Standing Out

Even for a Dakota resident, Mr. Fletcher was living well. He had a string of chauffeured cars including a Bentley, a Porsche, a Mercedes and a Jaguar. He bought homes in Montauk and Southampton, which he lent out to employees during the summer; he later sold the homes. He bought 1,100 acres in Litchfield County, Conn., with a storybook house employees called the Castle. He had his own security team.

He was popular among his neighbors, as was his companion, Hobart V. Fowlkes Jr., not least because of the parties they threw, often for charity. But he continued his quest to expand within the building, and kept coming up against obstacles that he now says are evidence of discrimination.

In 1993, he signed a contract on the fifth-floor apartment for $1.375 million, but was forced to sell his first apartment, even though several white residents owned additional units they used as gyms, offices or guest rooms, he said in his suit. The building, in its response, said no one was permitted to own two unconnected, full apartments; residents say the policy stemmed from when John Lennon and Yoko Ono irritated some neighbors by buying several units.

In 2002, Mr. Fletcher sought to buy his mother a ninth-floor two-room apartment, which once was Leonard Bernstein’s studio, for $1.06 million. The board demurred because Mr. Fletcher already owned other apartments, but agreed on the condition that only his mother and “no one else would be permitted to reside in Apartment 92, even overnight and even including close relatives,” according to his lawsuit. The board said that the rules were the same for all owners, and that it had gone out of its way by allowing Mr. Fletcher to purchase the apartment in a trust for his mother.

Giving Generously

His philanthropy was growing along with his real estate holdings. Besides the Fletcher Fellows stipends, he has donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and the Studio Museum in Harlem; to Columbia Law School, where the Alphonse Fletcher Jr. chair is now held by the pioneering civil rights lawyer Jack Greenberg; to Harvard, where the scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher university professor; and to Yale and Howard University. None of the institutions would disclose how much he has donated, but given that Ivy League chairs typically cost several million dollars to endow, it is likely that Mr. Fletcher has given away at least $11 million.