Architecture And Design

January 4, 2016

Own an Upstate Greek Revival Mansion Built By a Circus Entrepreneur for $2.5M

Behold the Gerard Crane House, a granite-clad Greek Revival mansion built on 30 acres upstate and named for its original owner. Crane was a prominent Somers, New York resident who started exhibiting exotic animals in the 1800s, eventually becoming a circus entrepreneur. He built this home for himself in 1849. Since his death in 1872, the house and estate have stayed a private residence with very few alterations made. And even though it's on the market, there will be very few changes to come, as the property is a designated historic district and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Even the interior of the home looks like a time capsule of Gerard Crane's life.
See more photos of the $2.5 million stunner

December 31, 2015

Isay Weinfeld’s Jardim Condominium Rises to Street Level Along the High Line

By Ondel Hylton

Foundation work for Isay Weinfeld's Jardim condominium is finally wrapping up and portions of the Chelsea development are now climbing to street level. Rising from the swampy banks of a bygone stream, the mid-block site at 525 West 27th Street is giving way to a set of two 11-story condo buildings encasing an elevated garden oasis. A partnership between Centaur Properties and Greyscale Development Group is responsible for the 95,000 square-foot complex; they purchased the site formerly occupied by the Pink Elephant nightclub in 2014 for $45 million.
Find out more

Should the City Impose a ‘Window Tax’ for Billionaires’ Row Central Park Views?

Google Earth rendering from CityRealty showing some of the supertalls around the south end of Central Park

December 31, 2015

Should the City Impose a ‘Window Tax’ for Billionaires’ Row Central Park Views?

By Dana Schulz

"The builders are charging up to $100 million for apartments that offer helicopter views of lush foliage, jagged skylines, soothing rivers and angelic clouds. They lure the superrich, many with suspect foreign assets, to sky-high mansions. They enrich themselves by exploiting weak zoning rules to pour hideous implants into Manhattan cavities." All of this, says Max Frankel, who was the executive editor of The Times from 1986 to 1994 and lives half a block from Central Park, may need some consequences. And he wonders if this should come in the form of a "user fee," where residents of these Billionaires' Row towers would have to pay a monthly "window tax" based on how high in a given tower their unit is located. And according to his "back-of-the-envelope calculations," this could bring in roughly $1 million a year per building for the city to use on public projects like street work, parks, education, and affordable housing.
More details ahead

December 30, 2015

Attractive New Bushwick Condo Rises on One of Brooklyn’s Ugliest Streets

By Ondel Hylton

It's rare to see a new development in Bushwick with any kind of style and grace, but a recently finished six-unit condominium at 27 Dodworth Street actually looks like some thought went into it. Even more remarkable is that it manages to do so on what is probably the most unfortunate looking street on the eastern seaboard. So breathtakingly ugly in fact that it could be thought of, by some, as chic. And as it turns out, buyers have shelled out up to $1 million for condos along this gritty stretch near the Bed-Stuy-Bushwick border.
See the good, the bad, and the ugly

December 30, 2015

Form Follows Function at CCS Architecture’s Wood-Clad Bridgehampton Residence

By Ana Lisa Alperovich

This stylish Bridgehampton Residence was designed to accommodate three generations of a family with growing children. Featuring big sliding doors and windows under a collection of sloped roofs, the wood-clad retreat plays between the indoor and luscious outdoor living spaces right in the heart of the Hamptons. In order to accommodate a multigenerational family, CCS Architecture gut-renovated and extended an existing dwelling, which went from four bedrooms to eight and gained a garage.
Learn more about this large family retreat

Architecture And Design

December 29, 2015

Outrageous Bronx Mansion Built for Jesus’ Second Coming Can Be Yours for $10M

By Dana Schulz

Up in Riverdale, atop the second-highest peak in the city, is an opulent mansion that beckons to the heavens–literally–that's about to hit the market for $10 million. The grand, 17-room home was built back in 1928 by its eccentric owner who never actually lived in the home herself, but rather constructed it for Jesus' second coming. Genevieve Ludlow Griscom was by then the widow of Clement Acton Griscom Jr., a prominent shipping executive. She was a member of a cult-like religious group called the Outer Court of the Order of the Living Christ, which was rooted in Episcopalian beliefs, but focused on "reincarnation and Christian mysticism," according to the Post. "The property was built as the group’s summer retreat and was surrounded by a high fence, leading neighbors to speculate that it was home to strange rituals," they added.
Get the rest of the strange history ahead

December 29, 2015

First Look at Six-Family Townhouses Set for North Williamsburg

By Ondel Hylton

At the northern edge of Williamsburg, near the Greenpoint border, work is beginning on a 12-unit project developed by Ami Barr's Djem Land LLC and designed by Queens-based InFocus Design and Planning. The building is situated at 171-173 Bayard Street, between Graham Avenue and McGuinness Boulevard, and replaces a one-story, nondescript light industrial building that the Long Island-based developers snapped up for $1.8 million in early 2014. Renderings posted on the architect's website show an orderly facade of red brick, large sash windows, and steel lintels. A somewhat strange marble cornice tops the first three levels and the fourth story is set back, simulating a modern rooftop addition atop a rehabilitated manufacturing building.
More details ahead

December 29, 2015

The Much-Anticipated Ecocapsule Micro-Home Is Now Available for Pre-Order

By Rebecca Paul

Excitement and anticipation over the innovative eco-friendly, pod-like micro-home dubbed Ecocapsule started back in May when they were first introduced to the public. The units are designed by Nice Architects and are totally off-grid, powered by solar and wind energy. They're finally available for preorder, and as one of the most efficient and adaptable housing solutions out there, we can't wait to see them in use.
Find out more right this way

December 29, 2015

Karl Fischer’s Greenpoint Development Gets a Makeover; Interiors Revealed

By Ondel Hylton

With its hodgepodge exterior once called "the Noah's Ark of bad design" and simply described as just plain "fugly," it seems Karl Fischer has taken the hint by reworking the design of 26 West Street into something slightly less offensive. Since the rendering reveal last April, construction is now well underway and a new image of the project has emerged on Fischer's website that shows the use of more red paneling and factory-style sash windows, a greater incorporation of balconies, and the placement of additional arched windows along its western, river-facing facade. Also shown and reflected in DOB filings is a seventh story, bringing the likely rental project up from 72 units to 96. Additionally, Fischer has now revealed the project's interiors, which seem to mix the two favored Brooklyn styles of rustic and industrial.
Check it all out

December 28, 2015

Horror Author Peter Straub Sells His Historic UWS Townhouse for $7M

By Annie Doge

When he put his Upper West Side townhouse on the market for $8.2 million in April, 6sqft wrote: "With accolades like the Bram Stoker Award, the World Fantasy Award, and the International Horror Guild Award to his name, one might proceed with caution when entering the home of American author and poet Peter Straub." But as we discovered, the Queen Anne-style home is anything but scary. Rather, it's a historically preserved masterpiece with rich colors, tasteful furnishings, and plenty of character. And now, according to city records, it's sold for $7,050,000, after Peter and his wife Susan called the residence at 53 West 85th Street home for 30 years.
Take a look around

Renderings Revealed for Cantilever King ODA’s Bushwick Hotel

By Dana Schulz

Back in March, 6sqft brought you renderings of a cantilevered, ziggurat-like project in Gowanus. The architects were none other than of-the-moment firm ODA, who have become the king of cantilevers and cube-like designs. The project never came to fruition (the developers noted that they won't be working with ODA), but it looks like the firm recycled some of the design ideas for their latest endeavor. ArchDaily revealed renderings for a new seven-story, 100-key hotel at 71 White Street in Bushwick. The ODA-designed structure, of course, features a dramatic cantilever with an interior courtyard and employs their signature boxy facade. It will use the foundation of a former 1930s manufacturing building, but for a true Brooklyn twist, will incorporate the existing brick graffiti wall into the new design.
More renderings and details this way

December 22, 2015

StudioMDA Explores Fantasy and Sexuality in a Hank Moody-Inspired Bedroom

By Rebecca Paul

It's commonly known that Hank Moody, the main character from Showtime's Californication is an ex-New Yorker making his way through the wild streets of Los Angeles. But this small factoid didn't stop the agency responsible for the show's marketing from building a New York homage to the sexual freedom explored by Moody and many of the other characters in the show. As described by StudioMDA, the designers behind this out-of-the-box deliverable, "the bedroom we designed for him is a perfect room for one of his trysts – a place where pleasure and fetishism are tangible and the boundaries between desire and reality are blurred." Well, we couldn't have said it better ourselves.
See it all right here

December 22, 2015

Stubby Shotgun-Style House Asks $775K in East Bed-Stuy

By Emily Nonko

Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn is a neighborhood that's famed for its architecture: majestic Italianate, Neo-Grec, Romanesque Revival and Queen Anne townhouses, churches and schools line a majority of the side streets. But this little house, at 288 Chauncey Street in East Bed-Stuy, stands in a category all its own. It looks more "New Orleans shotgun house" than Brooklyn townhouse, although it does boast a classic, historic cornice. It's also rare to see a townhouse in the neighborhood that's so stubby, with a one-story front facade (The home is actually a compact two-story, but the lower level sits mostly underground). What's even the proper price tag for such an oddball home? A few years ago, it was asking $350,000, but now that the Bed-Stuy market is so hot it's aiming high with an ask of $775,000.
Check out the interior

December 21, 2015

Studio DB’s Tribeca Penthouse Strikes the Perfect Balance of Beauty and Functionality

By Rebecca Paul

Tribeca has been a NYC hot spot for well over a decade and is home to one of the city's most sought-after zip codes. Thanks to its large stock of lofts and historic architecture, the trendy 'hood is chock full of drool-worthy real estate, and this classic penthouse is no exception. The home was renovated in 2014 by the design team at Studio DB, who set out to make the space both beautiful and functional for the homeowners' growing family.
See the whole renovation

December 21, 2015

More Details Revealed for Bjarke Ingels’ High Line Towers

By Dana Schulz

The latest project to come from starchitect-of-the-moment Bjarke Ingels is a set of towers that will rise along the High line at 76 11th Avenue. The renderings made waves a month ago when the angular, asymmetrical structures were revealed, and at this time it was also announced that the project would encompass a hotel, retail space, and around 300 luxury condos. But new plans filed by developer HFZ Capital Group, first uncovered by The Real Deal, show that the towers' four-story base will not include a hotel, but rather retail and office space, likely because "[commercial office space] vacancy rates in the [Meatpacking District] are notoriously low–around 2 percent–while prices are high."
Find out more

December 20, 2015

Architensions’ Writing Pavilion Is a Tiny Backyard Retreat for Two Brooklyn Creatives

By Dana Schulz

Most Brooklyn creatives head to the local cafe when they need to escape to get work done, but this lucky couple can retreat right to their backyard garden (h/t Inhabitat). They enlisted local firm Architensions to design a space where they can find "a condition of isolation or immersive solitude" for writing and drawing. The result is the Writing Pavilion, a 50-square-foot wooden structure that is light-filled and serene, but purposefully simple and void of distractions.
Find out more about this outdoor escape

Architecture And Design

Envision Design And Evoke Desire – New York, NY, Skyline 2030. Courtesy of Visualhouse. Click here to enlarge >>

December 18, 2015

Get a Look at the NYC Skyline in 2030!

By Dana Schulz

Though it's that time of year when we look back at the 12 months past, it's also a great time to look ahead. Which is exactly what creative design firm Visualhouse did with their incredible rendering of the NYC skyline 15 years from now. The image takes us from BIG's Via tetrahedron to the supertall towers of Billionaires' Row to the glistening cluster that will be Hudson Yards.
more here

December 18, 2015

Historic UWS Townhouse Filled With Bold Modern Furniture Hits the Rental Market

By Emily Nonko

Original mahogany and oak paneling, inlaid parquet floors, carved mantels and a grand staircase. That's the lowdown at 315 West 78th Street, an impressive townhouse in the Riverside Drive/West End Avenue area of the Upper West Side. It's a huge house, with 4,000 square feet, 11 rooms, five bedrooms and four-and-a-half bathrooms. It also has an impressive number of historic details intact. The home has been offered as a rental for a few years now, priced between $15,499 and $16,000 a month. It's back on the market asking $16,000 and is being offered furnished or not. It's also available short term, for a minimum of a six-month stay. This is a spot we definitely wouldn't mind hanging for six months.
See the interior

December 18, 2015

Get a Look at the South Village’s Upcoming Boutique Condo, 54 MacDougal Street

By Ondel Hylton

Excavation is nearly complete at 54 MacDougal Street, a ground-up, six-story condominium being developed by Valyrian Capital and Ajax Partners. Up until 2013, a humble three-story townhouse stood at the 2,500-square-foot lot for nearly 200 years, dating its creation to around 1820 when it was built on land formerly owned by Aaron Burr. The building lot is within a once working-class and immigrant neighborhood referred to by some as the South Village. Unlike large swaths of Greenwich Village to the north and cast iron sections of Soho to the west, the motley mixture of low-rise, pre-war buildings for years lacked landmark protections. Since 2006, the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (GVSHP) has urged the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission to designate a 35-block stretch of the neighborhood as an historic district, making it the city’s first tenement-based landmarked district. To date, two of the three phases of the district have been designated.
More details ahead

December 17, 2015

Edible Real Estate: These Amazing Gingerbread Houses Are Totally Turnkey

By Michelle Cohen

What could be better than real estate you can eat? Though these (mostly) edible homes are way too pretty to take a bite of, there’s just something about the idea of frosting on the roof… Ahead, check out some of the sweet, scaled-down edifices we've scouted across the web and NYC, including a gingerbread version of the Hogwarts School, Frank Lloyd Wright's iconic Fallingwater, and the Guggenheim, which, as they say, takes the cake!
More amazing cookie creations this way

December 17, 2015

A 1924 Proposal Would Have Drained the Entire East River to Reduce Congestion

By Dana Schulz

Remember 6sqft's post about a madcap engineer who wanted to pave over the East River in 1911 in order to create a "Mega-Manhattan?" Well, 13 years later, John A. Harris, deputy police commissioner in charge of traffic, came up with his own proposal for incorporating the river into the streetscape of the city: draining it entirely. Published in Popular Science, the never-realized scheme addressed New York's growing traffic congestion problem, said to have been costing the city $1.5 million a day. It would have transformed the waterway into "a five-mile system of automobile and motor-truck highways, subway lines, parking spaces, and city centers." Two concrete dams were to be erected, one near the Williamsburg Bridge and one near Hell Gate, and the riverbed would be "bridged with levels supported by steel uprights," thereby connecting the four boroughs.
More on the idea and the full drawing

December 17, 2015

Williamsberry’s Modern Mini-Me at 79 South Fifth Street Gets Glassed

By Ondel Hylton

Over in South Williamsburg, construction is moving apace on Mona Gora's noodle factory-to-nests condo conversion known as Williamsberry. While the building’s name has picked up a fair bit of ridicule, we think its ambiguity represents the neighborhood well; like that over-processed frozen yogurt flavor that's tangy to some, bitter to others, but too intriguing to stop tasting. The project is composed of an eight-story, former noodle factory building that is being transformed into 54 high-ceilinged residences topped by a rooftop solar farm. Alongside the conversion, the team is constructing a modern yet complementary six-story building at 79 South Fifth Street, which is also being designed by Workshop DA with interiors by Paris Forino.
Lots more details and renderings

December 16, 2015

Whimsical Balloon Coffee Table By Duffy London Will Lift Your Spirits

By Annie Doge

One look at this charming table and you'll probably find yourself humming the 1980s hit "99 Red Balloons." The dreamy design of studio Duffy London, the "UP Coffee Table" explores the concepts of levitation and buoyancy to create a trompe l'oeil effect of a glass tabletop being suspended by balloons. Plus it kind of looks like a cross between a Banksy balloon and a Jeff Koons puppy, don't you think?
more views of the table here

December 16, 2015

POLL: Should Broadway Become a Giant Park?

By Dana Schulz

Earlier this week, 6sqft brought you a proposal by Perkins Eastman Architects to turn a 40-block-long stretch of Broadway into a linear park. Stretching from Columbus Circle to Union Square, the Green Line concept would connect these hubs with Times Square, Herald Square, and Madison Square. As we noted, “Unlike other linear parks like the […]

Architecture And Design

December 16, 2015

130-Year-Old Limestone Townhouse on the Upper West Side Asks $12.95 Million

By Emily Nonko

It's hard not to be impressed by this 130-year-old limestone townhouse, built at 64 West 87th Street on the Upper West Side. The Jacobean Revival townhouse was designed by the 1890s architect Clarence Fagan True as a set of three—but this one is "the star of the show," according to Daytonian in Manhattan. There's an intricately carved facade with a four-story bay and an imposing stone porch with balustraded railings. It sold in 1895 to Lucius Nathan Littauer, a close friend of Theodore Roosevelt with his own political ambitions, and is known as the L. N. Littauer Mansion. Today, the facade is intact and the interior has been completely renovated by Zivkovic Connolly Architects to add some modern upgrades to the old world charm. Despite the modern upgrades, there are plenty of historic goodies left, including a truly impressive plaster ceiling that sits atop a ceramic-faced fireplace and parquet floors.
See more

Architecture And Design

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