Four Seasons Restaurant's Iconic Modernist Design Is Safe
Architect Annabelle Selldorf appeared in front of the Landmarks Preservation Commission on Tuesday to present a series of proposed alterations to Philip Johnson's 1958 lauded modernist interior, The Four Seasons Restaurant in the Seagram Building. The usually well-received Selldorf, commissioned by building owner Aby Rosen's RFR Holdings, presented a plan to change the carpeting throughout the restaurant, modify an original walnut panel in the Pool Room, and remove a glass partition added to the Grill Room by Johnson in 1983 in favor of returning the site's original planters. "I've never been so nervous to make a presentation," Selldorf said as she took her place in front of the commissioners and a packed audience. Her nerves were founded in good instincts: the alterations were reamed.
Mapping the Explosive Scenes in Die Hard With a Vengeance
When Bruce Willis isn't buying and selling real estate on the Upper West Side, he's acting as his alter ego, John McClane, New York City Detective and certified bad guy killer. Even though he's a New York cop, McClane, introduced to the world in 1988, doesn't defend his home turf until the third installment of the Die Hard series, "Die Hard With a Vengeance," which premiered 20 years ago today. In the film, he faces off agains Simon Gruber (Jeremy Irons), who seems to be out for revenge—after all, McClane shoved his brother off a Los Angeles skyscraper in the first movie. McClane is joined by appliance store owner Zeus Carver (Samuel L. Jackson), who is less than pleased to be risking his life to help McClane. It's not the classic that the original is, but it might stir up some nostalgia for New York City in the '90s.
Condos in UES Conversion The Wellington Will Start at $2.12M
One of a slew of rental-to-condo conversions on the Upper East Side, East 62nd Street's The Wellington (not to be confused with Wellington Tower, 20 blocks north), now just going by 200 East 62nd Street, just launched a teaser site. Although no new renderings are currently available, the developers have released some details about the project. The conversion is being spearheaded by Greenwich Village-based architects Messana O'Rorke and will consist of 115 condos ranging in size from one- to five-bedrooms. The units will start at $2.12 millionand occupancy is slated for fall of this year.
Renters Love Small Apartments; Buyers Are Relegated To Them
This week, real estate appraiser, Curbed graph guru, blogger, newsletter writer, and columnist Jonathan Miller looks at the size of apartments on the market.
[Click for big!.]
Since both the sale and rental markets in New York City continue to plot a parallel course—and that's upward—I thought I'd break down both markets by the number of bedrooms and see how they compare. Turns out the mismatch is quite pronounced at the extremes of each market.
Rental Mix ↑ : According to the data, studio and one-bedroom apartments make up a larger share of rental activity than those same types of apartments do for the sales market. If we were to see rental-to-condo conversions spring out of housing stock created in the 1990s and 2000s, we'd probably see even more studios and one-bedrooms enter the market. That would help temper the upward price pressure the resale market is currently experiencing.
For $895,000, a Renovated Century-Old Brooklyn Townhouse
Welcome back to The Six Digit Club, in which we take a look at a newish-to-market listing priced under $1 million, because nice things sometimes come in small packages. Send nominations to the tipline.
This is not a joke: there is a fully renovated, single-family Brooklyn townhouse with historic details on the market for just $895,000. Where could this unicorn house possibly exist? It's not the traditional brownstone belt, of course, but it's not way out in Canarsie or East New York either. It's located on 81st Street in Bay Ridge, so the neighborhood would still be considered a compromise for some, but the R train is just four blocks away, so it's not exactly the boonies. The brokerbabble claims the house is "fully original" with many details preserved, like pocket doors and woodwork dating to 1905. All systems were recently upgraded and it has a large private backyard.
Cornerspotted: The Cotton Club on 125th St. and 12th Ave.
Encyclopedic Curbed readers (and Twitter followers) agree that this week's Cornerspotter clue, a gas station photographed in 1941, was too easy. No less than four minutes after it went on the site, NYC10001-10305 posted the correct answer: the newest iteration of the iconic Cotton Club at 125th and 125th Avenue. Technically speaking, the unique triangular site is formed by 125th, 12th Avenue, and St. Clair Place, with Riverside Drive rolling by overhead. "The RSD viaduct is pretty distinctive clue," said MidC Frank. We'll try harder next time.
Quintessential Cool Map Tracks Whole World's Public Transit
If you would like to feel like Q (the current Q, who is a hacker/spy, not the old Q, who made pocket watches that turned into machine guns) from the James Bond movies, may we suggest this interactive map that follows 200 public transit systems around the world in real time? It is the coolest. Created by Swiss-German IT company GeOps and University of Freiburg graduate student Patrick Brosi (as his master's thesis), the map pulls from public data feeds and is apparently a work in progress, with more transit systems to be added.
Extell's Next 57th Street Tower Might Not Be Gigantic
Because Gary Barnett can't get enough of 57th Street, Extell's next tower on the thoroughfare is already in the works, even though the developer's latest is barely out of the ground. But unlike Extell's firsttwo 57th Street towers, the third may not reach supertall status. A source provided New York YIMBY with early schematics for a tower that could possibly rise at 123 West 57th Street, currently home to the Calvary Baptist Church, and they show the building rising to a measly 59 stories and 761 feet. However, these plans were created by a "another developer that was formerly in contention for the building," so they could be completely wrong, as the church has yet to even decide if it will sell the property to Extell.
Upper West Side Townhouse with Rooftop Hot Tub Asks $18M
An 8,500-square-foot single-family mansion on the Upper West Side does not come cheap, especially when it was recently renovated and decked out with an elevator from the basement to the top floor, a roof terrace with a hot tub, and smart home technology. Hence, this five-story house at 33 West 71st Street is asking $18.5 million. Other highlights include a wine cellar and gym in the basement, a ground-floor rear garden, two working fireplaces, six bedrooms, seven full baths, and three half-baths. The house was sold, pre-renovation, by one LLC to another LLC in 2013 for $6.225 million.
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The 22 Best New Public Art Pieces to See in NYC This Summer
Great public art is a year-round given in New York City—and something that Mayor Bill de Blasio wants to increase— but it's during the late spring and early summer that creators and curators really seem to break out the big guns. Site-specific spectacles and festivals, interactive sculptural extravaganzas, weirdo installations, blow-out block parties: it's all going down (going up?) in the next few weeks. To make sure you don't miss a single Instagram-able cultural moment, here is a not-exhaustive look at 22 of the season's most exciting pieces, be they highly anticipated or already in place. And if you spot anything amazing that we've missed, please let the world know in the comments.
—Text and photos by Scott Lynch, unless noted
—Text and photos by Scott Lynch, unless noted
Take a Peek Inside St. John the Divine's Contested Rentals
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First renderings for inside the two conjoined, 428-rental towers rising alongside the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Harlem show about as much of the development as is left to see of the 123-year-old church itself (which is to say, not a lot). It appears the Brodsy Organization-developed undulating towers will go by the name The Enclave at Cathedral, and will be connected by a gallery below the church's new transept stairs, according to renderings spotted by BuzzBuzzHome. The towers will be complete in 2016.
Curbed's Best Of New York Design Week
The Umbra Shift collection, which features exceptional graphic design and packaging in addition to new work by up-and-coming designers. All photos courtesy of the individual designers, unless otherwise noted.
While seemingly every neighborhood in New York has played host to increasingly vital and varied events this past week due to New York Design Week, the International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF)being held at the Javits Center still serves as the steel-and-glass mothership of the whole affair. And, like any big gathering, the ICFF organizers have given out awards recognizing standouts amid the endless rows of booths and displays. The Curbed crew has spent days scouring all that Design Week has to offer, and after much deliberation and discussion, we've come up with our own, alternate awards. There were plenty of standout chairs and great wall coverings, but how about celebrating the best example of tropical modernism, awarding the booth display that best recreated a tropical jungle, or the pamphlet that made the connection between psychedelics and furniture?
Coveted Woolworth Condos Hit Open Market for First Time
The 34 apartments that the Woolworth Building's uppermost floors are becoming haven't been on the open market—until now. Listings for five units, ranging in price from one-bedroom for $4,575,000 to a three-bedroom for $9,875,000, cropped up on the Woolworth Tower Residences' website today. These listings are notable not only because sales used to be completely closed, but also because they offer the first look at official floorplans for the long-awaited apartments.
Sure, we've seen renderings (and then more of them), as well as those preliminary floorplans via the building's offering plan—including for the seven-story penthouse that is asking a mind-boggling $110 million. But there's nothing like real, clickable listings to make a development project seem real.
WTC's Liberty Plaza Finally Starts to Look Like a Park
Liberty Park doesn't look like much, and that's because it's not much—at least yet, with its handful of trees. After years of planning, the greenery is finally arriving at a roughly acre-large site bounded by Liberty, West, Cedar, and Greenwich streets, just south of the plaza's reflecting pools, the Times reports. The elevated park will cover the top of a 25-foot-high entrance to the World Trade Center's vehicle security area. With the park will eventually come Calatrava's St. Nicholas National Shrine, which will rise on the site of the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church that was lost on September 11.
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