Top 10 Post-World War II Apartment Buildings
Donald Trump built three of the Top 10 post-World War II New York City apartment buildings on this list and no one else has two. That tells you that sleekness and glitz are not necessarily considered derogatory in the minds of many buyers who expect doors to be opened for them. Their amenities are nice, but location and views still count for a very great deal. Most of these buildings are not architecturally adventurous, but sometimes a building that was not universally acclaimed has new merits such as the Metropolitan Tower’s razor-sharp, angled edge will preserve its views of Central Park and let its residents see around the big new surprise on the 57th Street block, the gargantuan, 1,004-foot-high One57 mixed-use tower.
#1 - Residences at the Mandarin Oriental, 80 Columbus Circle
It's rare that a very controversial project exceeds its expectations but this twin-towered project dominating Columbus Circle has apartments with very great vistas, a stunning, curved retail atrium, a Mandarin Oriential hotel, luxury restaurants, offices and a fabulous Whole Foods store in its huge basement.
#2 - Trump Tower, 721 Fifth Avenue
Donald Trump's flagship next door to Tiffany's has a stunning design by Der Scutt with a pink marble waterfall, excellent retail, offices and condominium apartments in a stepped tower with staggered plans.
#3 - 1 Central Park West
Donald Trump took a drab office tower on the north side of Columbus Circle and had Philip Johnson give it a new, faceted reflective-glass facade and a stainless-steel globe in a plaza and, presto, you have a dazzling new entrance to the Upper West Side.
#4 - Olympic Tower, 641 Fifth Avenue
This and the Galleria on West 57th Street ushered in the era of mixed-use skyscrapers in New York about the same time and this slick, dark, reflective-glass tower provided a stunning north neighbor for St. Patrick's Cathedral that was most compelling for many foreign buyers.
#5 - 40 Bond Street
A modest mid-block residential project by Herzog & de Meuron that was mind-blowing for its thick, green-class variation on the theme of cast-iron, 19th Century factory buildings and its startling and undulating cast-aluminum fence whose intricate, lace-like design was inspired by grafitti.
#6 - Metropolitan Tower, 146 West 57th Street
Harry Macklowe's angled tower of apartments above a normal base of offices and retail is a black-glass, razor-sharp sword of modernity that trifles with the city's midtown grid.
#7 - 15 Central Park West
Robert A. M. Stern here created the quintessential pre-war apartment building in 2007 and one of the city's most successful residential buildings in history.
#8 - One Beacon Court, 151 East 58th Street
For the ladies who lunch, what is better than a tall and handsome, mixed-use project just south of Bloomingdale's with a huge, ellipitical driveway and its own Le Cirque restaurant.
#9 - Trump World Tower, 845 United Nations Plaza
Some neighbors were outraged that Donald Trump would dare to erect a tower considerably higher than the nearby Secretariat Building of the United Nations, but the city needed a beautiful, dark, "2001" monolith, didn't it?
#10 - 165 Charles Street
The clean, modern lines of this southernmost of the trio of Richard Meier-designed, mid-rise apartment towers facing the Hudson River in the West Village were an instant hit.
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