The Half-A-Billion Dollar Endowment (Maybe Crotchety Villagers Have Something To Be Worried About After All)

How come tuition is almost $40,000 a year if NYU Law is clearing Harvard levels of loot? Good question:

The NYU School of Law received more than $43 million in donations in the 2006-2007 fiscal year, finishing second only to Harvard Law School and raking in almost double the amount Columbia Law School collected.

The law school has raised $285,657,449 through Jan. 31, 2008 since 2002. With additional verbal commitments and gifts, the total comes to about $330 million.

The school expects to increase that amount to $400 million by December 2009.

Only One Thing Can Cancel Out Tom Brady — Giants Fans

I was beginning to feel a little proud of the Giants until I saw this:

When it comes to celebrating their home team’s first shot at the NFL championship in seven years, many New Yorkers are lacking neither money nor creativity.

Among the decorations for one Sunday Giants celebration is a 4-foot tall ice sculpture crafted to look just like the Vince Lombardi Super Bowl Trophy.

“Sports audiences are very physical and get very excited,” said Shintaro Okamoto, the founder of Okamoto Studio in Long Island City, who is making the ice sculpture. “We want to make sure our Super Bowl sculptures are very strong and durable.”

Okamoto said he is also fielding inquires from New York “hedge fund people and bankers” looking to spend upwards of $750 on ice sculptures in the shape of a Giants helmet for their private loft parties.

If You Love Somebody Set Them Up In A Staff Apartment For Free

The good news is you get your own apartment on Central Park West. The bad news is you’re wrapped around Sting’s finger:

Manhattan’s most expensive new condo building, 15 Central Park West, is one of only three in the city offering separate apartments tenants can purchase for their maids, butlers and other domestic workers.

Among those who already signed up for the new building are Goldman Sachs Chairman Lloyd Blankfein, former Citigroup Chairman Sanford Weill, rock star Sting, NASCAR superstar Jeff Gordon, sportscaster Bob Costas and Oscar-winner Denzel Washington.

It’s not clear whether any of them also bought staff apartments.

“The help need their privacy, too,” developer Arthur Zeckendorf said. “They can still watch their own TV, have their own life.”

And the owners benefit, he said, noting, “If you have someone working for you full time, you still want your privacy.”

One broker said noisy billionaires who buy in won’t risk losing staffers who value their sleep.

“If Sting wants to practice his guitar riffs in the middle of the night, he’s not offending anyone other than his family, and maybe a neighbor or two,” the broker said.

The staff apartments are on floors six through eight.

The higher floors with the lofty views are reserved for the billionaires and boldface names who employ the butlers and maids living below them.

The 24 staff apartments, studios and one-bedroom units that have already been sold range from $875,000 to $2.24 million.

The Bitch Just Get Richer? Perhaps Not Anymore . . .

New signs that the economy may be on track to correct itself in 2008:

The Dog Run, the city’s only water therapy for old and infirm canines will be closing next week to stave off a 50 percent rent hike, even though a dozen or so devoted human companions of the dogs staged an impromptu rally over the weekend.

“You can call us crazy dog owners but all the dogs have benefited so much from this place,” said Mona Mansour, a freelance copyeditor, who organized the protest and has been taking her dog to the pool for more three years for physical therapy. “We hoped it would be like the Grinch and the landlord would have a change of heart and see what he’s taking away.”

The Dog Run has been at its Chelsea location for four years providing an innovative form of “hydrotherapy” and massage for dogs and holding “open swims” for neighborhood dogs in its 12-by-15 foot pool.

The Horrible Truth About Stone Barns . . .

. . . is that it’s all about the tax break:

Super-rich New York city slickers are harvesting big checks from government programs originally set up to save poor family farmers during the Great Depression.

Among the dozens of billionaire sod-busters on both Forbes magazine’s rich list and the federal farm welfare rolls is banker and philanthropist David Rockefeller Sr., who reaped $29,615 from the corn-subsidy program in 2005.

Rockefeller, worth an estimated $2.6 billion, got the government money for farms in Westchester and Columbia counties, according to a database compiled by the Environmental Working Group lobbying organization.

Through a spokesman, Rockefeller, 92, said he’s unlikely to take any more of the money — and that he believes the system needs reform.

Location Scout: Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture.