One Mad Madness

Rem Koolhaas's 23 West 22nd Street: still not happening.

One Madison Park Lobby To Get Two Duplexes On Top

As some of New York’s avid construction watchers have noticed, something is afoot at One Madison Park. Specifically, on the 22nd Street side of the site, where Rem Koolhaas and his firm, OMA, were once tapped to build a staircase-like 22-story tower, which was to rise from the townhouse-sized site and cantilever over the building to the east.

That plan is no more, done in by the recession and the original developers’ spectacular bankruptcy. Something is, however, now rising from the site, and the neighbors are wondering, what’s up?

Curbed published a tip in January suggesting that the building now rising will be six stories, which The Observer has confirmed with an executive from the Related Companies this afternoon. We also learned that the lobby, as the relatively squat structure is being called, will feature two full-floor duplex units, starting on the third floor and rising to the sixth. The architect, however, has not yet been named. Read More

Manhattan Transfers

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Buffett Pad

Berkshire Scion Peter Buffett Bails Out of One Madison for an Extra $750,000

Apparently, a high-rise Manhattan condo didn’t really suit Peter Buffett. The youngest son of the famously frugal, resolutely Midwestern clan of the Berkshire Hathaway chief  Warren Buffett has dumped his 18th-floor pad at 23 East 22nd Street for $4.25 million. The sale, which was previously reported by The New York Post, has finally hit city records.

Despite his hesitance to pass on financial advice or anything beyond a $90,000 inheritance to his children (the oracle of Omaha does not, reportedly, believe in inherited wealth), the elder Buffett obviously passed on some investing savoir faire. Read More