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David Hollister still remembers the night someone dumped a dead body on his block. It was 20 years ago. A car pulled up to the brick rowhouse, the car door opened and the body tumbled out.
"It was the perfect place for it because the street was so deserted at night," recalls Hollister. "When we moved into this neighborhood, there was no neighborhood. No one really lived here. It was filled with commercial loft spaces and discount stores. There weren't any real restaurants, only greasy spoons. It was a no man's land."
That no man's land has become one of Manhattan's hottest addresses. Called Ladies Mile, it is part of a landmark historic district roughly bounded by 15th and 24th Streets and Broadway and Sixth Avenue. At its northern edge is the wedge-shaped Flatiron Building. To the south are the Beaux Art buildings on lower Fifth Avenue, with classical facades and elaborate stone carvings. The area is home to advertising agencies, publishing houses, trendy boutiques and eateries. The Giorgio Armani store is here. So is Cafe Society, Union Square Cafe, and Chevignon, a French clothier.
Loft prices in the district range from $310,000 to $320,000, according to Pamela Liebman, a vice president of the Corcoran Group, a real estate concern that deals widely in the area. In 1989, prices dropped about 10 percent, she said, because the area was "hot" and apartment sales had appreciated rapidly in the late 1980s. But last year, prices in the district began leveling off and now are in synch with the rest of the New York real estate market, Liebman said
The commercial rebirth of Ladies Mile recalls its origins as a fashionable shopping strip. In the late 19th Century, women in crinolines, plumed hats and parasols strolled through the grand department stores lining the streets. Lord & Taylor, Arnold Constable, Tiffany's and Bonwit Teller catered to the carriage trade, offering everything from French kid boots to fur-lined capes.
"It was the shopping area in the country at one...