Brooklyn's real-life version of "The War of the Roses" culminated yesterday as a wall was built to literally split a marital house in two.
Workers contracted by millionaire Simon Taub constructed the wall in the center of the Borough Park home that the sweater baron shares with his soon-to-be ex-wife, Chana Taub, capping a bitter dispute that began last year. "I didn't believe he would actually do this," said a shocked Chana Taub, 57. "This is not a living space; it can't be."
Simon Taub, owner of TechKnits Inc. of Williamsburg, got the okay to put the wall up last year, but Chana went to the state Appellate Division to stop him - and lost. On Wednesday, the city Buildings Department issued Taub a permit for the Sheetrock wall, which slices through two floors of the three-story house on 49th St. the couple shared for 18 years.
As a curious crowd gathered outside, workers hurried to change the locks on Simon Taub's front door while his wife demanded clothing, a fax machine and shoes be brought to her side of the home. "They're moving my shoes!" she yelled to one of her adult sons. "I need my fax. Just take it, don't ask!"
The wall now puts the former lovebirds in a similar position to Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner in the 1989 hit movie "The War of the Roses." The division leaves Simon Taub, 58, with 1,000 square feet of living and sleeping space, complete with a bathroom and kitchen - about a quarter of the house.
The couple's feuding camps traded barbs from their now-separate doorsteps in front of a crowd of gawkers. "Her mother got divorced, her grandmother before her got divorced, all of her sisters got divorced and now she is divorced," said Simon Taub, who cited money as the reason for the split. "For her, divorce is always ugly." Chana Taub's sister-in-law Esther Newhouse countered that the ex-husband, who owns property across Brooklyn, including the house next door, was building the wall just to rile his ex. "This is a multimillionaire who says he has nowhere to go, nowhere to live," Newhouse said. "He has nothing else to do but torment his wife, and that's what he's doing now."
Simon Taub appeared to be winning the neighborhood's peculiar public-relations war yesterday, as several people in the crowd said they were on his side. "We are all against her," said a resident who wouldn't give his name but added he knew Simon Taub from the local synagogue. "The whole community is against her."
This lovely story brought to you by the NY Daily News.
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