Want to own a luxurious apartment offering unrivalled views over New York? Then you’d better move quickly.
The privately-owned developer Macklowe Properties had representatives in the UAE recently to drum up interest in the remaining units in its US$1.3 billion residential tower at 432 Park Avenue in the heart of Manhattan.
Designed by the architect Rafael Vinoly, the cube-shaped building will be the second-tallest in New York when it completes next summer, and the tallest residential tower in the western hemisphere, says Macklowe Properties’ executive vice president of sales and marketing, Richard Wallgren.
With 96 storeys, it will stand almost 427 metres in height, but the premium apartments at the top of the tower, which occupy entire floors, are almost all sold out already.
The one remaining unit is on the 88th floor and on the market for $76.5m.
With about 8,000 sq ft of space, the property has four bedrooms, a maid’s quarters, a formal dining room, a grand living room measuring 30ft by 45ft, a library with a wood-burning fireplace and a master-bedroom suite containing a sitting room space, plus two separate bathrooms and dressing rooms. There are seven bathrooms in total, a private lift landing, an eat-in kitchen, pantry, a wine cellar, a powder room and a utility room.
“The design is a very pure, classic modernist design,” says Mr Wallgren. It has been built as a square building, 93ft by 93ft, inspired by Manhattan’s grid structure.
With a floor-to-ceiling height of 12.5ft, even the windows are square – 10ft by 10ft and more than an inch thick. These had to be specially made at a St Gobain factory in Austria and shipped to Virginia for fabrication. Each side of the building has six of these, offering views over the Atlantic Ocean to the east, New Jersey and beyond to the west, Connecticut and Westchester County to the north and New York City to the south.
“You can see all of New York, whether it’s the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, the Brooklyn Bridge, the United Nations building – it’s very dramatic. At night, with the twinkling lights, it’s spectacular.”
The Macklowe Properties founder Harry Macklowe bought the former Drake Hotel in 2006 and a group of neighbouring town houses on East 57th St before teaming up with the Californian property investor CIM Group to develop the project. Construction work started in 2012.
mfahy@thenational.ae
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