By Kim Velsey 5/07 3:11pm

Love and Real Estate

Tea Obreht reads in one of the Westbeth apartments.

Home Is Where the Art Is: Westbeth Opens Its Doors To Literary Looky-Loos

The sun was setting when we arrived at Westbeth, and as soon as we entered the labyrinthine corridors of the artists’ housing complex, we found ourselves dreaming about living here, in what a friend described as “a Hotel Chelsea that never dies.”

As far as impossible dreams go, gaining residence in the rent-stabilized complex, which sprawls across an entire city block in the West Village and offers studios with rent that starts around $600 a month, is one of the most heart-wrenching. The waiting list is not only seven to 10 years long but has been closed since 2007. (As if the rent weren’t appealing enough, Richard Meier was the architect who oversaw the building’s 1970 factory conversion.)

But at least visitors got a peek on a recent Friday evening, when residents in 20 of the complex’s 383 apartments opened their doors for the PEN World Voices Festival’s “Literary Safari”—a somewhat surreal pairing of the literary and the domestic.  Read More

By Kim Velsey 7/18/12 7:25pm

Starchitects

Who's home? Everybody! (Structures: NYC, flickr)

No Vacancy: Richard Meier’s On Prospect Park Sells Out

The residents of Richard Meier’s On Prospect Park once spent their days roaming the empty halls of the glassy tower, a vertical ghost town rising over Prospect Heights. But those days are long gone.

The building, which hit the market in 2008, has finally sold out, Brownstoner reports. And they got the news straight from the horse’s mouth—lead Corcoran broker Cheryl Nielsen-Saaf (although Brown Harris Stevens took over the brokering during the project’s home stretch). Read More

By Kim Velsey 5/02/12 2:04pm

Manhattan Transfers

Manhattan living, but in Brooklyn

Penthouse At Richard Meier’s Brooklyn Tower Sells For $5.1 M.

Things may have looked bleak during the recession for On Prospect Park, but the tower’s most expensive penthouse has finally sold for $5.1 million, just as everyone knew it eventually would.

Are boom times here again? Well, when it comes to gentrification in Brooklyn, Prospect Heights in particular, it’s not a question of if but when, and Prospect Heights was already pretty far gone when the sleek tower was just a rough sketch in Richard Meier’s head. Even if The New York Times did call the starchitect-designed condo “a wall of windows into the real estate bust” back in 2009. Read More

By Matt Chaban 2/10/12 6:05pm

Starchitects

14 Photos

New In Newark

Richard Meier and Lloyd Blankfein Grab Their Shovels in Newark

It is almost impossible to live inside one of Richard Meier’s fabulously sleek homes without a net worth exceeding eight figures. From Hamptons homes to the Perry Street “lofts,” those glass sentinels overlooking the Hudson, Mr. Meier’s architecture is synonymous with the high-end. But just across the river, in Newark, 200 lucky teachers will be able to call a Richard Meier apartment home. Read More

By Elise Knutsen 11/28/11 11:39am

Starchitecture

New York by Frank Gehry at 8 Spruce Street (Photo from NYC Loves NYC)

Starchitecture Is Actually Worth the Money

Once, living in a building with celebrity residents or prewar pedigree was the goal of every nouveau riche New Yorker. Trump International, anyone? Yes, please, 740 Park.

Now upwardly mobile denizens of our great city have slightly different aspirations: starchitect developments; that is, buildings designed by jet-setting, Pritzker-prize winning  architectural wizards, typically of the old guard variety. While some have suggested that the starchitect craze is the result of pure unadulterated vanity, it turns out that buildings have made a pretty penny since they began to sprout up a decade ago, Crain’s reports. Read More

By Elise Knutsen 8/03/11 9:53am

Manhattan Transfers

173 Perry Street (Photo from Street Easy)

Banker-Turned-Developer Flips Vincent Gallo’s Old Place in Richard Meier’s 173 Perry

Keith Jacobson, a retired banker turned developer, has sold the two floors he owned at 173 Perry Street.

The glass building was designed by Richard Meier, though, despite the high-brow aesthetic, poor construction marred the property. When the issues with the building were being made public, Mr. Jacobson made his move, buying two floors in 2004. He paid $2.465 million for the seventh floor (which he purchased from Vincent Gallo) and slightly less, $2.25 million, for the sixth floor. He sold the conjoined apartments for $10.5 million this week. Read More

By Laura Kusisto 6/13/11 10:28am

lease beat

He chose glass, of course.

Richard Meier Renews Early on 10th

It took five years for the first penthouse at the Richard Meier-designed On Prospect Park to sell, but significantly less than that for the architect to lock down a new lease.

Richard Meier & Partners has signed an early renewal of their 18,500-square foot lease at 475 10th Avenue. They’ll be hanging out on the Read More