The rich still love vast lofts and cobblestone streets, but this year Tribeca has failed to reclaim the title of New York’s most expensive neighborhood.
The honor goes to Soho, where tourists come to shop, sidewalk vendors clog the streets and the median residential sales price in 2012 was $2.2 million, according to a new report released by PropertyShark. Read More
Michael Stern was walking to a meeting last summer when he saw the vacant site, barely wider than a townhouse, at 107 West 57th Street. On one side was the Steinway Building, an 87-year-old city landmark with an etched white limestone façade. On the other was a dowdy old SRO about to be gutted and transformed into the Quin Hotel, yet another boutique confection for the tourist masses.
Yet it was not the barren lot’s immediate neighbors that set Mr. Stern’s heart racing, but another edifice further down the block: Gary Barnett’s One57. The 1,005-foot, 90-story tower was only about halfway built at the time, but already it was on its way to taking the crown, on the skyline and in the record books, as the city’s tallest apartment building. Billionaires were already circling the units, which ranged from $5 million to $115 million.
Looking from Mr. Barnett’s site to the one in front of him, Mr. Stern knew he had to have it.
“Right now, there is nowhere else in the city like 57th Street, and it is only going to get better,” Mr. Stern told The Observer. Read More
Back in September, The Observer wondered just how many luxury towers could possibly pop up on 57th Street, following the announcement of 107 West 57th Street. This was in addition to Gary Barnett’s One57, CIM and Harry Macklowe’s 432 Park and Mr. Barnett’s 225 West 57th Street, which is poised to become the city’s tallest tower at 1,550 feet. And all the way down at the Hudson, there is of course Bjarke Ingels and Durst Fetner’s pyramid apartments.
Now, the shiny strip has a new eastern redoubt. The Observer has learned that a long-planned 57-story tower at 250 East 57th Street, on the corner of Second Avenue, is set to rise this year. Demolition already began on the old high school on the 63,000-square-foot lot in November, the same month World Wide Group, the project’s developer, filed new construction documents for the contorted tower designed by Roger Duffy, the art-loving visionary at SOM who designed the equally daring Toren condo tower in Downtown Brooklyn, Read More
There had been rumors that Gary Barnett had tapped Swiss starchitects and downtown darlings Herzog & de Meuron to design his supertall skyscraper at the corner of 57th Street and Broadway, but now The Journal reports that Adrian Smith is the architect for 225 West 57th Street. The bigger surprise, literally, may be that the 1,550-foot height for the Extell tower, which The Observer previously reported, may just be a starting point. Read More
The condo tower rising at 432 Park Avenue may be the most fascinating development project in the city. Sure, it can boast of being the tallest building rising in the city at the moment, to an eventual height of 1,397 feet (29 feet higher than the roof of 1 World Trade Center). It is also set to be the most expensive. But even more so, it is the secrecy of the building’s developers, CIM Group and Harry Macklowe, that make the project all the more intriguing.
Very few details about the project have been released, and none of them publicly. Even renderings are clandestine. Which is why it is amazing that not one or even two but three different skycams have been whirring away at the site for the past year, showing it off in real-time, free for anyone to look—except that no one thought to. Read More
No sooner did Extell Development file permits for a new 1,550-foot residential tower on the corner of 57th Street and Broadway then scaffolding started to go up around one of the final properties comprising Gary Barnett’s little west side assemblage that will be home to the city’s tallest tower. On Friday morning, The Observer happened to be out for a stroll on the crosstown boulevard when we noticed construction workers assembling a sidewalk shed, the first sign of construction commencement.
A source close to Extell confirms that demolition will soon begin on 1780 Broadway, a 12-story building that was once home to BF Goodrich. At the time, this corner of Gotham was known as Automobile Row during the Gilded Age. Because of an agreement with the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission, the facade of 1780 Broadway must be retained as part of any new building, so this will presumably be a careful deconstruction. Read More
For a time, it looked as though Jean Nouvel’s MoMA Tower would be the tallest apartment building in the city, when the 1,250-foot shard was proposed four years ago. Having been cut down to 1,050 feet by planning chief Amanda Burden, and with the revelation earlier this week that Gary Barnett is building a 1,550-foot tower on Broadway and 57th Street–to complement his 1,005-foot One57 and surpass Harry Macklowe’s 1,397-foot 432 Park–it appears Torre Verre, the MoMA Tower’s official name, will simply be a very tall apartment building. Very, very tall.
That, and the project’s starchitect pedigree, have the design-obsessed online watching the project’s every move. Last week, a contributor to the site Skyscraper City noticed that what looked like pile-driving equipment had been assembled on the site next to the Museum of Modern Art. This was a sure sign of the project’s imminent commencement, or so the photographer surmised. Lo, it is not so, according to Hines, the condo tower’s developer. Read More
If King Kong were to swing into New York sometime this decade, he might actually have a hard time figuring out where to go.
In the original 1933 black-and-white classic, King Kong famously scales the two-year-old Empire State Building, cementing it in the conscience of the world as arguably its most famous skyscraper. Four decades later, the giant gorilla set his sights higher, standing astride the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. Today, perhaps he might climb atop their succesor, the new 1 World Trade Center. But one gets the sense that King Kong is given to gigantism, so only the city’s tallest tower will do.
Until a few months ago, that would have been 1 World Trade. But since 432 Park Avenue began to rise skyward in April, the 1,397-foot condo tower developed by Harry Macklowe and CIM on the old Drake Hotel site would have claimed the skyline crown. It beats out its downtown rival by 29 feet, so long as one ignores the silly 400-foot sorta spire atop 1 World Trade. Should King Kong arrive sometime in 2014, this slinky tower would probably be his choice.
But a year or two after that, and he might turn his gaze further down 57th Street, past the already striking 1,005-foot One57 tower, Gary Barnett’s billionaire bauble nearing completion despite that crane accident. There it would settle on another tower being developed by Mr. Barnett, at 225 West 57th Street, just one block from what was already going to be the city’s tallest apartment building when it opens next year. The new tower’s height, according to building permits filed last week: 1,550 feet. Read More
Those Zecekendorfs sure do love their starchitects.
From William Zeckendorf’s work with I.M. Pei and Minoru Yamaski in the 1960s and ’70s to his grandsons’ projects with the likes of KPF and, most notably, Robert A.M. Stern, who created both the brand new 15 Central Park West and the newly renovated 18 Gramercy Park South, the Zeckendorfs have a thing for high design.
Add to that now 50 UN Plaza, a 44-story condo tower on the East Side that will be Lord Norman Foster’s first residential commission in the United States. Mr. Foster is well known for his work on the Hearst Tower, World Trade Center Tower 2 and the new Sperrone Westwater Gallery on the Bowery, as well as a new commission for 425 Park Avenue for L&L Holdings. With this latest commission, he cements his place as an all-around architectural power in the city. Read More
We warned of a deluge of lawsuits surrounding the crane accident at One57, and it looks like the tide is already rising. A tipster sent Curbed a photo of a flyer seeking claimants for a suit against Extell, the contractors on the site and the city’s Department of Buildings. Turns out the attorney putting together the suit lives on West 58th Street and was evacuated during the accident. The sweetest revenge is judicial! Read More
