The new penthouse owner arrived at the stately Galleria building in Manhattan practically unnoticed, as if standing on a dark stage just before the curtain is raised.

Word spread. “I think I heard it from my neighbor, who heard it from the concierge,” said Emma Ruth Yulo-Kitiyakara, 78, a former resident in the building.

It was true. David Copperfield was moving in. “He might magic you out of your apartment,” someone joked.

That was in 1997. Years later, the building’s residents would be well aware — painfully aware — of the world-famous magician’s sprawling, four-floor penthouse apartment. It seemed to transform before their eyes from a showpiece of great wealth to an embarrassing eyesore to a leaky health hazard.

And then, according to neighbors in the Galleria, Mr. Copperfield — for his next trick — disappeared.

A lawsuit filed earlier this month in New York accuses Mr. Copperfield of abandoning his penthouse apartment in a “trashed” state and allowing a valve to fail, flooding apartments and common areas below. And not for the first time.