Jones Lang LaSalleNYC 11 28 05
URBAN GLASS HOUSE: HALF FULL?
Anna Holtzman
The Urban Glass House, designed by Philip Johnson Alan Ritchie Architects, is a condo project rising in a 19th century Manhattan industrial district.
Philip Johnson is gone, but not forgotten. A slick sales campaign by real estate marketing firm The Sunshine Group tells us that the Urban Glass House, a vestige of the final projects designed by the late, renowned architect, is rising as we speak in a fast-changing urban industrial outpost at the western edge of SoHo and just north of Tribeca.
The neat marketing package belies a convoluted backstory: First, this isn’t the building Johnson intended as his last legacy (in fact, it is more of a tribute design than one of his own.) Second, the man who dreamed up the project and hired Johnson’s firm-restaurateur-turned-developer Nino Vendome, who after 9/11 turned his nearby restaurant into a home-away-from-home for thousands of rescue and recovery workers at Ground Zero-has all but vanished from the project as well.
The Glass House replaces the more exciting Habitable Sculpture, which the community and city planners rejected a few years ago.
Interwoven into the mixed-up tale of Johnson’s legacy is the story of this morphing neighborhood. Vendome’s initial vision opened the doors for a suite of high rise residential projects that ultimately beat him at his own race to set the tone for the neighborhood’s future, and actually set the stage for the rezoning three years ago of the 19th-century industrial district for residential use.
It all began in 1999, when Vendome selected Philip Johnson Alan Ritchie Architects’ envelope-pushing design for a residential tower at Spring and Washington Streets, a site that Vendome had pieced together parcel by parcel over several years. At 26 stories, the project, known then as the Habitable Sculpture, defiantly broke all of the neighborhood’s rules: Not only did it challenge the industrial zoning and the aesthetic of its historic surroundings-the scheme resembled a fistful of towers spliced together, with different facades sticking out at various angles-but, reports Community Board 2 zoning committee chair David Reck, the building’s floor area ratio (FAR) of 17.4 was way above the zoning allowance of 5.
“Everyone loved the building,” Ritchie told The Slatin Report. “We got glowing reports from [then-New York Times architecture critic Herbert] Muschamp and the architectural community.” But Reck and the community board couldn't see past the current zoning, though he concurred that, “The design was really something to look at.” It's axiomatic that community boards dread change, and this one fit the mold. The board feared that making an allowance for Johnson's scheme would open the floodgates for other high rise developments.
The project replace the warehouse next to the historic James Brown House, home of the Ear Inn.
www.nyc-architecture.comThey were right: Around the time that Vendome’s proposal was turned down by the city's Board of Standards and Appeals in early 2003, the city had rezoned the neighborhood, and a fleet of new residential developments followed-including Metropolitan Housing Partners’ 505 Greenwich Street, designed by architect Gary Handel and Associates, and developer Jonathon Carroll’s Greenwich Street Project, whose undulating curtain wall is the work of architect Winka Dubbeldam.
Undeterred, Vendome asked Johnson and Ritchie to go back to the drawing board and come up with a design that fit the new 6.02 FAR requirement. Instead of stunting the original opus, Ritchie proposed an entirely new concept-a tribute to Johnson's 1949 Glass House in New Canaan, Conn., one of Johnson's most celebrated works. The resulting “Urban Glass House” is the comparatively squat curtain wall structure now rising at 330 Spring Street.
Although he professes pride in the new design, Ritchie confessed to The Slatin Report, “I feel upset, because we were the trailblazers for how this neighborhood could be developed, and our design offered a contextual feeling for the area, using brick and other historical elements.” Instead, he said, the tone has been set by projects that paid little attention to context.
For Vendome, though, it was too little, too late. In 2004, says Ritchie, after the Urban Glass House had been approved by the Dept. of City Planning and local community groups, Vendome still yearned to build the original Habitable Sculpture, on another site. He sold the Spring Street site with the Johnson Ritchie design to Glass House Development, LLC, a consortium of developers, comprised of Charles Blaichman, Scott Sabbagh, and Abraham Schnay. They hired architect Annabelle Selldorf to design the interiors for the residential units.
The unbuilt Habitable Sculpture paved the way for developer Jonathon Carroll's Greenwich Street Project, designed by Winka Dubbeldam, around the corner.
Despite persisting resistance from the community, the building’s superstructure is already up, with the first unit slated for completion in June 2006. And further development in the area is inevitable-according to Schnay, there are three other nearby projects in the works. “Give it five more years,” says Reck, “and it’ll be a completely different area.”
Had they known that change was coming, some locals may have preferred the Habitable Sculpture to its replacement. “The current design is a compromise," Rip Hayman, who since 1979 has owned the James Brown House, an early 19th century landmark adjacent to the Glass House site and the home of a famed local tavern, the Ear Inn, told The Slatin Report. "I thought [the original design] was fantastic.” Hayman asserted that he and other longtime residents of the area have always wanted the neighborhood to become residential; he believes that the rezoning will bring benefits such as residential services to the area. “The problem,” he says, “is that it’s become [one of] the most expensive neighborhood in the city, and that’s squeezing out older renters.”
And in this neighborhood, it doesn’t look like the real estate bubble’s about to burst anytime soon. According to Schnay, 25 percent of the Urban Glass House units-priced from $1,140/square foot to $2,325/square foot-have already sold. And he reports that the majority of those interested in the 4,300-square-foot penthouse want to combine it with additional units below. Cindy Saxman, a mortgage broker with Guilford Funding, said of the area in general, “People are buying-I don’t think you’ve seen the end of the boom yet.”
Nino Vendome still hopes to erect his Habitable Sculpture on another site at some point in the future, but he hasn't given up entirely on this site's potential: Vendome retains the ground floor commercial space at the Urban Glass House, where he has asked Ritchie to design an Italian restaurant for him. Said Hayman, “It’s getting to be like Garlic Row here with all the restaurants-the more restaurants you have, the better.” He added wistfully, “Vendome was the one with the vision, but not the real estate experience.”
