Jade, 16 West 19th Street: Review and Ratings

Review of 16 West 19th Street by Carter Horsley

This conversion of a 12-story commercial building at 16 West 19th Street into a 14-story residential condominium building with 57 units opened in the summer of 2006.

The building is known as Jade after Jade Jagger, a jewelry designer who is the only child of Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones and his former wife Bianca Jagger. Photographs of her, then 34, appeared extensively in the marketing of the building and she is credited with being the concept designer for the building's unusual layouts that employ high-gloss, lacquered "pods" containing kitchens, bathrooms and closets.

John Hitchcox, Philippe Starck and YOO had recently "joined forces" with her to create "Jade Jagger for YOO" and as its creative director she is the concept designer for the building collaborating with Mr. Hitchcox and Mr. Starck and her "long-term business partner Tom Bartlett."

Most of the building s apartments have these "pods," which were offered in four different style flavors, or schemes: Aristo, Boho, Luxo and Baroco.

Most of the "pods" are free-standing and are somewhat reminiscent of the monolithic room intrusion near the end of Stanley Kubrick's great film, "2001," whose most memorable line was "Open the pod bay doors, HAL!"

Jade offers the following descriptions of the different "pods":

"The great Aristo, as I affectionately call it, is beautifully and classically English. The duck-egg blue accented with creamy marble tones in the kitchen creates a beautifully warm harmony. In the bathroom, British racing green and rich leather-hued tiles on the floor, evoke a handsome club-like formality."

"The lapis blue that lines Boho's bathroom reminds me of the sea breezes of my island home in Ibiza, a home that I designed to be a luxurious sanctuary. The vibrant true stone colors and the lustrous lilac kitchen radiate the easygoing and natural harmony of a sun-soaked holiday on the Mediterranean seacoast."

"Baroco is graphic. Black, red, and white. Kind of feisty. Quite urban. The outside of the Baroco Pod is a monochrome black lacquer with an amazing reflective surface. The black is never somber but serene and sophisticated. And the kitchen and bathroom are a bold and sexy black, red and white. You open it up and it's like - WOW! This is very hot."

Of the "Luxo" pod, Ms. Jagger declares that she has always been inspired by gold, "from gilded Japanese screens that decorate my home to my love of working with the material as a jewelry designer." "Evocative of the shimmering allure of sun and sand, the patina of the burnished gold in the kitchen and the vibrant yellows and oranges of the bathroom, cast a romantic jewel-like glow throughout the residence."

There is wallpaper coordinated with an apartment owner's choice of pod at the apartment's entrance.

The pods, whose interiors have bright mosaics, come in two sizes: 8-foot and 10-foot cubes.

While many loft conversions in Chelsea and other downtown neighborhoods were carved into large, often full-floor apartments, this building opted for smaller units.

There are 24 studios, 14 one-bedrooms, 11 one-bedrooms-with-home office, four two-bedrooms, and three penthouses, two are duplexes with terraces.

Asking prices for the studio units started initially at about $500,000 while the three-bedroom penthouses had asking prices of about $3.7 million.

The building had been acquired in 2005 by The Copper Group of which Jeremy Beyda is a principal for about $25 million and the architectural firm of Perkins Eastman oversaw the addition of two floors.

The mid-block building has a fine location in the Chelsea and Flatiron districts between Fifth Avenue and the Avenue of the Americas.

Its two-story roof addition will have a communal terrace and lap pool, a lounge and a fitness club.

The Copper Group, of which Hosea Deitsch is a principal, is also developing a 30-story, residential condominium tower at 133 Greenwich Street, which is also known as 25 Thames Streeet near Ground Zero.

Costas Kondylis is the architect for that project.

An article on this building at the Triple Mint website made the following observation about the building's "pods":

"As much as big chef's kitchens have become de rigeur status symbols in the marketing of New York lofts these days, the truth is that most Manhattan-ites eat out six nights a week. On the seventh night they use their kitchen to soften a pint of ice cream. Face it, the most important kitchen appliance really isn't the stove - it's the corkscrew. These pods are a kind of tacit admission that many people in New York end up living like global nomads. It's the condo as glorified hotel suite."