Carter's Review

"Sky House," the 55-story residential condominium tower at 11 East 29th Street, is one of New York City s most impressive "slivers" as its width on 29th Street is only 37 feet.

The rusticated red-brick building extends through the block to 30th Street and is at the east edge of the Episcopal Church of the Transfiguration, which is popularly known as the Little Church Around the Corner.

The Gothic Revival-style church and its gardens are official city landmarks but its parish house was not declared a landmark. The base of the new tower includes a new parish house for the church that will be distinguished by three "saw-tooth" elements in front of the setback tower.

The tower's red-brick façades were chosen to compliment the church's architecture and its position on the site permits many apartments in the tower to "see around" the Madison Belvedere, the mid-block, 50-story, 400-unit rental tower across 29th Street from the church while also not substantially interfering with that building's northern vistas.

The Clarett Group and Prudential Real Estate Investors are the developers and FXFowle Architects, PC, is the architect for the project, which will contain 139 condominium apartments above the new three-story parish house for the church.

The design of the tower is divided into three parts. It has a fenestration pattern of horizontal "ribbons" in the north section, a pattern of "punched" windows in the center, and recessed vertical strips between masonry piers in the south section.

There will be three apartments a floor starting at the sixth floor and prices are anticipated to from about $870,000 to $2,200,000.

The 2,817-square-foot penthouse occupies the entire 55th floor. There are 1,819-square-foot duplex apartments on floors 51 to 54.

Two bedroom (convertible 3) apartments on floors 6 to 17 have 1,596 square feet, 1,604 square feet on the 18th floor, 1601 square feet on floors 19 to 28, 1606 square feet on floors 29 to 36 and 1,612 square feet on floors 37 to 54. Two bedroom apartments on floors 6 to 28 have 1,374 square feet, 1,159 on floors 29 to 36 and 1,150 on floors 37 to 50. One bedroom apartments have 767 square feet on floors 6 to 28, 983 square feet on floors 28 to 36 and 991 square feet on floors 37 to 50.

The plan of the building approximates a "T" with the narrow leg at the north end of the site and a squarish, wider section at the south end. The north end of the tower only rises to 50 stories.

The building has a 24-hour doorman, concierge service, a fitness center, a children's playroom and resident storage. Master baths are clad in black marble and granite.

The tower, which serves symbolically as a campanile for the church compound, is setback 60 feet from 30th Street.

The first service of the Church of the Transfiguration was held in a private home at 48 East 24th Street in October, 1848 and the church was erected the following year.

The first Rector, the Rev. George Hendric Houghton, who served for 49 years, pioneered the Oxford Movement to revive the full Catholic Faith among Episcopal Churches in the United States. During the draft riots of the Civil War, he sheltered escaped slaves and he had a prominent part in the founding of the Order of the Holy Cross, the oldest continuing monastic Order in the Episcopal Church in this country.

In 1870, Joseph Jefferson was rebuffed in arranging for the funeral of his friend, George Holland, an actor and when he was told that there was a little church around the corner where "they do that sort of thing," Jefferson exclaimed, "God Bless the Little Church Around the Corner." In 1923, the Episcopal Actor's Guild was founded at the church and George Arliss was its first president and Basil Rathbone, Tallulah Bankhead, Cornelia Otis Skinner, Charlton Heston, Joan Fontaine, and Rex Harrison have graced the annals of the guild as president, vice president, or as members of its council.

In 1930, Dr. J. H. Randolph Ray, then the church's rector, organized a breadline and with Heywood Broun, Mrs. William Randolph Hearst and Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt set up an employment bureau in a nearby brownstone to help men in the breadline shower and get a new suit.

The church's fourth rector, Father Orin Griesmyer led the parish in opposing a city plan in 1962 to build a cross-town arterial highway that would have left the church stranded between the east- and west-bound lanes.

At the same time as it was constructing this project, the Clarett Group was finished work on the reflective-glass-clad, 36-story Place 57 apartment tower on the former site of the Sutton Theater at 207 East 57th Street and launching new projects on Central Park West and West 70th Street. Its other projects in the city include Opus, a 22-story condo at 2770 Broadway, and the very handsome Post Luminaria at 385 First Avenue at 23rd Street, designed by Randy Gerner of GKV Architects.