The real cost of a mansion

New York

FOR the past two years or so, my daily comings and goings have taken me past a building on my Brooklyn Heights block ripped down to the studs by a developer with the ambition of returning it to the market as a five-story brownstone for US$18 million.

Renovations are ubiquitous in Brooklyn - home improvement is as distinguishing an element here as surgically taut faces are on Park Avenue - but this project possessed a team of workmen so big that it seemed as though a regional airport were under construction. Greeting the foreman, an Irishman with intense eyes who appeared to have landed in the world of HVAC from the world of James Joyce, became such an integral part of my morning habit that I would worry about him on the days when he wasn't out front, poring over blueprints on the hood of his car.