East 58th Street; Finding a Larger Co-op One Floor Downstairs

By TRISH HALL

FAr more often than people would like to believe, getting what you want in real estate is a matter of being in the right place at the right time. Eight years ago, after her three children were grown and she divorced, Judi Sperling left Long Island and moved to New York. She rented an apartment and then, four years ago, knowing she wanted to stay, bought a one-bedroom co-op on the 44th floor of the Sovereign, a postwar building on 58th Street near the East River.

Because there are only two apartments on each floor, both have panoramic views. She consumed the views and had no desire ever to leave. Her bedroom, however, was tiny, because some years earlier the master bedroom was sold to the neighboring apartment, leaving only the second, smaller one.

Using a lawyer as an intermediary, she tried to persuade the owner to sell back the bedroom, but got nowhere. Her downstairs neighbor was in a similar position. He was trying to buy the adjacent apartment, which the owner never used, but he too made no progress. Finally he gave up and bought something larger elsewhere.

Ms. Sperling, who had lived in a house in Roslyn for many years, wanted more space. She wanted a bigger bedroom, and especially a bigger closet. She called the broker who had originally sold her the apartment, Jessica Ushan at Charles H. Greenthal, and asked her to please call her if she knew of anything in the Sovereign.

Ms. Ushan did, and she showed Ms. Sperling some apartments, but they all faced north, which didn't interest her. She liked the southern view. One day, Ms. Ushan called with some news. The apartment that had so long been coveted by the downstairs neighbor, an apartment unused for 20 years, was available. The owner had died and the heirs were selling it.

So in February, Ms. Sperling bought the large two-bedroom apartment for $1.2 million and began renovating it, using the decorator who had done her upstairs place, Iris Sekoff of Upper Saddle River, N.J. In June, she moved in, and she is unequivocally enthusiastic about the apartment. ''It's beautiful, and I love coming home to it,'' she said. Ms. Sekoff reconfigured the space to suit her (Ms. Sperling) better. ... put in new marble bathrooms, a new kitchen and new floors. In the master bedroom is a wall of closets with a pull-out shelf unit for her shoes and a closet just for sweaters. Just beyond the entrance to the apartment is a small refrigerator and wet bar. She turned the dining area into a den, and cut a pass-through into the wall between the kitchen and the living room, where she placed her dining table and chairs.

She uses the table mainly for parties and holidays. Most evenings, when she gets home from her job as director of paralegal recruitment for Brookville Legal Search on East 42nd Street, she doesn't cook. ''I have state of the art stuff in there,'' she said of her kitchen, ''but if I eat at home, it's dialing, dialing.''

The apartment feels light and clean, with all-beige furniture, complex textures and surfaces that gleam, from the grand piano to the glass dining table to the lacquered beige breakfront.

But the most important feature was created by no single human. It is the skyline, the view south and west, a panorama she treasures, even now, when she wakes up in the middle of the night and sees the lights.

From her windows she can see nearly every major landmark. Except one, of course.

ON Sept. 11, she was drinking coffee in her kitchen and watching the news when she heard about a plane crashing into the World Trade Center. She went into the living room, where from the window she saw smoke and then the second plane crash.

''I saw the whole thing,'' she said. ''I saw it crumble. That I couldn't believe.'' Although it deeply shocked and saddened her, she said she has no regrets about having moved back to Manhattan. ''For about a week, I wouldn't go on the subway,'' she said, and then she just decided she had to resume her life.

She grew up on the Upper West Side and left when she married and had her first child. When she came back, she said, it was like returning to a different city. She had no friends here anymore, and she wasn't sure she could really start over.

But she did, and New York is again her home. The other day, as dusk approached, she sat on her piano bench and for a moment she seemed one with the city beyond, her burnt-orange satin shirt merging into the glow created by the setting sun.
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