City Oasis: Private Pools in NYC Apartments Top the Luxury List

FEBRUARY 3, 2012

A few of the city’s best apartment buildings boast opulent, highly-styled swimming pools for residents--but a pool of one’s own is still the ultimate in urban living.

Rooftop and terrace swimming pools, flooded with sunlight and with breathtaking city views, are difficult–and expensive–to construct. Most of these private pools come are part of vast penthouse apartments: Jean Nouvel's 40 Mercer Street in Soho boasts two such apartments, each with a private lap pool as part of a 2,250 square foot terrace.

Lux 74 on East 74th Street boasts a triplex penthouse with a private indoor pool. Others include a 109-square-foot lap pool at 166 Perry Street in the West Village and a private penthouse rooftop pool at the Alma Lofts in the Flatiron District. Atop the nine-story Dietz Lantern building in TriBeCa, two stories were added to form a 50-window penthouse duplex with a private lap pool. The former Sky Studio at 704 Broadway includes a 25-foot heated pool that reportedly cost $500 million to build.

Less-costly basement and backyard pools dot Chelsea, the West Village, and the Upper East Side as well, including a 21-foot pool surrounded by a heated limestone floor at 51 Walker Street, reportedly rented by Leo DiCaprio for a time. And an unusual–even by New York City standards–indoor pool in the living room of a five-story Chelsea townhouse at 232 West 15th Street made news when the apartment arrived on the market in last year for $10.955 million (WSJ).