Private Schools in Manhattan-up to $46,000 a year and LOTS of attitude, interviews and b.s.

“Where are the schools and the grocery stores?” is a frequent question from tourists. After explaining that large grocery stores with parking lots don’t exist in Manhattan, I point out Whole Foods, Gristedes, Fairway and a few others.  But when it comes to schools, the sky is the limit… guides talk about the various public schools, especially the specialized high schools (Fashion, Business, Math & Science, Performing Arts, etc.).

But when there’s time and interest, I take it a bit further and get into an in-depth explanation of the world of private schools and how there are more elite private schools crammed onto Manhattan’s 22 square miles that any other place in the world…filled with the children of the Rich & Famous. It’s quite a cut-throat experience interviewing and trying to get your children accepted into these elite schools where tuition can range from $21,000--$46,000 yearly!  In fact, there are more than 300 private schools in Manhattan. It’s been comically suggested that women register children into the best schools when they are still fetuses in the womb, because of a typical 5-6 year waiting list!

Notable schools in town: Hewitt School, Brearley School (Caroline Kennedy is a famous graduate), Trinity School, St. John Cathedral School, York Preparatory, the Calhoun School, Avenues The World School (Suri Cruise attends), the Beekman School, the Collegiate School (boys), St. David’s (boys), the Lycee Francaise, the Steiner School (Jennifer Aniston), and many more.

 Some of the most desirable:

1. Spence School for Girls- E. 91^st St.- Founded by Clara Spence in 1921, it’s a combination “finishing school” and prep school. Anna Wintour, editor of VOGUE, sent her daughter Bea here. Gwyneth Paltrow went here, so did Katie Couric’s girls, Mayor Bloomberg’s daughters and many more.
2. Dalton School- Co-Ed- E. 91^st St.- Robert Redford’s kids, Barbara Walters’ daughter, Claire Danes, Anderson Cooper, etc.
3. Convent of the Sacred Heart- E. 91^st St.- Regis Philbin’s daughters, Lady Gaga and her sister, Nicky Hilton, many more.
4. Nightingale/Bamford School for Girls: E. 93^rd St.
5. Chapin School for girls- Ivanka Trump, various heiresses
6. Buckley School for Boys-E. 75^th- lotsa Wall Street sons’
7. Stevenson School for Boys- see above
8. Alexander Robertson School- W. 95^th St.- founded 1789
9. Browning School for Boys- E. 62^nd St. & Park Avenue
10. Dwight School-Central Park West- Paris Hilton (can you believe she actually went to school?)

One of my favorite schools is Professional Children’s  School- W. 60^th St.- founded in 1914-   I’ve visited here and my cousin Lesley was a music teacher there and in fact, she met her husband there.   Lesley tells me that it was a very freaky experience to try to teach music to kids who are already on Broadway, making movies, starring in their own TV shows or playing Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. Lesley says: “It’s also quite an experience when you have child stars whose designer clothing and handbags are a month’s salary to me!”

Famous graduates of P.C.S. include: MacCaulay Culkin and Kieran Culkin (they lived in the tower next door), Sarah Jessica Parker (when she was ANNIE), Scarlett Johanssen, Uma Thurman, Christina Ricci, Ricki Lake, Vera Wang, Savion Glover, Gelsey Kirkland, Suzanne Farrell, Joan Blondell, Marvin Hamlisch, child prodigy violinist Midori, Yo-Yo Ma, Anthony Michael Hall, Irene Cara (FAME), Ann Blyth, Phoebe Cates, Beverly Sills, Adam Arkin, Milton Berle, Sandra Dee, Melissa Joan Hart, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Anne Francis, Carrie Fisher, Jane Krakowski, Ruby Keeler, Elliott Gould, Diane Lane, Donald O’Connor, Jennifer O’Neill, Phyllis Newman, Rita Moreno, Jerry O’Connell, Amy Irving, Patty McCormack, Christian Slater, Susan Strasberg, Tara Reid, Martha Plimpton, Leslie Uggams, Lesley Ann Warren, Christopher Walken, Dick VanPatten, Malcolm Jamal-Warner, Tempest Bledsoe, Buddy Rich, Sidney Lumet, Peggy Lipton, Lorna Luft, Brooke Adams, Pinchas Zuckerman and many more.

From Metropolitan Diary:

Overheard on a crosstown bus: three high school girls in school uniforms from a fancy Upper Eastside girls’ school:
High Schooler #1: (in the middle of a conversation about the coming weekend and their respective country houses): “I always feel like a stupid rich kid saying we have a place in ‘The Hamptons’, you know?”
High Schooler#2: “I NEVER say ‘The Hamptons’. I just say we go to Long Island. The Hamptons sounds, you know…..”
High Schooler #3: “ I LOVE saying ‘The Hamptons!’ That way people don’t think we’re so rich. Only renters say ‘The Hamptons.’ “

Jim Dykes, licensed New York guide and GANYC member, is the co-founder of Rich and Famous Tours, www.richandfamoustours.com

Madonna-- the complete story

Madonna—the complete story 

We’ve all read the big news that at long last Madonna (Louise Ciccone) has put her fabulous Central Park West apartment on the market, not exactly priced to sell quickly at $23.5 million.  I wondered how long it would take her to sell….she hasn’t lived there in a couple years since she offended and alienated everybody in the exclusive building with her constant redecorating, renovating as well as loud music and fled to a huge mansion on E. 81st Street near the Lexington Avenue subway.

Her CPW abode was pieced together from sections of apartments on the fifth, sixth and seventh floors in Harperly Hall at 1 West 64th Street. Harperly Hall was built around World War I in what is referred to as “arts & crafts style”…on a sunny day if you peer carefully you can see the colorful artsy trim around the top of the building. Other neighbors in the building include Mikhail Baryshnikov, Melanie Griffith and Antonio Banderas, Ed Asner, Carol Kane and a few more. 

Madonna moved in after being rejected from a dozen other fabulous co-ops on the Upper East and Westside. In fancy co-ops, one negative vote from a board member can keep you out of a desired property. Madonna was rejected from buildings such as the San Remo, the Eldorado, the Majestic, 101 Central Park West, 989 Fifth Avenue, 1010 Fifth Avenue and others.  Finally her friend, the writer Gail Gregg (Mrs. Sulzberger whose husband runs the New York Times) took pity on her. Gail was on the board at Harperly Hall and used her influence with board members to assure Ms. M got into the building in a basic 2 bedroom apt. on the fifth floor. But as soon as the ink dried on the deal, Madonna was already wheeling and dealing and buying out other people in the fancy building.

It wasn’t long till Madonna began buying every other apartment on the fifth and sixth floors over the years as well as a few more on 4 and 7.   She was knocking down walls and adding staircases and constantly renovating which made her a pariah in the building and during most of these noisy and dusty renovations, she wasn’t even living on the premises! She was in London or Los Angeles!  She eventually had two entire floors and pieces of others.  At one point she attempted to buy more apartments on the 7th floor and the building began threatening legal action.  After the legal threats were settled, she fled the building for E. 81st Street.  She still has homes in the Hamptons, Michigan, Malibu, Miami, London, outside of London and a few other places. Not bad for a girl from Detroit who moved to New York with a few hundred dollars and slept on sofas in the East Village!

Madonna moved to New York from her native Michigan in the early 80s to study dance but quickly abandoned that idea for a career in pop music.  She was a bit of a “mythic” figure in those days…a girl who wore crosses and created her own style.  A girl who knew exactly what she wanted…fame & fortune in the pop music business and single-mindedly made up her mind to get it, any way possible.  It’s been more than whispered for years that she is not a good singer…she’s a product of the computerized music industry, echo chambers, backup singers, gimmicky dance numbers and scenery. She knew the value of the new MTV video business and her career “hit” just as music videos were coming into their own.

People in the industry say she has a very ordinary voice but has other oral skills supposedly as well as a good business mind, discipline, determination and almost no scruples.  She used flirtation, sexual favors and some say even thievery to get her way. Stories are rampant from those days that Madonna would target guys in the music business and go home with them. After getting high and having sex, it’s said she would wait for them to fall asleep and then she would rifle thru their apartments looking for anything she could use... she was famous for helping herself to names and phone numbers, money, valuables and anything else that wasn’t nailed down. Some say she even took bits and pieces of songs that were in the process of being written and passed them off as her own compositions in years to follow.

I don’t know her, but I was a “club kid” in the early 80’s for awhile and Madonna and I have been “buzzing” around in the same orbit since those wild days.  When I was working at Studio 54, she was up in the dj booth supposedly “sexually persuading” the DJ to play her latest demo records. She also was a fixture at other clubs such as Xenon, Limelight and the former Danceteria, a club located on W. 20th Street near Sixth Avenue in the old Cammeyer Department Store building which is now luxury condos across the street from the former Limelight, now a retail center.  Madonna was a fixture in EVERY club in New York in those days…all the former “club kids” of which I was one, remember her….some more fondly than others.And now she’s “first lady” of the pop music industry...all hail the "queen" from Detroit!