Carter's Review

This pleasant, 8-story residential condominium building at 1635 Lexington Avenue between 103^rd and 104^th Streets in East Harlem has 42 apartments and was completed in 2012.

Known as the Lexington Hill Condominium, it was developed by Sunsun Development Group and designed by Gilman Architects, who also designed the Lighted Murano in Long Island City that was known for its mid-section colored lights.

This building was formerly known as the Glass Spire.

Bottom Line

Despite a redesign that squashed its major design feature, this mid-rise building in East Harlem remains rather complex and lively.

Description

With its prominent balconies and various setbacks, this building’s avenue frontage looks a bit pinched and disjointed, but it has a robust presence.

An earlier scheme was more daring and unusual with a narrow, angled glass enclosure, dubbed “overlook,” thrusting up through part of its middle roofline. That dramatic outburst has now been quieted and now conforms with most of the building’s roofline although it its setback a bit from the building’s front.

The building’s wirey and attractive balconies are not uniform.  At one end of the building, they are slightly angled and the middle tier is much narrower than the other two.

Just to keep pedestrians on their tippy-toes, the building’s avenue frontage has three major sections: a red-brick façade at one end adjoins a very narrow glass façade (that formerly jutted upwards in an abstract “Glass Spire” gesture), and a metallic panel façade, which bends slightly at one end and which has a top-floor setback and a recessed, enclosed mechanical tower.

The building has retail space on the ground floor.

Amenities

The building has a roof deck.

Apartments

Apartments have solid oak hardwood floors, walk-in closets, quartz kitchen countertops, Kohler kitchen fixtures, cherry wood kitchen cabinetry, and baths have double basins.

Apartment 2F is a two-bedroom unit with 971 square feet with an 18-foot-long living room next to a pass-through kitchen.

Apartment B on the third through the sixth floor is a one-bedroom unit with 746 square feet and a long entry foyer that leads to a 17-foot-long living room and a pass-through kitchen and a 32-square-foot balcony.