Looking up at 50 West Street, Moinian's 90 West Street is getting a refacing next door; CItyRealty
This shimmering sentinel at 50 West Street, a taller, kindred spirit to the glorious, curved reflective glass tower at 17 State Street overlooking the harbor, is a major addition to Lower Manhattan’s celebrated and changing skyline. The 778-foot-high tower has a roof slanted upwards toward the pinnacle of One World Trade Center, a few blocks to the north.
Developed by Time Equities, a real estate company headed by Francis Greenburger, the slim tower is notable for its stainless-steel spandrels and the curved glass corners above its east and west low-rise bases. The 64-story structure was designed by Helmut Jahn of Murphy/Jahn Architects of Chicago with SLCE serving as the architect of record. The German-American architect has been off the New York stage for some time now, but in the 1980s he designed CitySpire, Park Avenue Tower and 425 Lexington Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. He also designed the great State of Illinois Center in Chicago where the firm’s North American office is based.
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50 West Street is nearly finished; CityRealty
Inside are 191 condominium apartments designed by Thomas Juul-Hansen and Rene Desjardins. Kitchens will be finished in stained walnut panels and granite slabs and will include Miele and Sub-Zero appliances. Bedrooms will have large closets and bathrooms with expansive mirrors, floating, backlit marble vanities, marble floors, custom walnut cabinetry, and fluted glass bath walls.
The tower’s penthouses have three bedrooms and 20-foot-high ceilings in their great rooms, with stone slab kitchen countertops and backsplashes, six-burner stoves, full-height wine refrigerators, two Miele dishwashers and bathrooms have free-standing baths, benched steam showers and radiant floor heating.
The tower’s penthouses have three bedrooms and 20-foot-high ceilings in their great rooms, with stone slab kitchen countertops and backsplashes, six-burner stoves, full-height wine refrigerators, two Miele dishwashers and bathrooms have free-standing baths, benched steam showers and radiant floor heating.
Building amenities will include a doorman, a 60-foot-long swimming pool and hot tub, bicycle storage, and an observatory. The building will also hold 15 small offices on the third floor. An earlier plan had called for a 55-room hotel on floors 1 through 13, 48 "full-service residential units" on floors 14 through 18 and 259 residential condominium apartments on floors 20 through 63.
Renderings by DBOX
DBOX
DBOX
Since we last covered the tower, more than 60% of its units had already sold. The average price of an apartment for sale in the building stands at $2,635 per square foot, well above the $1,421 per ft² average of the Financial District. As of today, there are twenty-seven homes on the market starting from $1.995 million one-bedroom to a glorious 3,373-square-foot penthouse on floor 61 priced at $24.54 million
The entrance has a five-step-up vestibule and the lobby has mosaic terrazzo floors and zebrawood walls. The curved south side of the tower has a landscaped plaza that provides an alternate and more attractive pedestrian walkway to and from Battery Park City.
The building will be connected to Battery Park City by the glass-covered West Thames Pedestrian Bridge on which construction has just begun. The bridge was originally designed by SHoP Architects and was redesigned by WXY Architects. Its design has undulating curves straddling the West Side Highway and those curves complement the tower’s curved corners that are extremely appealing.
Plaza fronting the building; Image Credit: DBOX
WXY Architect's under construction pedestrian bridge over Thames Street
Its unique, slanted top is lacy and open. Within a short, indented and open, central section of its south façade, the crown features two observatory stanchions overlooking the harbor and the Statue of Liberty. With exterior construction of the tower nearly complete, Qualls Benson provided the fantastic aerial photographs shown below.
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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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