- William Beaver House condo - 15 William Street
- Chelsea Stratus - 101 West 24th Street
- Gramercy Starck - 340 East 23rd Street
- Sheffield 57 - 322 West 57th Street
- The Visionaire - Battery Park City
- Platinum - 247 West 46th Street
Above is just a partial list of some of the larger new condominium projects being built or converted in Manhattan. Combined the above represents well over a thousand new apartments set to hit the market. A lot of people write in to ask why we don't write about this or that new condo. The truth is few if any of them are at all ambitious in terms of architecture and design. Still, there is an overall collective effect on the cityscape that is worth noting. After the jump a bit more on some of these projects for the sake of recording this frenzied moment in New York's development history. We may update this list now and then so it will be suitable for a time capsule. As Gore Vidal once wrote of a different city "one day these may make great ruins."
If the Manhattan real estate term "prewar" causes your heart rate to increase and your pupils to dilate then you're likely to have been unmoved by much of the new modern glass-tower development we've been chronicling on this page. Well sit up straight and adjust the screen all you old-world classicists because today is your lucky day: we take a closer look at Robert A.M. Stern's 15 Central Park West, a new condominium now rising that actually manages the rare feat of living up to its grand prewar antecedents. After the jump some striking images you may not have seen yet. 
Continuing with our West Village theme, architect Daniel Goldner has now placed on-line a large color rendering of his design for a building to fill a narrow lot at 163 Charles Street. The site sits directly behind the just completed Richard Meier tower, and was recently dubbed (unfairly, we think) "Mini Meier" by the New York Times. To our eyes Goldner's design seems competent in its own right, and comes after the property's previous owner (art dealer Kenny Schachter) had commissioned Zaha Hadid to design an earlier plan for the site. The new design appears to have retained at least some of the intersecting planes associated with Hadid's work, while also carving out a triplex unit, two duplexes, and ground floor commercial space. The project was recently the target of a demonstration by preservationists who are seeking to maintain the area's scale and protect the surviving examples of 19th century houses and stables. To see a larger view of the rendering click through to the link below.
In part one of a series on changes to the Hudson River waterfront in the West Village, we take a look at the pending development of the Superior Printing Ink factory along West Street. Click on the link below for recently reported details on these plans, plus our snapshots of one unlucky co-op preparing to lose its river views.
In a previous post we ruminated on the possibility that another project designed by Gwathmey Siegel might soon rise in Manhattan to follow on their much discussed Astor Place "Sculpture for Living" (right). Recently Lois Weiss of the New York Post reported that the Landmarks commission has now approved the design for a residential project to fill a parking lot at 311-323 West Broadway across the street from the SoHo Grand Hotel. The Laboz family plans a condo project that will go through the block to Wooster Street, and may include townhouses. We'll take a closer look as details emerge.
Dutch-born architect Winka Dubbeldam is at work on a follow-up to her innovative 497 Greenwich Street design (top right) with a new project for an empty lot on Vestry Street in TriBeCa. The design for 31-33 Vestry was recently unveiled at a hearing held by the Landmarks Preservation Commission where Ms. Dubbeldam was asked to make a number of changes. The building's curtain wall as proposed (bottom right) would be inlaid with bands of light-emitting stone that will glow at night. The luminous facade would be extremely flat and, according to Downtown Express' Ronda Kaysen, members of the commission expressed concern that it would make for too harsh a contrast with the neighboring buildings. To our eyes the plan is such a clean break from the past that to ask Ms. Dubbeldam to apply cheap echoes of its surroundings would be rather silly. We hope the revised design will maintain the spirit in which it was first conceived, and we hope the commission will ultimately find the merit in a challenging design. Follow the link to Downtown Express for a larger view.
Thin is in. What do you call a trend born of necessity? When new construction fills small odd-lots and leftover spaces it usually means the most desirable neighborhoods are fast approaching a state of being fully "built-out." It also means the price per square foot is just too good for developers to pass up. Do the math, as they say in bad action movie spec scripts. 
next door to the much loved Ear Inn. 
We may have been in a minority among our dinner companions of late, but we sorta like the new Charles Gwathmey designed apartment house on Astor Place. Maybe part of it is how we remember growing up for a time in the neighborhood during the '80's, when the East Village skaz collided everyday into the gridlocked commerce of lower Broadway via Astor Place, resulting in a sometimes out-of-control mix of street vendors, saxophone players, panhandlers, and boom boxes. Everyone's ambition was to be either Jean-Michel Basquiat, Run DMC, or Gordon Gecko. While that seems like ancient history now, Gwathmey's reflective glass gives us a chance to stop, look in the mirror, and understand just how far we've come.
