Search Results for: Aby Rosen

April 3, 2019

Aby Rosen says he’ll add an observation deck to the Chrysler Building

“I see the building as a Sleeping Beauty: It needs to be woken up and revitalized,” developer Aby Rosen told the Post about his plans for the Chrysler Building. His firm RFR Realty, in partnership with Signa Holding, bought the landmark for $150 million last month . His plans include restoring the 1930s Art Deco interiors by way of a series of restaurants that will take inspiration from Chrysler's original Cloud Club, as well as adding a '"fashionable food hall" (of course) and retail spaces. The biggest news, though, is that he also wants to incorporate a new observation deck, joining the ranks of 30 Hudson Yards, One Vanderbilt, and Chrysler's one-time rival the Empire State Building.
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July 25, 2017

Aby Rosen signs fashion company Totokaelo as first retail tenant at 190 Bowery

It's been two-and-a-half years since developer Aby Rosen of RFR Realty scooped up the former Germania Bank Building for $55 million. He bought it from photographer Jay Maisel, who in 1966 turned the then-abandoned landmark into his own private 72-room mansion. After removing the Nolita building's iconic graffiti last summer, Rosen is now all systems go for his conversion to an office building with ground-floor retail. As the Post reports, Seattle-based fashion retailer Totokaelo (who counts among its designer offerings Acne Studios, Comme des Garçons, Jil Sander and Proenza Schouler) signed a lease for 8,918 square feet at street level. However, the deal only covers early fall through March 2018 for a large-scale pop-up store.
All the details ahead
July 6, 2017

Mega-developer Aby Rosen lists art-filled Upper East Side townhouse for $20M

Big-time real estate developer and man about town Aby Rosen has put his extravagant Upper East Side townhouse at 16 East 78th Street on the market for $19,950,000, a good deal more than the $8.4 million he paid for it back in 2004. According to LL NYC, the listing comes just a week after his other nearby home at 5 East 80th Street, which he's rented for 15 years for nearly $23,500 a month, narrowly escaped the auction block. Rosen expressed interest in buying the property, which could be why he's decided to part ways with this residence. Listing photos show the art collector's impressive contemporary collection, as well as the full-full master suite, roof deck, and garden.
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August 8, 2016

The 30-Year Evolution of Socrates Sculpture Park; Developer Aby Rosen Releases Anti-Trump Billboard

Despite his partnership with Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, developer Aby Rosen put up a huge billboard in Noho urging New Yorkers to “Vote Your Conscience.” [TRD] The Four Seasons is hosting a Hamptons pop-up. [NYP] In 1986, Long Island City’s Socrates Sculpture Park was a landfill and illegal dumping ground. Today, it’s an urban artistic haven. [Dwell] Tour Anna […]

July 18, 2016

Beyond the Four Seasons: Aby Rosen Talks Maintenance and Costs at the Seagram Building

On Saturday night, after what seems like an eternity of speculation followed by lamentation, the iconic Four Seasons hosted its last dinner. Last summer, Seagram Building owner Aby Rosen of RFR Realty chose not to renew the iconic restuarant's lease, and even before this, he faced criticism when he removed Picasso's largest ever work, Le Tricorne, from the space. But despite the constant contention, the developer is speaking out, hoping to get a little credit for the work and money he has put into the office building. "I see myself as a custodian," he told the Times, referring to the fact that it costs RFR an estimated 20 percent more to maintain the landmarked structure than it would a typical tower of the same size and age. But experts say this is par for the course when one willingly purchases a designated building, which Rosen did in 2000 for $379 million.
Rosen breaks down the specifics
July 15, 2015

190 Bowery Is Already Back on the Market, Aby Rosen Attempts a Flip

It seems like the saga of 190 Bowery is never going to be over. As you'll recall, photographer Jay Maisel turned the former Germania Bank Building into his own private mansion and lived there from 1966 until February of this year, at which time he sold it to developer Aby Rosen of RFR Realty for $55 million. Like we previously said, "Since that time, it’s been all eyes on Rosen. Is he removing or preserving that iconic graffiti? What the heck happened with that 'public' art show inside the building?" And though the Landmarks Preservation Commission approved plans in May for a restoration and conversion to an office building with ground-floor retail, it now seems that Rosen may be getting cold feet. Curbed reports that he's taking offers for 190 Bowery in what looks like a very high-profile flip attempt.
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September 10, 2014

Real Estate Wire: $13M for Bed-Stuy’s Tallest Apartment Building; Aby Rosen is Creating His Own Mansion

A ‘seven-star hotel’ will rise on the former site of the Rizzoli Bookstore near Central Park. [WSJ] Aby Rosen wants to turn an 11-unit co-op at 1025 Park Avenue into his personal 19,000-square-foot mansion. [NYDN] Owners of a 13-story, 23-apartment rental at 11 Spencer Court in Bed-Stuy are looking to make $13 million sale—50% more than […]

August 28, 2023

NYC’s Gramercy Park Hotel to reopen with rooftop bar and Danny Meyer restaurant

After closing during the pandemic, Manhattan's famed Gramercy Park Hotel will reopen under new ownership, the Wall Street Journal reported. MCR Hotels, the nation's third-largest hotel owner and operator, has purchased a 99-year lease to the hotel, located directly across from the exclusive Gramercy Park, for roughly $50 million and expects to reopen the property as one of the city's most luxurious hotels in 2025 following renovations. Plans include upgrades to the lobby, the 197 guest rooms, the first-floor restaurant (Danny Meyer's Maialino), and the 7,000-square-foot rooftop bar.
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May 19, 2020

See the observation deck proposed for the Chrysler Building

An observation deck will return to the Chrysler Building. During a Landmarks Preservation Commission hearing on Tuesday, Aby Rosen's RFR Realty, which bought the Art Deco landmark last year for $151 million, presented its proposal to revamp the skyscraper's 61st and 62nd floors to allow for public access. The Chrysler Building previously housed an observatory, which opened on the 71st floor in 1945 as the Celestial.
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June 10, 2019

The Four Seasons is closing this week, less than a year after $40M reopening

Less than a year after moving out of the historic Seagram Building and reopening a new space, the famed Four Seasons Restaurant will close Tuesday, the New York Times reported. The news comes after the restaurant reopened last year on East 52nd Street with a $40 million renovation. And last December, former managing partner Julian Niccolini resigned after pleading guilty to sexual assault in 2016.
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March 14, 2019

Chrysler Building sells for a discounted $150M, may become a hotel

Update 3/14/19: A few days after Aby Rosen bought the Chrysler Building for the bargain price of $150 million, the real estate mogul told Bloomberg this week that he would consider converting the tower into a hotel.  Real estate mogul Aby Rosen has picked up another New York City landmark. Rosen's RFR Holding LLC, which controls the Seagram Building and Lever House, bought the Chrysler Building for $151 million, according to the Wall Street Journal. The sale represents a major loss for majority owner Abu Dhabi Investment Council, who paid $800 million in 2008 for a 90 percent stake in the 77-story Art Deco tower.
Details here
September 28, 2018

Bjarke Ingels is tapped for his first residential project in Brooklyn

Bjarke Ingels' architectural dominance of New York City is growing -- the Danish starchitect has got his first commission in Brooklyn, reports Crain's. Developer Aby Rosen tapped Ingels' firm Bjarke Ingels Group to draft plans for a large new apartment project on the banks of the Gowanus Canal. The site in question -- at 175-225 3rd Street, pictured in the aerial shot above -- is currently a parking lot.
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September 21, 2018

How Prohibition restructured NYC real estate and architecture (and built the Seagram Building)

One hundred years ago, the United States Congress passed a temporary Wartime Prohibition Act banning the sale of beverages with an alcohol content of over 1.28 percent. The 1918 amendment later led to full-blown Prohibition, which wouldn’t officially end until the early 1930s. Find it difficult to imagine a spirit-less New York? In 1918, many New Yorkers, including city officials, also had a difficult time imagining a New York without alcohol. After all, with alcohol banned, the future remained uncertain for an estimated 9,000 hotel and saloon properties. The city itself stood to lose roughly $18 million in tax revenues related to the sale of liquor. In the end, however, New York not only survived the Prohibition Era but, indirectly, had its architecture altered.
Booze and bootlegging this way
May 14, 2018

INTERVIEW: New York legend Jay Maisel dishes on 190 Bowery and his new photo archive

Jay Maisel is best known for the incredibly expressive stories he tells through his beautiful photography. But in recent years, he's become perhaps just as well known for his New York City real estate story where he made the deal of the century when he sold his home, the Germania Bank Building at 190 Bowery. What he's not at all known for, though, are the stories he tells through the hundreds of thousands of memories that fill his home and studio. Maisel, who may appear gruff on the exterior (at 87 years-old, he still likes to shock), is actually incredibly kind and sentimental. He misses his home and all his toys that once filled the 35,000-square-foot building. Although he was initially intimidated by the size and upkeep costs of 190 Bowery, Maisel grew to love the home and raise his family there for 50 years. In 2015, he sold the building for $55 million and purchased a stately townhouse on Pacific Street in Cobble Hill for $15.5 million. (At the time, it was the most expensive townhouse sale in Brooklyn.) 6sqft sat down with Maisel and discussed his real estate coup, his move to Brooklyn (which is not “the city” in his view) and his most recent New York City photography series, entitled “Jaywalking.”
Hear from Jay and get an inside look at his life and work
March 7, 2018

Art and real estate: The new relationship that’s selling big

The architect Morris Adjmi looks to trends in art, more than in architecture, to inspire his work. “Art is more stimulating to me than the latest trends in architecture. Art is visceral and topical, it is much more immediate and it allows you to get into the zeitgeist of the time. In art, we see what is happening now, in architecture it takes a few years to show up.” More and more architects, developers, designers, and brokers believe in the powerful relationship between art and real estate. So much so, it is now understood that art sells real estate and real estate sells art. James Cavello, owner of Westwood Gallery, curated an art exhibit at 212 Fifth Avenue’s $73.8 million “Crown” penthouse with a multimillion-dollar collection of art, with works by Warhol, Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly, Robert Indiana, Charles Hinman, and Douglas Kirkland. On the relationship between art and real estate, Cavello says, “We share the same similar high net worth clients so developers and brokers look to individuals like me and my company to propose alternatives to staging the areas with furniture and drapes and, instead, work with the light and space and utilize the art as staging.” The Sotheby’s team behind 212 Fifth added that having Westwood Gallery stage art in the three-story, 10,000-square-foot unit, “Helped generate powerful awareness for Westwood Gallery with a level of visibility that is often unattainable for a stand-alone gallery.” Clearly, art and real estate have a very symbiotic relationship.
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January 26, 2018

Real estate bigwig drops $4.35M on Seth Meyers’ West Village condo

Real estate bigwig Michael Fuchs (he co-founded RFR Realty with his childhood friend Aby Rosen) paid $4.35 million for Seth Meyers' West Village condo at 302 West 12th Street, according to the Post. The “Late Night” host and his wife Alexi Ashe bought the two-bedroom unit in 2013 for $3.5 million, but after dropping $7.5 million on a five-bedroom Washington Square West co-op in summer 2016, they listed their smaller pad this past September for $4.5 million. And Fuchs must've really seen something in the apartment, because he went into contract on it just a month later.
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October 10, 2017

Creative power couple’s Yorkville duplex asks $16.5M for 13 rooms, 20-foot ceilings and a waterfall pond

One of several high-profile homes for a high powered creative couple and their three children, this sprawling apartment at 170 East End Avenue is both a perfect canvas for a very serious art gallerist and collector and a home that is lacking exactly nothing, including river, bridge and skyline views, 5,000 square feet of interior space, 20 foot ceilings, 13 rooms, a 150-bottle wine cellar, several terraces, a teak gazebo and a pond with its own waterfall. Indeed "truly remarkable," with interiors by renowned architect Peter Marino, the condominium, just listed for $16.5 million, has 2,186 square feet of landscaped private terraces, six bedrooms plus a library, formal dining, an eat-in kitchen, a home office, studies and lounges–all in a full-service Upper East Side building with amenities galore.
Tour this colorful mini-MoMA
September 28, 2017

$13.5M UES townhouse boasts one of Manhattan’s finest private gardens

The listing tells us this six-story townhouse at 140 East 65th Street on the Upper East Side, with 18 rooms accessible by a wood-paneled elevator, is "the antithesis of the familiar, plain-vanilla, cookie-cutter developer spec house," and we'd have to agree. Asking $13.5 million, its 7,000 interior square feet and 900 square feet of private outdoor space are brimming with magnificent design details that include one of the finest private gardens in Manhattan, designed by the Curator of Japanese Gardens at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden.
Check out the endless details and rooms to spare
September 14, 2017

Billionaire sports team owner gets $17M discount on Upper East Side mega-mansion

A massive Upper East Side single-family townhouse at 50 East 69th Street was just wrestled off the market for an equally monumental $45 million, sources have told the New York Post. Joshua Harris, co-founder of Apollo Global Management, owner of the Philadelphia 76ers and part owner of the NHL’s New Jersey Devils, just bought the 21,070-square-foot house, which was listed at $72 million last September and reduced to $59 million in June. The 44-foot-wide limestone-clad building, known as the Dommerich Mansion, was built in 1917 in a neo-French classic style by architect Henry C. Pelton for Otto Louis Dommerich, who ran his family's family cotton business. It was most recently being used as a cosmetic surgery facility.
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September 6, 2017

Over-the-top Upper East Side maisonette is back on the market for $19M

Well within the gracious walls of 135 East 79th Street, one of the Upper East Side's most coveted–and expensive–condominiums, this nearly 5,000-square-foot elevator duplex is for all intents a townhouse that feels like a penthouse. Except it's a maisonette, complete with separate street entrance and backyard. It’s also a condo, with access to the top-notch amenities one would expect from a recent big-ticket Carnegie Hill development. The unit first sold for $11.8 million in 2014 to convenience store heir Gerald Erickson, Jr., but he re-listed it just a month later, with the added benefit of over-the-top interiors, for a considerably elevated $18.4 million. It doesn’t look like things have changed much since then, but the maximalist pad has just reappeared on the market with an $18.995 million price tag.
Get a non-stop eyeful, this way
July 25, 2017

$350K UES studio designed in the ’80s by Adam Tihany resembles a luxury train car

A quirky studio designed by the interior designer Adam Tihany, praised as one of the greatest American interior architects by the New York Times, has hit the market for $350,000. The design has essentially remained unchanged since the apartment was featured in an early 1980s issue of Metropolitan Home, which compared the design to that of a luxury train car. According to the listing, this modest interior, packed with inventive storage, is an early example of Tihany's world renowned hotel work (some of his commissions include the Mandarin Oriental in Vegas, the Beverly Hills Hotel, and two Four Seasons in Dubai). It's located in the 16-unit Upper East Side co-op 223 East 78th Street, which has one more studio for sale asking $315,000.
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November 22, 2016

New Isay Weinfeld-designed Four Seasons won’t resemble the historic restaurant at all

The 21st century incarnation of the iconic Four Seasons restaurant set to open at 280 Park Avenue will bear no resemblance to the original, beyond the famous name and the sign that fronted the "Mad Men"-era power lunch spot in the Seagram Building, according to the restaurant's co-owner, Julian Niccolini. The New York Post reports that the team behind the "new" Four Seasons–Niccolini and partner Alex von Bidder, the Bronfman family, landlord Steve Roth of Vornado and representatives of landlord SL Green Realty–approved the new restaurant's design, by Brazilian architect Isay Weinfeld, last Friday.
A new femininity for the three-martini lunch?
October 12, 2016

Rande Gerber and Cindy Crawford to be George Clooney’s neighbor at Norman Foster’s Midtown tower

Rande Gerber and wife Cindy Crawford have purchased the apartment just upstairs from George and Amal Clooney's at the Norman Foster-designed One Hundred East Fifty Third Street, according to Page Six. As 6sqft recently reported, the Clooneys just scooped up a high-floor (though not the $65 million penthouse they reportedly viewed) apartment at the glassy tower. Longtime pals Clooney and Gerber recently sold their matched pair of adjoining Mexican villas, christened Casamigos–the same name as the duo's tequila brand, which is reportedly expanding its presence in New York City.
Check out the interiors at the new celebrity-approved tower
July 13, 2016

Get a Peek at the Modernist Treasures Headed for the Four Seasons Restaurant Auction

The Wright auction house is gearing up for the July 26 auction of kitchen and dining room items from the iconic Four Seasons restaurant. As 6sqft previously reported, news that the restaurant would decamp from the building surfaced last summer, when Seagram Building owner Aby Rosen did not renew the lease for what has been seen as the quintessential Midtown “power lunch” spot for the last decades of the 20th century since it opened in 1959. The restaurant’s interiors feature custom designs by Pritzker Prize-winner Philip Johnson and furniture, tableware and other modernist treasures by the likes of by Seagram Building designer Mies Van der Rohe, Hans J. Wegner and others and custom-made Knoll furniture. With an emotional forward by Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, the auction catalog offers a preview of items up for auction with estimates. Included will be banquettes designed for the space by Philip Johnson Associates, Eero Saarinen Tulip stools, chairs and tables from the bar of the Grill Room, pans, flatware and dishes created for the restaurant by Ada Louise and L. Garth Huxtable and more.
Take a look at the items in the Four Seasons auction