8 Union Square South: Review and Ratings

Review of 8 Union Square South by Carter Horsley

This 15-story building on the southwest corner at University Place and 14th Street was erected in 2007 by the Claremont Group, of which Stephen and John Lari are the principals.

The building is known as 8 Union Square South and is also known as 128 University Place and 36 West 14th Street.

Arpad Baksa was the architect for the project.

The building, which has a white, sandblasted, precast concrete façade with Artic Blue windows, has 20 residential condominium apartments. Initial prices started at about $1,500,000.

The apartments have 10-foot ceilings and Bang & Olufsen pre-wiring, Valcucine kitchens with Sub-Zero refrigerators and Miele cooktops, dishwashers and wall ovens and bathrooms will have textured limestone floors and walls and Waterworks fixtures and tower radiators.

The two duplex penthouses have ceilings that are almost 11 feet high.

Many apartments have corner windows overlooking Union Square Park. These corner windows have inward-opening "French doors" with "fake Juliet" balconies that do not project from the façade.

The building has a doorman, a gym and concierge service by Quintessentially.

Eric Choler was the interior designer for the public spaces and was available for customized design services for the residents.

The residential entrance to the building is on University Place.

One-bedroom apartments are located in the middle of the University Place façade and have living rooms whose west walls are the open kitchens.

Two- and three-bedroom apartments have corner windows overlooking Union Square Park and their living rooms have open kitchens on the south walls.

The duplex penthouse on the 11th and 12th floor has a 2,000-square-foot terrace.

The site was formerly occupied by a yellow-brick, low-rise building with a four-story glass stair tower designed by Morris Lapidus for Crawford Clothes that for many years housed Paterson Silks and finally Odd Job. The tower was demolished over the protest of some civic groups that felt it should be declared an official city landmark.

Roger Lang of The New York Landmarks Conversancy, a civic organization, for example, testified March 29, 2005 before the Landmarks Preservation Commission on its possible designation of the Crawford building and another Lapidus building, the former Summit Hotel, now the Doubletree Hotel on Lexington Avenue at 51st Street. "Crawford Clothes exemplies his playful, glamorous early retail designs; it was created in 1948, barely three years after he opened his own firm in New York....Think of Lapidus as the anti-Mies. No elegant, severe, serene modernity for him. In fact, his 1966 autobiography was entitled "Too Much is Not Enough," a direct riposte to Mies's "Less is More." The most famous building by Lapidus, who died in 2001, is the Fontainbleau Hotel in Miami.

This site has excellent public transportation and is convenient to the Strand bookstore and Whole Foods, Greenwich Village and the Flatiron and Chelsea districts.