The Mark, 25 East 77th Street: Review and Ratings

Review of 25 East 77th Street by Carter Horsley

The top floors of the handsome, 16-story, former Mark Hotel at 25 East 77th Street on the northwest corner at Madison Avenue were converted to residential condominiums in 2008 by the Alexico Group, of which Izak Senhabar and Simon Elias are principals. 

The lower floors remain a hotel and the building is known as The Mark. 

Jacques Grange designed the interiors of the hotel. SLCE served as the architectural firm for the conversion. 

The building was erected in 1927 and was designed by Schwartz & Gross.

Bottom Line

With its distinctive roof and very prime location, the Mark is one of the iconic properties on Madison Avenue and is diagonally across the avenue from the Carlyle.

Description

The red-brick building has one of the city's most distinctive roofs, a copper-clad sloped pyramid cut off at the top. 

It has a three-story, rusticated limestone base and a large entrance marquee with sidewalk landscaping on the side-street.  

The building has quoins and its windows are framed in white. There are balconies on the 14th floor and arched windows on the 15th floor.

Amenities

The building has a 24-hour concierge and doorman, a fitness center, a business center, multilingual secretarial support, valet parking and limousine service. In addition, residents have signing privileges at Frederic Fekkai's Salon Mark, Bar Mark and Sant Ambroeus, an Italian restaurant a few doors up from the building on Madison Avenue that is revered for its cappuccino. 

The building also has a Jean-Georges Vongerichten restaurant.

Apartments

Several of the apartments have wall-mounted panels for temperature control, motorized blackout and decorative shades and Miele Touchtronic Series washers and dryers. 

Kitchens have Boffi high-gloss white lacquer upper cabinetry and brushed aluminum lower cabinets, black granite countertops, Gaggenau ovens and electric cooktops, Miele dishwashers and Sub-Zero refrigerators. 

Bathrooms have marble flooring and walls and Kohler Tea-for-Two soaking tubs, heated tower bars, and Duravit wall-mounted Happy D. water closets. 

The 9,799-square-foot penthouse has fireplaces, a "personal two-story lift," a skylit conservatory, a living room with a 26-foot-high ceiling and a 2,300-square-foot terrace along with six bedrooms and 7-and-a-half bathrooms. 

Apartment 1109 has an open kitchen next to a 12-foot-long study and a hall that leads to an 18-foot-long living room.

Apartment 1501 has a 13-foot-long entry foyer that leads to a 27-foot-wide corner living room that opens onto a 14-foot-wide library and a 16-foot-long enclosed dining room adjacent to the enclosed 17-foot-long kitchen with breakfast room. The apartment has two bedrooms. 

Apartment 1503 has an 8-foot-long entry foyer that opens onto a 20-foot-long living room that leads to a 13-foot-long library. It features a 15-foot-long formal dining room next to a 12-foot-long windowed corner kitchen with breakfast room and also has a gallery that that connects to three bedrooms. 

Apartment 1401 is a 5-bedroom unit that has a 12-foot-long entrance foyer that leads to a 23-foot-long gallery that connects to a 30-foot-long master bedroom suite, an 18-foot-long library and a 37-foot-long living room - all of which face an 82-foot-long terrace overlooking the sidestreet. A 17-foot-long formal dining room is next to the large kitchen with breakfast room and off of the living room. There is also a 16-foot-long media room.

History

Alexico acquired the leasehold interest in the building for about $150 million from Mandarin Oriental Management. The hotel, which then had 119 rooms and 57 suites, is cattycorner to the Carlyle Hotel and until recently Issey Miyake occupied its Madison Avenue corner store at 77th Street. 

Alexico’s original plan was to retain 118 hotel rooms and create 42 condominium apartments.  That plan was subsequently revised to reduce the number of condo apartments to 18. 

For several years, the Mark Hotel’s lobby was decorated by a previous owner with superb paintings by William Holbrook Beard, a 19th Century American artist noted for his amusing paintings of animals involved with human activities. Those paintings were subsequently put up for auction. 

Another Alexico project is the Laurel at 400 East 67th Street.

Location

The building is directly north of the Carlyle Galleries Building at 980 Madison Avenue where Aby Rosen, the owner of the Seagram Building and Lever House, was unable to get a certificate of appropriateness from the Landmarks Preservation Commission for a design he commissioned from Sir Norman Foster for a silvery glass cylindrical tower roof addition placed at the northern end of the building right across from the entrance to The Mark. 

It is just up the avenue from the great cantilevered Whitney Museum of American Art building with moat that was designed by Marcel Breuer that the museum has decided to abandon and let it be used by the Metropolitan Museum of Art nearby on Fifth Avenue. 

There are many art galleries, boutiques and restaurants in the area.