A Hell Of A Way To Wait Out A Town House

UPPER EAST SIDE - Apparently, Howard Lutnick is a guy with a big heart-or at least a big bank account. Mr. Lutnick, the president and chief executive of Cantor Fitzgerald, a wholesale securities seller and the chairman and chief executive of eSpeed Inc., which develops technology for trading online, bought a Beaux Arts house at 11 East 71st Street for $7.6 million in 1998. At the time, it was divided into 10 apartments. But not until January 2001 did he obtain a permit to renovate the place into a single-family home. "I think he's bought a complete shell, basically," said Suria Clarke, a spokeswoman for the businessman, who was working from his London offices last week. In fact, Mr. Lutnick told The New York Times' Christopher Gray that "nothing original remained inside" the Beaux Arts-style 1892 Carrere & Hastings-designed home down the block from the Frick, which Mr. Gray called "a radically new piece of architecture" for its time.

In the meantime, Mr. Lutnick recently signed a four-month lease on the 6,300-square-foot triplex maisonette at 817 Fifth Avenue that belonged to the late pediatrician and philanthropist Anne Dyson. The rent is a mere $45,000 a month. The apartment has four bedrooms, six bathrooms, a double maid's room, a library, an office, a sitting room, a large living room and two fireplaces. There is a small terrace and two floors with about 50 feet of frontage each on Central Park. "It's like having your own townhouse," said Scott Durkin, chief operating officer of the Corcoran Group. And apartments as little as half the size have rented for $30,000 a month, according to one broker familiar with the building, which is home to Steve Wynn and Richard Gere. The lease may or may not tide Mr. Lutnick over until his house is ready, which won't be until November at the earliest. But it will certainly buy some time for Dyson's husband, Michael Kramer, a managing editor at the Daily News, to try to find a buyer for the apartment, which has been on the market since last October