Carter's Review

This 11-story, mid-block apartment building at 287 East Houston Street between Suffolk and Clinton Streets on the Lower East Side has a handsome dark gray façade with a steep dormer setback. 

It is scheduled for completion in early 2018 with 28 condominium apartments by Vinci Partners and Hogg Holdings.

Aldo Andreoli of AA Studio is the architect and Jeffrey Cole is the executive architect. 

The site was formerly occupied by a two-story movie theater. 

Bottom Line

Darth Vader is arriving with his dark magnificence on the Lower East Side in this new 11-story apartment building on East Houston Street between Suffolk and Clinton streets.

Description

This mid-rise condo building has a stunning and very elegant black façade with black protruding metal panels, accented by a steep dormer setback.

The building has a two-story dark gray granite base with a dark gray entrance façade, and broad windows.

The upper part of the façade, however, is punctuated with thin, tall windows —with one large pane, over a small pane, recessed between protruding dark metal panels, and thinly recessed dark metal spandrels on each floor. 

The overall visual effect of the façade dramatically conjures an image of a high-tech ammunition jacket, whose bullets can surely induce dark chocolate fever or a Star Wars cloud burst. 

The façade texture would mesh with Black Rock, the CBS building by Eero Saarinen on the Avenue of the Americas in midtown, and the glorious regimentation of the Seagram Building, on Park Avenue by Walter Gropius and Philip Johnson, —if it wasn't for its steeply angled dormer setback, topped by an open space frame on the top floor of the dormer, or its glass railings on its setback and roof levels.

The setback, of course, probably has something to do with the city’s fussy zoning regulations that unfortunately interfere with this building’s gracefulness and power. Without the angle and setback, this could have been a “champion.”

Amenities

The building has a fitness center, a roof deck, a laundry, a doorman, storage and bicycle storage.

Apartments

Penthouse A is a two-bedroom unit with 1,193 square feet on interior space, and 140 square feet of external space. Its 10-foot entry foyer leads past a 12-foot open-kitchen, with an island, to a 12-foot-wide living room and a 13-foot-long dining room that opens onto a terrace. 

Apartment 9B is a two-bedroom unit with 1,055 square feet of interior space and 124 square feet of external space, and an entry across from the open, 12-foot-long, kitchen with an island next to the 18-foot-long living/ dining room and terrace. 

Apartment 4B is a one-bedroom unit with a 10-foot-wide entry foyer that leads past an open, 12-foot-long open kitchen with an island to a 15-foot-long living room.