UES Button Shop Owner Wins Fight With Developer Over 6-Inch Strip

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — A judge has sided with the elderly former owner of an Upper East Side button shop in her legal battle with a developer over a six-inch strip of land.

In 2019, developer Arthur Shapolsky agreed to pay $5.3 million to buy 143 East 62nd St.: a four-story building that housed the beloved Tender Buttons shop. The building was owned by Millicent Safro, now 87, who had run the button shop since the 1960s.

Central to the purchase, Shapolsky said, was a six-inch strip of land near the property's rear that extended to Lexington Avenue, which would open up a few more sites for development. Safro had told Shapolsky about the strip, only for him to discover it did not exist, he alleged.

He sued in March 2020, seeking to reclaim his $500,000 down payment. Safro, meanwhile, insisted she had never made any claim about the six-inch strip.

On Thursday, State Supreme Court Justice Phillip Hom sided with Safro, dismissing Shapolsky's complaint and ordering that the $500,000 down payment be turned over to Safro — with interest.

Shapolsky, the judge noted, is "a sophisticated real-estate developer with decades of experience in the Manhattan real estate market," undermining his claim that he had been tricked by the elderly store owner.

The ruling was first reported by The Real Deal, which called it "one of the stranger real estate cases in recent years."

Tender Buttons began when Safro's late partner, Diana Epstein, stumbled into another button shop on East 77th Street whose owner had recently died, and purchased the entire inventory. She soon linked up with Safro, and the pair relocated to East 62nd Street in 1968.

"It wasn’t intended to be a shop," Safro told the New Yorker in 2019. "It was a button shop, but as what would now be called performance art, and people would come, and we would show twenty-nine shades of green corroding or corrugated boxes."

Nora Ephron, who featured the shop in her 2009 film "Julie & Julia," described it as a "walk-in treasure chest," the magazine wrote.

Shapolsky, meanwhile, had a self-described "empire" that once included all the land under the High Line between 18th and 25th streets, according to the company's website. Shapolsky has since stepped down from day-to-day management of the business.

Tender Buttons closed in August 2019. Safro could not immediately be reached for comment, and Shapolsky Real Estate did not immediately respond.

The fate of the building is unclear, though it is now listed for sale for nearly $5 million.