The Wunderhill Townhouses, 22-36 Underhill Avenue: Review and Ratings

Review of 22-36 Underhill Avenue by Carter Horsley

This handsome, thee-story row of townhouses at 800 Pacific Street between Vanderbilt and Underhill avenues in Prospect Heights has 8 residences.  It is known as Hello Townhaus and was developed by Hello Living, which is headed by Eli Karp. 

Hello Living acquired the site, which also has the addresses of 22-36 Underhill Avenue, in 2013 for $2.1 million.

Zabrano Architectural Design was the original architect for the development, which was initially called Hello Townhouses, and subsequently Hello Living commissioned a redesign from Loading Dock 5 and Jun Aizaki of Creme Architecture + Design.  Design Kollektivor did the interiors. 

It was completed in 2017.

Bottom Line

An attractive complex of 8, spacious, three-bedroom townhouses with indented, four-step-up entrances with thin marquees and alternating façade designs with dark, thin framing.

Description

An earlier design had balconies on the second and third floors and grey and beige façades beneath roof-top pergolas that were placed at alternating ends of the units and over very nice large "quoins" of one end of the units with alternating block sizes with dark garage doors on the ground floor next to entrances - a busy but rather groovy composition. 

A later design made use of some wooden façades on the second and third floors and finally that "Bauhaus-inspired" design was replaced by what Ondel Hyton described in a November 30, 2017 Market Insight Future New York article as a "clean minimalist feel inside and out" in muted colors.  

The new and design was highlighted by thin, dark metal framing on the second and third floors aligned with one window side but leaving a two-tone vertical space between the frames that "floated" slightly above a four-step-up indented entrance with a small and thin marquee - a sophisticated but rather fussy modernist composition. 

The rear of the building has two cascading, angled skylit spaces for each unit, a nice variation of the "wintergardens" of the high-rise, mid-block residential tower on 57th Street between Park and Lexington Avenues.

Amenities

The attached townhouses are spacious and have underground parking spaces and roof decks as well as PassivHaus-certified Zehnder ventilation units, highly insulated roof and façade systems and weather-sealed Yaru Energy windows.

Apartments

The apartments have three-bedrooms with 2,700 square feet of interior space including four bedrooms, a laundry room, a finished cellar, a private roof terrace with a kitchenette and a private underground parking space.

The lower level of the houses have a 17-foot-wide utility room and a 17-foot-wide recreation room, the first floor has a 14-foot-wide living room, a 13-foot-long open kitchen with an island and a 17-foot-wide dining room with an island, the second floor has a 17-foot-wide family room, a bedroom and a 267-square-foot terrace and the third floor has two bedrooms and a spiral staircase to a 334-square-foot roof terrace.