim from her sister’s accountant; the theater, which they ran from 1960 to 1973, opened for business with a double feature: “Henry V” starring Laurence Olivier, and the French short “The Red Balloon.” Later, the couple ran a film distribution business and three other theaters: the Cinema Studio (1977 to 1990), the Metro Theater (1982 to 1987) and, beginning in 1981, the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, which closed in 2018 after the landlord declined to renew the lease. The final film shown at the Lincoln Plaza was “Darkest Hour,” a 2017 biopic about Winston Churchill, for which actor Gary Oldman won an Oscar.

“Of course I would like to continue running it [the theater],” Toby Talbot told the Rag in an interview at the time the Lincoln Plaza theater closed. “And one of the things that grieves me — grieves is hardly even a strong enough word — is that the people who’ve been working with us — and I say not ‘for’ us, but ‘with’ us, some for 35 years — are so devoted, I just hate to think of them suddenly being out of jobs.”

Though Talbot had been a movie buff since childhood and her name was synonymous with UWS theaters, her degree was in Spanish, and for a time, she was education editor at the Spanish-language newspaper El Diaro Nueva York. She also translated into English a memoir by Argentine journalist Jacobo Timerman and taught classes in Spanish at East Rockaway High School, in Spanish literature at Columbia and NYU, and in documentary film at the New School.  She was the author of dozens of books, including memoirs and a novel, and she edited her husband’s memoir, “In Love With the Movies” (2022), after his death in 2017.

Read her full obituary — HERE.

Just in time for Halloween, a company known for “dark history” tours of Lower Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens, is turning its attention uptown, with a new tour of the “haunted” UWS.

“We’re so excited about this one,” Andrea Janes, founder of Boroughs of the Dead walking tours, told Our Town recently. “Everything fell into place while we were researching in a way that felt, well, uncanny. The connections felt somehow more than coincidental.”

The tour, called “The Uncanny Upper West Side,” starts at West 66th Street and Central Park West, and wraps up in Riverside Park at West 83rd Street near the site of the farm where Edgar Allen Poe wrote “The Raven.”

“You might think you know everything about the spooky spots of the Upper West Side—it’s no surprise to anyone that Sigourney Weaver’s Ghostbusters apartment is at 55 Central Park West, aka Spook Central—but what do you know about Dan Aykroyd’s real-life connections to the Spiritualist movement?” Janes told Our Town. “We’ll tell you about those on this tour . . . and then we’ll take you to the former headquarters of the American Society for Psychical Research, which is only a few blocks up the street. It really is uncanny, the way all these stories are clustered together geographically and seem so entwined thematically.”

The tour, which is not recommended for children under 13, costs $40 per person.

Read the full story — HERE.

When Meredith Viera and her husband, Richard Cohen, bought a penthouse apartment in the landmarked El Dorado building in 2014, they planned to initially use it as a pied a terre and later to live there full time. But after Cohen, who had multiple sclerosis, died last December, Viera decided to sell.

“I’m still reeling a bit from Richard’s loss,” Vieira explained to The New York Times in a piece that ran in this weekend’s real estate section. “Our fantasy had been that we would probably leave Westchester altogether” — the couple made their home in Irvington, N.Y. — “and retire in the city. That dream is not going to happen, so it’s sad. You should not walk into that apartment and feel sad.”

The 2,800-square-foot apartment, at 300 Central Park West, is listed for $12.5 million, with monthly maintenance of $8,332. It’s located on the 19th floor, just below the building’s north tower, and it features three bedrooms, three and a half baths, a bar, a double-sided fireplace, herringbone oak floors, two irrigated terraces totaling 1,400 square feet, and a private elevator landing. The listing agent is Deborah Kerr of the Corcoran Group.

Viera told the Times that she fell in love with the apartment’s 10-foot ceilings and abundant light. “It just says old New York charm — it’s so gracious,” the paper quoted her as saying. “It’s like having a little house in the sky.”

Read the full story and see photos — HERE.

ICYMI

Here are a few stories we think are worth a look if you missed them last week — or a second look if you saw them. (Note that our comments stay open for six days after publication, so you may not be able to comment on all of them.)

What to Know About the New ‘Danger’ Signs on Grates in Riverside Park

Upper West Side to Lose 3 Dedicated Ambulances and Staff

Facing a Ban, Central Park Horse-Drawn Carriage Drivers Defend Their Industry