Journal Squared, 615 Pavonia Avenue: Review and Ratings

Review of 615 Pavonia Avenue by Carter Horsley

This very handsome, 53-story rental apartment tower is the first of three towers at 615 Pavonia Avenue between Magnolia and Summit avenues at the Journal Squared development in northwestern Jersey City near the Journal Square Transportation Center.  It will have 538 units.

The other two towers will have 60 and 70 floors and the complex will have a total of 1,838 units, 36,000-square feet of retail space and a public plaza.

HWKN is the architect and Handel Architects is the architect of record. Christopher Stevens designed the interiors.

Kushner Real Estate Development, which is headed by Jonathan Kushner, a cousin of Jared Kushner, who is married to Ivanka Trump, and National Real Estate Advisors are the developers.

Bottom Line

The first tower of one of the nation’s most striking residential high-rise complexes, this exceedingly handsome, 53-story, white metal-paneled tower with inset windows is next to the Journal Square Transportation Center in Jersey City and has tremendous vistas in all directions.

Description

This and the next two towers in the complex are similar in design to the 1,400-foot-high residential tower at 432 Park Avenue between 57^th and 56^th Streets in Manhattan that was completed in 2017 and designed by Rafael Vinoly.  That tower features a smooth white concrete façade with large square windows interrupted every 10 floors or so by recessed spaces for resident lounges, amenities and mechanical equipment. 

This substantially shorter tower has a similar slender proportion as does its two subsequent and slightly taller towers but they are uniformly clad with white metal panels in a very handsome grid pattern interrupted only by a narrow inset blue-glass accent pier that does not extend the full height of the towers.  In this tower it rises in diminishing width from the low-rise base but in another tower it is short and cascades down from the top. 

The indented accent piers are asymmetrically placed and this tower also has asymmetrical side setbacks in the lower half of the tower.

The apartments begin on the 9^th floor.

Some of the lower floors in the base have different heights and the top two floors of the tower are also slightly taller than most of those above the base.

Where most buildings of a similar or taller height have some “mechanical” floors that break up its mass, these towers do not.  The absence of such floors gives a tremendous increase in the project’s elegance as does the division of the inset windows into three vertical section with two clear windows and one dark blue pane and the latter alternate their position depending on their horizontal position.

The façades mullions and spandrels are rectangular and square and their proportions are very fine.

The building has an entrance marquee and a through-block arcade.

A rendering of the completed, three-tower project that appeared in the august 4, 2016 edition of The Wall Street Journal indicated that the center arcade between the towers will have a large multi-spout fountain and a curved climbing ramp at its center behind a light-blue checkerboard center structure with many box sections projecting at slightly different distances beneath a landscaped roof.

Amenities

The building has a 24-hour concierge, a residents’ lounge, a library, a fitness and yoga center, a billiards room, a swimming pool, a two-story-high lobby, and a work/play space called “Club JSQ.”