The Howell, 84 William Street: Review and Ratings

Review of 84 William Street by Carter Horsley

This very handsome, 19-story building at 84 William Street has one of the finest locations in Lower Manhattan as it faces the Louise Nevelson Plaza and is catty-corner to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in Lower Manhattan.

It was designed in 1907 for the Royal Insurance Company by Howells & Stokes.  The insurance company would move in 1927 to a larger, wedding-cake-style building, designed by Starrett & Van Vleck, at 150 William Street.

I. N. Phelps Stokes, the author of the important 6-volume architectural history of the city known as “The Iconography of New York City,” was a partner in Howells & Stokes, whose other important commissions included St. Paul’s Chapel at Columbia University, Woodbridge Hall at Yale University, the Dudley Memorial Gateway and Music School at Harvard University and the American Geographical Society Building in New York City.

His partner, John Mead Howells, had partnered with Raymond Hood on the famous winning entry in the Chicago Tribune Building competition.

This building was acquired in 2013 by a joint venture that included Korman Communities, Shorewood Real Estate Group LLC and the Prodigy Network.  The joint venture launched a $40 million renovation of the building and its transformation into AKA Wall Street, a short-term, luxury, long-stay building with 137 rental apartments.

It will open in the fall of 2015.

Asfour Guzy Architects designed the conversion, which added two floors to the original 17-story building.

Other AKA projects include the Romanesque Revival AKA Times Square, the former Hotel Gerard at 123 West 44^th Street, the AKA United Nations at 234 East 46^th Street, the AKA Sutton Place at 330 East 56^th Street and the AKA Central Park at 42 West 58^th Street.

Bottom Line

A very handsome, red-brick and limestone residential conversion of a pre-war office building with a large clock at the fourth floor of its rounded corner at a prime location in the Financial District.

Description

The building is distinguished by its six-step-up entrance at its rounded corner beneath a very impressive clock on the fourth floor flanked by two large prancing stone lions.

The building has a three-story rusticated limestone base with a large bandcourse above the second floor and the windows on the fourth floor have wide limestone balustrade balconies.

There is another bandcourse above the fourth floor and most to the rest of the façade is red-brick.

The top four floors of the original building were faced in limestone with a stringcourse below the 14^th floor and a bandcourse above it and the top floor had bandcourses above and below it.

The building has a glass-wall roof deck.

Amenities

The building has a roof deck, a Technogym fitness center, a business and media center, a residents’ “evening” lounge, a 24/7 front desk, and same day valet dry cleaning and laundering service.