REAL ESTATE / HOT PROPERTIES
Modern Punctuation for a Vintage Block / Sleek New Sliver for Sutton Place
If you go to 441 East 57th Street, where a sleek sliver of glass 20 feet wide and 15 stories tall is soon to rise, bring your imagination. By the summer of 2008, say its developers, a young design/develop/build firm called FLAnk (Architecture on the Front Lines), there will be an ultra-modern exclamation point on this street of distinguished pre-war grand dames: seven condominium apartments stacked vertically, finished with luxurious materials, and offering every possible amenity.
Right now, there are slabs in place a hefty portfolio of promotional literature. I met Jennifer Bell, FLAnk’s Director of Public Relations, expecting to see model apartments. Instead, we sat and talked in the breezy brick-paved riverfront park two minutes’ walk away, among baby strollers, walkers and wheelchairs reflecting the multi-generational make-up of this tony enclave off Sutton Place.
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A rendering of 441 East 57th Street |
Ground was broken in May, and two of the seven units were spoken for immediately, Bell told me -- the penthouse, by the owner of an aerospace company and his wife, and the maisonette, by a well-known investment banker (born and raised in the Sutton place area). A pro basketball player is considering a third unit. Most of those who’ve expressed interest “seem to be pied a terre buyers,” Bell says – people looking for a second or third or fifth home.
The remaining units, mostly two-bedroom duplexes,start at $2.95 million for 1,645 square feet (there’s also one three-bedroom, 3,375 square foot triplex priced at $6.65 million). Monthly maintenance is a low $1.03 per square foot, thanks to such high-tech innovations as an offsite ‘virtual doorman,’ who communicates via video interface with residents admitted to the building by displaying key tags read electronically by the sliding entry doors and elevator.
The apartments – or town homes, as the developers prefer to call them – have wide-plank oak floors and sybaritic baths almost as large as the bedrooms, with deep soaking tubs from Bain Ultra and sinks from the British company Barber Wilsons. In the kitchens, Bulgarian limestone floors and marble counters offset the retro appeal of $20,000 La Cornue ranges from France. Perks include white gloved house cleaning provided by the venerable Lindquist Agency, complementary membership in the L.A. Sports Club on East 61st Street, and use of the wine cellar at Crush, Drew Nieporent’s wine shop nearby.
One of the chief selling points at 441 is that each apartment has three exposures. Look north from the higher floors, and you’ll see the rooftops of midtown; to the south, across 57th Street, the russet-colored brick of more neo-Renaissance piles. To the east is the river and, at closer range – right next door, in fact – the bluestone-paved garden belonging to literary lions Tina Brown, former editor of Vanity Fair and the New Yorker, and her husband Harold Evans, onetime head of Random House.
A well-publicized lawsuit last year by the couple against the developers centered on six inches of party wall left over from the former townhouse owned by legendary Broadway composer Cy Coleman, which FLAnk principal's Jon Kully and Mick Walsdorf bought for $5.5 million and demolished to make way for the new tower. “The New York State Supreme Court, the Appellate Division and the Court of Appeals all ruled in our favor that we could tear down the party wall,” Kully says. The flap delayed the project, but discussions with Brown and Evans toward a comprehensive settlement are now underway – “They weren’t keen at first, but they’re fine now,” is how Bell puts it – allowing construction to proceed apace.
FLAnk’s recent projects include the nearly sold-out Novare, a Greenwich Village church converted to an eight-unit condominium; a West Village condominium at the former site of Diane Von Furstenberg’s showroom; a boutique hotel on the Lower East Side and a commercial property in Chelsea are in development.
Because 441 East 57th is not part of any historic district, no special dispensation was needed to tear down the existing five-story townhouse, and no landmarks approval needed for the design of the new glass and anodized aluminum structure. Dark bands of aluminum on the building’s crystalline façade will outline and delineate the individual units. Says Kully: “You can point up and say, ‘That’s my home.”
— Cara Greenberg |
