"The Urban Glass House" at 330 Spring Street in SoHo has been recently topped out and is now about 50 percent sold.
The 12-story building has 39 apartments and a penthouse unit and is being developed by Glass House Development LLC, a partnership of Abram Shnay, Charles Blaichman and Scott Sabbagh with Antonio "Nino" Vendome as co-developer.
The building has been designed by the Philip Johnson, who died about a year ago, and Alan Ritchie and has interiors designed by Anabelle Selldorf, who has designed interiors for the Neue Galerie on Fifth Avenue at 86th Streets and many prominent artists such as David Salle.
The sleek and elegantly-styled building takes its name from the very famous 1949 home in New Canaan, Connecticut, of Philip Johnson, who was the dean of American architecture in the late 20th Century.
The building's facades have a high fenestration factor and its large square windows have five panes. The building is almost a cube with five small setback cutouts on four floors.
The clean lines of the building's design follow the tenets of the International Style of Modernism that was epitomized in Mr. Johnson's one-story, all-glass-facade house in New Canaan. Mr. Johnson was famous for his A.T.&T. building on Madison Avenue at 56th Street (now the Sony Building), Pennzoil Plaza and the RepublicBank Building and the Galleria in Houston and many other important skyscrapers across the country as well as, in New York, the garden at the Museum of Modern Art, the elliptically-planned building at 885 Third Avenue, often referred to as the "Lipstick" building, the very handsome Takashimaya Building on Fifth Avenue between 54th and 55th Streets and the Museum of Broadcasting on West 52nd Street.
The penthouse unit, which has been sold, has 12-foot-high ceilings and a double-sided fireplace. The other apartments have 9-foot-9-inch-high ceilings and many have large open plan living/entertaining spaces, some of which measures 42 feet 6 inches by 12 feet 11 inches and some that measures 35 feet 8 inches by 19 feet 3 inches.
The building is at Washington Street and is very close to West and Canal Streets.
In a statement about the project's design, Alan Ritchie, Mr. Johnson's final partner and his collaborator on the project, noted that "While earlier iterations of the design for this new building flirted with some very adventurous geometries, the discipline and modernist principles of the New Canaan house ultimately ruled the day. Those principles were consciously applied to the final design for the Urban Glass House, and the outcome is a calm, ordered residential building that will provide a wonderful sense of refuge, a haven of quiet elegance and privacy within New York City."
The earlier design was a very intriguing, 26-story tower of many angles, colors and facade treatments that in many ways was similar to the plans of Frank O. Gehry for thrusting-upwards towers for a large project in Brooklyn for Forest City Rattner.
The 12-story building has 39 apartments and a penthouse unit and is being developed by Glass House Development LLC, a partnership of Abram Shnay, Charles Blaichman and Scott Sabbagh with Antonio "Nino" Vendome as co-developer.
The building has been designed by the Philip Johnson, who died about a year ago, and Alan Ritchie and has interiors designed by Anabelle Selldorf, who has designed interiors for the Neue Galerie on Fifth Avenue at 86th Streets and many prominent artists such as David Salle.
The sleek and elegantly-styled building takes its name from the very famous 1949 home in New Canaan, Connecticut, of Philip Johnson, who was the dean of American architecture in the late 20th Century.
The building's facades have a high fenestration factor and its large square windows have five panes. The building is almost a cube with five small setback cutouts on four floors.
The clean lines of the building's design follow the tenets of the International Style of Modernism that was epitomized in Mr. Johnson's one-story, all-glass-facade house in New Canaan. Mr. Johnson was famous for his A.T.&T. building on Madison Avenue at 56th Street (now the Sony Building), Pennzoil Plaza and the RepublicBank Building and the Galleria in Houston and many other important skyscrapers across the country as well as, in New York, the garden at the Museum of Modern Art, the elliptically-planned building at 885 Third Avenue, often referred to as the "Lipstick" building, the very handsome Takashimaya Building on Fifth Avenue between 54th and 55th Streets and the Museum of Broadcasting on West 52nd Street.
The penthouse unit, which has been sold, has 12-foot-high ceilings and a double-sided fireplace. The other apartments have 9-foot-9-inch-high ceilings and many have large open plan living/entertaining spaces, some of which measures 42 feet 6 inches by 12 feet 11 inches and some that measures 35 feet 8 inches by 19 feet 3 inches.
The building is at Washington Street and is very close to West and Canal Streets.
In a statement about the project's design, Alan Ritchie, Mr. Johnson's final partner and his collaborator on the project, noted that "While earlier iterations of the design for this new building flirted with some very adventurous geometries, the discipline and modernist principles of the New Canaan house ultimately ruled the day. Those principles were consciously applied to the final design for the Urban Glass House, and the outcome is a calm, ordered residential building that will provide a wonderful sense of refuge, a haven of quiet elegance and privacy within New York City."
The earlier design was a very intriguing, 26-story tower of many angles, colors and facade treatments that in many ways was similar to the plans of Frank O. Gehry for thrusting-upwards towers for a large project in Brooklyn for Forest City Rattner.
Architecture Critic
Carter Horsley
Since 1997, Carter B. Horsley has been the editorial director of CityRealty. He began his journalistic career at The New York Times in 1961 where he spent 26 years as a reporter specializing in real estate & architectural news. In 1987, he became the architecture critic and real estate editor of The New York Post.
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