The beauty of fire escapes and the vanishing of Edward Hopper’s New York

Autumn in New York: they even wrote a song about it that was a great hit 60 years ago. Last weekend the sky was awash in blue, Manhattan at its best, with Central Park gleaming in green and only the crowds marring the views. New York has changed dramatically these last 50 years, but what city has not? The place has got richer, but not better as far as the quality of life is concerned. That ghastly Bloomberg midget sold the place to the highest bidders, so developers are singing his praises, not unlike bootleggers paying homage to Al Capone.

Manhattan was always chic in the Upper East and West Sides, but bohemian and gritty and artistic downtown. No longer. The place has been airbrushed for good, a playground for Indian and Chinese billionaires, Russian molls, Arab crooks, as well as American and European money managers, corporate lawyers and international jet setters. In other words, the place stinks with new and unacceptable money and manners. Developers are king, long live funny money.

The luxurious downtown loft spaces that used to be cheap artist studios in the Fifties and Sixties were once failed factories and warehouses during the Forties. Economic and cultural evolution is a constant in many cities, but more so in the city that never sleeps. (In fact, it is impossible to sleep when drilling begins at 7 a.m. and one is a night owl.) Cranes are everywhere, new high-rise condos sprout like weeds, a horror to end all horrors stands over Madison Avenue in midtown, like an undulating middle finger to good taste, built by a man called Macklowe with whom I had the bad luck to go to prep school. Empty apartments sit by the thousands, owned by zillionaires hedging their bets in case the regimes that enabled them to make their money get their comeuppance.