500W25, 500 West 25th Street: Review and Ratings

Review of 500 West 25th Street by Carter Horsley

This handsome, 10-story condominium building at 500 West 25th Street on the east side of the High Line Elevated Park in Chelsea was erected in 2018  by GDS Development, which is headed by Michael Kirchmann and Alan Rudikoff. 

It was designed by GF55 Partners and L'Observatoire designed the thin, vertical lighting stripes on the side-street façade. 

It has 8 apartments including a penthouse triplex cantilevers out on the building's west side. 

It replaced a four-story tenement that once sported a mural by Eduardo Kobra that was a colorful remake of Alfred Eisenstadt's famous black-and-white photo of V-J Day in Times Square, and a one-story car stereo store. 

GF55's other projects include the Kalahari at 40 West 116th Street in Harlem, +Art at 540 West 28th Street in Chelsea, One Morningside Park at 240 Manhattan Avenue. 

This building  has 2,650 square feet of retail space.

Bottom Line

An elegant, mid-rise building along the High Line with only 8 large apartments and impressive window and façade treatments and a stunning lobby.

Description

The building has different façade treatments.  The façades are Alabama limestone. 

The west façade, which faces the High Line and the Hudson River, has large terraces, the top three of which belong to the penthouse and are cantilevered. 

The north façade, which faces 25th Street, has thin vertical strip lights to the left of the large three-part windows whose right side wall is angled.  Some of this façade's windows have the smaller two parts of the windows enclosed in a narrow and thin box.  This façade has five bays that occupy the bottom two and top three floors.  It contains the building's entrance, which has a marquee. 

The building's east façade on the avenue has narrow inset windows with the top three floors and the bottom two having continuous surrounds that give the façade something of a "net" appearance because of their "fins." 

The building's lobby has a very handsome entrance with an angled wall behind the concierge's stations, both with tightly ribbed vertical banding that is repeated on the wall facing the front door.  The rest of the lobby has gently undulating limestone walls whose panels are separated by thin vertical light strips, conjuring a massive medieval castle or seaside bunker. 

Amenities

The building has a doorman, washers and dryers in each unit and pets are allowed.

Apartments

The Penthouse is a three-bedroom unit with 12-foot ceilings, an entry foyer that leads to a 19-foot-long, windowed dining room  and a 24-foot-long great room with a 39-foot-wide terrace in one direction and a 14-foot-long gallery and a 26-foot-long, windowed kitchen with an island in the other.  The terrace is also accessed by a 26-foot-long gallery from the foyer that also leads in the other direction to a bedroom.  There is a staircase up to a very large, three-sided roof terrace from this level, which has separate stair leading down to the lower level that has three bedrooms and a 39-foot-long terrace off the 26-foot-long master bedroom. 

The other units have three-bedrooms, 10-foot-6-inch ceilings and an entry foyer that leads in one direction to an open and windowed kitchen with a breakfast bar and very handsome white oak cabinetry and a 23-foot-long living/dining room and in the other direction a 30-foot-long gallery and a 35-foot-wide terrace.  Master bathrooms are windowed and have marble accent wall, a free-standing bathtub and heated marble floors.