About Archstone Midtown West, 250 West 50th Street
This very large, rental apartment tower, which was developed by Jack Resnick & Sons, Inc., and completed in 1998, lessens its impact on the street by chamfering its corner at the avenue. (It is one of the few buildings that do this. Dag Hammarskjold Tower on Second Avenue and 47 th Street is another.)
Although such deviations from the midtown's traditional rectilinear streetwall grid are rare and not generally encouraged by planners because they break continuity, they can provide welcome extra "light and air" in congested areas as well as open up different and interesting views for the residents.
It is across the avenue from the very handsome, full-block development known as World Wide Plaza that contains a major office tower, a cineplex, and several residential buildings on the former site of Madison Square Garden. The World Wide Plaza complex, completed about a decade earlier than this building, opened the way for the redevelopment of this once seedy stretch of Eighth Avenue.
This building, which was originally called the Gershwin, is on the same cross-street as Rockefeller Center, Saks Fifth Avenue and St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Cathedral and borders on the theater district and the northern fringes of Times Square.
The 41-story building has 440 apartments and was designed by Schuman Licthenstein Claman & Efron.
It has a pool, a garage, a doorman, a recreation room, a sundeck, and valet service.
The building has many corner windows and bay windows. Public transportation is excellent.
It was acquired by Archstone, which renamed it Archstone Midtown West, a far less glamorous name than Gershwin, and Archstone was bought in 2007 by Tishman Speyer.
The building is also known as 810 Eighth Avenue
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