Coral Caporale, a Puerto Rican native who has lived at No. 229 for 15 years, is one of the few Hispanic tenants to buy. A lawyer for the city's Health and Hospitals Corporation, she insists that she is not buying for the potential profit, but to get on the co-op board and make sure the old timers who stay on as renters receive fair treatment. She said she would prefer, however, to have no conversion at all.

''Historically in this country you had manifest destiny, which was used to move out all the Indians,'' she said. ''Gentrification is contemporary manifest destiny used to move out minorities, and that's why I'm staying. They're so used to Puerto Ricans who can't afford to buy that I'm going to buy.''

Miss Dworkin confirms the split in the building, despite the close cooperation that eventually developed between her and some of the older tenants once the conversion process got under way.

''I felt I was very much the outsider when I moved in,'' she said. ''I was the beginning of the yuppie invasion.'' In May 1986, Mr. Ziegelman made his conversion plans official with the delivery of the ''red herring,'' a book-sized document that constitutes a nonbinding, preliminary offer to sell the building as a co-op. Like almost all conversions in New York these days, it was a noneviction plan, meaning that no one could be evicted for refusing to buy.

''Nobody did anything,'' said Miss Dworkin. ''There was a lot of apathy.''

Then, last Aug. 12, Mr. Ziegelman's final offer - the ''black book'' - was delivered to each apartment. Its arrival signified that the Attorney General's office, which regulates the conversion process, had accepted Mr. Ziegelman's plan to convert the building and it remained for the sponsor to sell 15 percent of the units for it to be declared effective. Both books are more than an inch thick and highly technical. ''It was interesting for us to see that, with the profile of the building being Hispanic, none of these books were in Spanish,'' said Gigo Laherra, a retired wig-maker who has lived in the building for more than 20 years. He used Mr. Gonzalez as an interpreter. ''You have to be a lawyer to understand the books to begin with, and when they are also in English . . .'' He made a small gesture of resignation.

For 90 days following the arrival of the black book, or until Nov. 10, 1987, the tenants had an exclusive right to buy their apartments at the insider price. At the end of that time, if the sponsor could show he had 15 percent of the units sold either to insiders or to outsiders who would actually occupy the units, he could ask the Attorney General to declare the conversion complete.

Mr. Ziegelman had pegged the price per share at $425 for insiders and $530 for outsiders. This put the average cost per room at $39,260 to insiders and $52,800 for outsiders, or, typically, $115,000 for a four-room apartment to an insider and $204,000 for the same unit to an outsider.