New York City Luxury Condos

This very slick and very dramatic apartment building at 35 West 15^th Street between Fifth Avenue and the Avenue of the Americas conjures a high-tech “grater,” and that’s meant as a high compliment.

It does not slice and dice, or appear in late-night infomercials but unlike some new cantilevered projects it is nicely squeezed into its neighborhood and stands pretty freely in its skyline splendor.

It is a fine representative of a new generation of New York apartment towers that are not comfortable with the city’s traditional, rigid geometry of right angles, or what the late Mel Kaufman, one of the city’s leading office building developers, liked to call “panels and rails” before he changed his philosophy and built 17 State Street, the great semi-cylindrical, reflective-glass tower facing the harbor.

This mid-block tower, which is known 35XV, a reference to its address, is slightly cantilevered and its south and north façades are angled to align with the street’s “sky exposure plane” atop a 6-story base that is expansion space for the adjoining Xavier High School to the west, which is one of the city’s top Jesuit educational institutions.

The mixed-use 35XV is near the school’s campus that includes a handsome church designed by Patrick Keely.

The base of the new building will be used by the school and has been designed by Beyer Blinder Belle and its residential tower has been designed by FXFOWLE and will contain 59 condominium apartments upon completion in 2014.

Alchemy Properties was the developer.

Benjamin Noriega-Ortiz was the interior designer for the project.

15 Union Square West is located at the west side of Union Square at 15th Street.

Residences boast varied and open floor plans filled with natural light. They also have high ceilings and were custom designed by Vicente Wolf to mimic the feel of a townhome; apartments in the upper floors have fireplaces and offer views of the nearby park. Open kitchens are equipped with oversized islands, energy efficient LED lighting and stainless steel appliances; large master bathrooms have stone floors and walls and double sink vanities. Some units have touches like glass staircases and powder rooms with additional laundry rooms.

Amenities at 15 Union Square West include a spa with a 50-foot-long lap pool and oversized Jacuzzi; a massage and spa treatment room; and a gym with a yoga and Pilates studio. Many shops, restaurants, movie theaters and bars are nearby.

The handsome, red-brick building at 15 East 69^th Street occupies the Madison Avenue blockfront between 69^th and 70^th Streets along one of the city's most chic stretches. 

It was converted into condominium apartments from a hotel in 1999. It used to be the Westbury Hotel and its last operators were Trust House Forte. 

The 18-story building, which was erected in 1927, has 47 condominium apartments. 

The Superior Ink development in the West Village is a large project that combines a tall building facing the Hudson River and low-rise buildings on the rest of the block.

Its massing is somewhat similar to another waterfront project completed a few years earlier several blocks to the south, Morton Square.

This one was developed by the Related Companies and was completed in 2008.

It was designed by Robert A. M. Stern, who is best known for 15 Central Park West, the Chatham and the Brompton.

This development has a 17-story tower with 62 apartments on West Street with two setbacks and 7 townhouses on Bethune Street.

This impressive 12-story apartment house at 521 Park Avenue on the northeast corner at 61^st Street was designed by William Alciprhon Boring and completed in 1911 two years after he had designed 540 Park Avenue on the northwest corner at 61st Street, which has been described, according to James Trager, the author of Park Avenue, Street of Dreams," (Atheneum, 1990), as "the first of the high-class apartments to be built on Park Avenue."

This building was erected as a co-operative and has 27 apartments and was converted to a condominium in 1987.

Built in 1925 and designed by J. E. R. Carpenter, the leading luxury apartment architect of his generation, this handsome building was originally the Mayfair House, a pleasant, 450-room hotel, but it gained considerably more cachet when Le Cirque restaurant opened on its first floor sidestreet frontage in 1974 and quickly became one of the city's most socially prestigious dining rooms.

A generation later, however, Le Cirque decided to relocate to the Villard Houses that are part of the New York Palace Hotel at 451 Madison Avenue in 1997 and the next year the building was bought at a bankruptcy auction for $15 million and Park 65th Associates L.P., an affiliate of Colony Capital Inc., a real estate investment group based in Los Angeles that had recently also taken over the Stanhope Hotel on Fifth Avenue and has been active in luxury resort properties, and the Trump Organization, headed by Donald Trump.

The new owners renovated the property for another $55 million to convert it into 70 condominium apartments. At the time of the conversion the hotel had had 210 hotel rooms.

A large entrance marquee on the sidestreet had been created in 1934 for a restaurant, but over the years it had become the hotel's entrance and Le Cirque had an adjacent, discrete entrance. The 1998 renovation, however, used the marquee sidestreet entrance for the building's new restaurant Daniel, which was considerably larger and much grander than Le Cirque, and it quickly became one of the city's top restaurants. A new entrance to the apartment building was created on the avenue frontage.

Le Cirque would subsequently relocate from the Villard Houses to One Beacon Court.

Carpenter was also a co-developer of the building, which for a while in the 1980s had been acquired by the Hong Kong-based Regent International Hotels chain.

The new condominium project got off to a flying start and began selling units based only on floorplans. Early prospective buyers were not even allowed to enter the building and there were no model apartments and within a few months, the sales campaign had sold all but three of the apartments that ranged in price from about $700,000 to more than $7 million for units that ranged in size from 986 to 4,400 square feet.

The combination of an elegant but older exterior with lavish new interiors was a strong selling point as was the fact, for some buyers probably, that the tenant mix was likely to have a narrower range of income groups compared with the typical pre-war residential property whose owners have moved in at different times as apartments are offered for resale.

Given its excellent location and the fact Le Cirque was being replaced with another famous restaurant, Daniel Boulud's Restaurant Daniel, which offered catering service to the residents, and that the apartment layouts were designed by Costas Kondylis & Associates, P.C., and the common interiors by Mac II, it was not too surprising that the conversion was successful.

The apartments have coffered, 9-foot-high ceilings, seven-inch-high base moldings and many have fireplaces, libraries and living rooms as large as 20 feet square. The building has a fitness center, maid service and valet parking.

A far more architecturally stunning "Mayfair" apartment building was built in 1908 at 471 Park Avenue. Designed by Charles Buckham, it featured duplex apartments and was notable for its large double-height, arched windows.

The exterior of this building is a stereotyped Park Avenue apartment house but the elegant sidestreet marquee and the grandness of Restaurant Daniel make it a very choice building in a very choice neighborhood, not far from midtown and close to Madison Avenue's many boutiques and art galleries.

The brown-brick building has a three-story limestone base, a doorman, a health club, sidewalk landscaping and basement storage, but no balconies, no garage and no roof deck.

Located at 72nd Street at Riverside Boulevard, the 31-story Heritage at Trump Place is arguably the finest of the Trump Place development.

Residences at the Heritage at Trump Place have mahogany herringbone floors, expansive sound-proofed windows, individual climate control and state-of-the-art telecommunications and entertainment systems, including high-speed Internet access and high-definition TV. Modern kitchens are styled with imported cabinetry, premium granite countertops and top-of-the-line stainless steel appliances. Master baths and powder rooms are appointed in luxurious marble with elegant vanities, fixtures and finishes.

The attention to detail continues with the Heritage's amenities, which include a round-the-clock, hotel-style doorman, concierge and valet service, two swimming pools, a health club with steam rooms, saunas and aerobic studios, on-site valet parking, a private screening room, an entertainment suite with catering kitchen, a children’s playroom and a landscaped atrium courtyard.

Trump Place offers residents easy access to Riverside Park and the Hudson River Esplanade, with the former featuring pedestrian walkways and bicycle trails, numerous sports fields and courts, a skate park and playgrounds.

South African architect Lindy Roy designed a very intriguing and elegant façade for the High Line 519 condominium apartment building at 519 West 23rd Street that employs curved, almost-amoeba-shaped, stainless-steel screens that overlap floors in the center of the building's glass façade.

Ms. Roy's firm is Roy Design. She recently designed Vitra USA's headquarters and Hotel QT at 125 West 45th Street near Times Square for André Balazs. She was the winner of the Museum of Modern Art/PSI Young Architects Competition in 2001. 

The building, which was developed by Sleepy Hudson, has 11 full-floor apartments

The 52-story Olympic Tower at 641 Fifth Avenue in Midtown is situated between 51st and 52nd Streets and was developed by Aristotle Onasis. Its 226 apartments are located in the top 29 floors and have large windows that offer expansive views of the Manhattan skyline and St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Residences also feature varied layouts, 9-foot-high ceilings, enclosed kitchens and elegant bathrooms.

Olympic Tower amenities include elevator attendants, 24-hour concierge service, a gym, a barber, a hair salon, a bicycle room, a fitness center, and – in the event of a power outage – emergency electric power. It also is close to the shops and restaurants along Fifth Avenue and such cultural attractions as the Museum of Modern Art. 

Iconic 141 Fifth Avenue in the Flatiron District has a history that dates back to the late 19th century.

Its top ten floors were converted into apartments in 2009. Units feature large windows and have generous layouts, while kitchens and bathrooms are equipped with modern, premium appliances and fixtures. Apartments are also distinguished by detailed architectural touches, as the developers worked to maintain its original finishes.

Amenities include a full-time doorman, basement storage, a restored roof deck and a fitness center. 141 Fifth Avenue, which is located at the corner of East 21st Street, is near multiple public transportation options, Madison Square Park and excellent shopping on Fifth Avenue. Eataly, the gourmet Italian food store and restaurant complex from celebrity chef Mario Batali, is also just a few blocks away.

This 1984 condominium apartment tower is one of the finest post-war designs in the city and the winner of a national award for its architect, James Stewart Polshek, from the American Institute of Architects.

Its clean-cut, modern lines, incised windows and asymmetrical massing have been highly influential, and the building is a rare example of a contextual design that complements a modern landmark, the short office building at 500 Park Avenue on the southeast corner at 59th Street.

The small, elegant, aluminum-and-glass building was designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill as the headquarters in 1960 for Pepsico that subsequently became known as the Olivetti Building, and then the Amro Bank Building.

The 16 lower floors of the 40-story tower contain office space, an advantage to the residents in this multi-use building, as it removes them further from the heavy traffic on 59th Street.

The architectural firm of Schuman, Lichtenstein, Claman & Efron also worked on the design for Charles and Randall Atkins, who had offices in the small office building, and eventually sold their interest in the planned tower to Tishman Speyer Properties and the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States.

In an August 16, 1984 New York Times column, Paul Goldberger observed that "The brooding, dark-gray granite of the office floors at the base is handsome in a cold and official sort of way, but this strongly undomestic imagery is the building's only major failing."

"And," he continued, "perhaps it is justified by the larger purpose it serves - for the granite, used in tandem with a glass and aluminum skin, creates a dignified backdrop to Skidmore's delicate modern box. At the same time, the glass and aluminum sections of the new tower act as a counterpoint to the older structure, making the overall design a subtle balancing act of foreground and background, of solid and void, of texture and flatness. Indeed, this is among midtown's best new towers, residential or commercial. And the apartments within are generally excellent, with nine-foot, two-inch ceilings, handsome windowed kitchens complete with Sub-Zero refrigerators and windowed baths. With its sprawling entrance gallery, an expansive A unit high in the tower could almost be a 1920's apartment sleekly renovated - until you see the wraparound windows of the living room."

The subtlety of Polshek's design is in his brilliant massing and façade treatment and overall proportions.

The tower's façade has a distinctly split personality with a silvery aluminum bay that runs up its east side to complement the low-rise office building, and the strongly delineated "matte" façade with incised windows on the other façades. The building, which is a masterpiece, has a stunning lobby.

Polshek maintained in "James Stewart Polshek Context and Responsibility," (Rizzoli International Publications, 1988), that the "tower was conceived as a singular piece of architecture in its own right but also as a building that would be a backdrop for the elegant integrity of the existing building. The tower also had the urban design function of clearly indicating the east-west boundary between commercial Park Avenue to the south and residential Park Avenue to the north. The parti involved the creating of a granite shaft perforated by deeply set windows. From this stone tower unfolded an aluminum and glass envelope whose twenty-four stories of residences cantilevered twenty-five feet over the existing building."

The new metal skin was derived from the existing building, but energy laws and technical constraints regarding the sizes of glass and available aluminum alloys required a reinterpretation of the original envelope, the objective being to retain the proportional subtleties and flush surface characteristics that had always distinguished the building.

In their book, "New York 2000, Architecture and Urbanism Between The Bicentennial And The Millennium," Robert A. M. Stern, David Fishman and Jacob Tilove said that "Polshek's building could be seen as one of the city's architectural success stories of the 1980s, involving historic preservation - of a Modernist building ten years too young for designation by the Landmarks Preservation Commission - and new construction of a mixed-use skyscraper of exceptional suavity."

"Described rather improbably by Ada Louise Huxtable as a 'kind of Pazzi Chapel of corporate design,' Pepsi-Cola was designed by Gordon Bunshaft," the authors continued, adding that "When it was completed, Pepsi joined Lever House lower down on Park Avenue, Manufacturers Trust Company on Fifth Avenue and Forty-third Street, the Chase Bank in the financial district - all designed by Bunshaft for Skidmore, Owings & Merrill - and Mies van der Rohe's Seagram Building to form the greatest concentration in one city of artistically exceptional commercial Modernism."

When Olivetti decided to leave the building, studies were made to redevelop the site along with the adjacent Nassau Hotel at 56-60 East 59th Street that was built in 1897 as the Hotel Roland and designed by F. W. Fisher. The Kalikow real estate organization acquired the combined site but soon resold it to the Securities Groups, which was headed by Charles and Randall Atkins. Securities Group commissioned Polshek to design new offices for it on the 10th and 11th floors of the Pepsi building and then Polshek was commissioned by the Amsterdam Rotterdam Bank (AMRO) to redesign the retail spaces in the building.

The Atkinses then commissioned Polshek to design the adjacent tower that would cantilever 25 feet over the rear of the Pepsi building. "If a specific source for the design were to be identified, it would be that of the PSFC Building (1932) in Philadelphia, designed by George Howe and William Lescaze," noted Stern, Mellins and Fishman, who added that "approval of the plan was held up by the City Planning Commission's study of midtown zoning, and by 1981, when the Atkinses found themselves in deep financial trouble, the Securities Groups sold the property to the Equitable Life Assurance Society, which entered into a joint partnership with Tishman Speyer Properties to develop the project according to Polshek's plans."

"When Ada Louise Huxtable reviewed models and drawings for the scheme in May 1981, she called it 'one of the most skillful 'shoehorning' jobs, involving an unusual and uncommon, sensibility to considerations of style and scale," the authors continued.

This 7-story residential condop building was completed in 2010 at the east end of the "Close" at the General Theological Seminary that occupies the block bounded by Ninth and Tenth avenues and 20th and 21st streets and is one of most important landmarks in Chelsea. The "Close" is the large, center lawn at the complex.

The building, which is located at 177 Ninth Avenue, was built by the Brodsky Organization and designed by Polshek Partnership Architects.

It contains 53 apartments.

The elegant and handsome Metal Shutter Building at 524 West 19^th Street was designed by Shigeru Ban and built in 2007 by Jeff Spiritos, the president of HEEA Development L.L.C., and Klemens Gasser, a Chelsea art dealer.

It has a very prime location in West Chelsea flanked by Frank O. Gehry’s sail-like, IAC headquarters building and Annabelle Seldorf’s terracotta-banded 520 West 19^th Street, and across the street from Jean Nouvel’s 100 Eleventh Avenue with its broadly curbed façade of differently angled and sized windows.

Ban’s 11-story building has only 9 residential condominium apartments. It was completed in 2011.

The handsome 8-story building at 260 Park Avenue South on the southwest corner at 21^st Street served as the headquarters of the United Federation of Teachers for about 30 years until it was sold in 2003 along with an adjoining 12-story building at 48 West 21st Street, also owned by the federation, to Max Capital, led by principal Adam Hochfelder, and developer Yitzchak Tessler of Linjan Associates LLC, and the co-investment division of Insignia Financial Group.

260 Park Avenue South was an 8-story building that dates to about 1917 with about 82,200 square feet and 48 East 21st Street is a 12-story building with about 123,000 square feet.

While the developers added four floors to the eight-story neo-Classical façade on Park Avenue South, they carved a 12-story niche from the back of the building on 21st Street to provide more "light and air" to rear apartments and to create a rock garden.

The new owners converted the buildings to 86 condominium apartments in 2004.

Karl Fischer Architects was the architect for the conversion.