130 William Street: Review and Ratings

Review of 130 William Street by Carter Horsley

This dark, monolithic, 66-story apartment tower with arched windows on a large "L-shaped" plot with a landscaped plaza at 130 William Street near Fulton Street in the Financial District has 244 condominium apartments and erected by the Lightstone Group of which David Lichtenstein is the head.  Lightstone was the developer of 40 East End Avenue.  

This tower, which is almost 800 feet tall and is south of the New York by Gehry tower, is due for completion in 2020.

It was designed by Sir David Adjaye, who was born in Ghana, and Hill West Architects.  Mr. Adjaye is the architect of Sugar Hill Development, a 13-story affordable apartment building and museum overlooking the Harlem River at 155th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue with a grey façade with a setback with an angled façade and small windows and the Smithsonian Institute National Museum of African American History and Culture on a prominent site on The Mall in Washington, D.C.  He was named one of 100 most influential people in 2017 by Time Magazine. 

Weintraub Diaz is the landscape architect. 

There is some ground-floor retail space. 

The building's entrance is in a plaza.

Bottom Line

A tall, darkish, textured concrete panel tower with horizontally saw-toothed and slightly ragged façades with many arched windows and some loggias in a plaza the Financial District designed by Sir David Adjaye, the architect of the dramatic Smithsonian Institute National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Description

The building's façades are made of textured hand-crafted concrete panels and in an interview with Architectural Digest Mr. Adjaye said the façades pay tribute to the area's masonry façades.  They will be "incredibly sensorial, and the closer you get to it, the more those material details emerge," said, adding that he "was inspired to craft a building that turns away from the commercial feel of glass and that instead celebrates New York's heritage of masonry architecture with a distinctive presence in Manhattan's skyline." 

He said that the inspiration of the building's arches was drawn from the mercantile buildings that once populated the area: "I wanted to see if there was a way to retain this sense of craft and ornament on a contemporary scale." 

A June 28, 2018 article at Cityrealty.com noted that the façades, "reminiscent of volcanic rock, will go up in angled panels to give the building a saw-toothed appearance and break up rainwater streaming down." 

The large double-height lobby has a wall of arches containing library shelves across from a wall of vertical piping. 

A May 22, 2017 article at CityRealty.com showed an earlier rendering of the project that showed "a gold-trimmed prism punctuated by rigid rows of arched windows."

Amenities

The building has a full-time doorman, concierge service, a roof deck with cabanas and grilling stations, an indoor/outdoor landscaped lounge, a private dining room, an infinity-edge spa pool with a rounded-arch colonnade, a sauna, a fitness center with terrace, a yoga studio, a basketball court, an IMAX private theater, a golf simulator, a children's play room, a pet spa, and bicycle storage.

Apartments

All apartments have arched windows but the top ten floors are arched at the bottom and are twice the width of the traditional top-arched windows below.  The top loggia floors with the bottom arches have low-fences that rise from the floor inside the façade to the top of the lower curved arch windows. 

All apartments have wide-plank oak flooring and open plan kitchens with Gaggenau appliances, Italian Pietra Cardosa stone kitchen countertops, master baths with Bianco Carrara marble. 

Apartment 61C is a three-bedroom unit with 2,470 square feet of interior space and 863 square feet of exterior space in a long loggia, a long entry foyer  that leads to a 30-foot-long living/dining room with an open kitchen with an island. 

Apartment 54A is a four-bedroom unit with 2,495 square feet of interior space and an entry foyer that leads to a long gallery that leads to a double-height, 24-foot-long living/dining room with an open kitchen with an island. 

Apartment 54D is a three-bedroom unit with 1,761 square feet with a 24-foot-long living/dining room with an open kitchen with an island. 

Apartment 55A is a two-bedroom unit with 1,435 square feet and an entry foyer that leads to a 28-foot-long living/dining room with an open kitchen with a breakfast bar. 

Apartment 43B is a two-bedroom unit with 1,263 square feet of interior space and a long entry foyer that leads to a 23-foot-long living/dining room with an open kitchen. 

Apartment 47A is a one-bedroom unit with 1,042 square feet of interior space and a 25-foot-long living/dining room with an open kitchen. 

Apartment 42A is a one-bedroom unit with 853 square feet of interior space and an entry foyer that leads past an open kitchen with a breakfast bar to a 23-foot-long living/dining room. 

Apartment 40D is a one-bedroom unit with 855 square feet of interior space with a long entry foyer that leads to an open kitchen and a 25-foot-long living/dining room with a slightly angled wall. 

Apartment 18A is a one-bedroom unit with 622 square feet of interior space and a long entry foyer with an open kitchen across from a large walk-in close and the foyer leads to a 15-foot-long living area.