Devonshire House, 28 East 10th Street: Review and Ratings

Review of 28 East 10th Street by Carter Horsley

Marketing started in 2009 for Devonshire House, a 1928 apartment building at 28 East 10th Street that was designed by Emery Roth and is now being converted from rentals to condominium apartments.

The building was acquired for about $110 million by a development venture composed by Sterling American Properties, which is headed by Fred Wilpon, and Cheshire Group, a partnership of Jennifer Steig and Susan Hewitt.

When it was sold, the building had 131 small apartments comprised of 68 unregulated units, three of which are medical offices, 52 rent-stabilized units, 14 rent-controlled units and 8,200 square feet of ground floor retail space comprised of ten stores.

Alan G. Rose of ARCT Architecture PC designed apartment renovations in the building and Victoria Hagan designed its interior spaces.

The brown-brick, 12-story building is notable for its very ornate rooftop watertank enclosure and it is across University Place from two other brown-brick apartment buildings at the 10th Street intersection of the about the same vintage.

The building, which is on the southeast corner of University Place, is one of the most decorative pre-war apartment buildings in Greenwich Village and is three blocks north of Washington Square Park and has excellent bus service.

The building, which has a courtyard garden, has an Elizabethan-style lobby and the renovation is adding a 24-hour doorman, landscaped roof deck, a concierge, a fitness center, a playroom, a bicycle room, a resident superintendent, individual storage and refrigerated lobby storage.

The building was erected by H. A. Hyman and it incorporates the crest of three stags within a shield supported by two standing stags of the Duke of Devonshire and its name is the same as the Duke s house on Piccadilly in London. The crest's motto is "safety through caution." One of Roth's lobby details showed a pair of doves amid grape vines, which the building's website states "represent peace and unity."