One57

One57 is in the Midtown neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, just south of Central Park and between Sixth Avenue to the east and Seventh Avenue to the west. The building contains frontage along 57th Street to the south and 58th Street to the north. The irregular site covers , with the 57th and 58th Streets sides being slightly offset. The 57th Street frontage is wide, while the lot has a depth of between the two streets. The building is along 6½ Avenue, a pedestrian walkway running parallel to Sixth and Seventh Avenues. It is aligned roughly with the center axis of Central Park. One57 is on the same city block as Alwyn Court, The Briarcliffe, and 165 West 57th Street to the west, as well as the Nippon Club, Calvary Baptist Church, 111 West 57th Street, and The Quin to the east. One57 is also near Carnegie Hall and Carnegie Hall Tower to the southwest; the Russian Tea Room and Metropolitan Tower to the south; 130 West 57th Street and 140 West 57th Street to the southeast; and JW Marriott Essex House and Hampshire House to the north. ==Architecture==

visible at far left|alt=The base of One57 as seen from Seventh Avenue One57 was developed by Extell Development Company, which in turn was led by Gary Barnett. The building was designed by architect Christian de Portzamparc, while the interior design was by New York-based designer Thomas Juul-Hansen. The building has a roof height of and its top floor at . The top story is numbered as floor 90. Form and facade 's works, These glass panes were arranged to create vertical stripes and were intended to absorb sunlight in various ways and maximize views. De Portzamparc likened the northern and southern facades to the work of Austrian painter Gustav Klimt, citing the artist's work as having inspired the design. The base of the building has undulating vertical glass strips around and above the entrances, which are also meant to symbolize a waterfall. By contrast, the facade along 58th Street, facing Central Park, has a flatter profile without setbacks. and tapers in width to . Among the shapes that are used in the facade are curved panels, at the setbacks; curved corner panels, at the extreme ends of the setbacks; "peel-outs", consisting of adjacent curved and flat panels; and the undulating "teardrop" panels around the entrances. Most shapes are used infrequently, with the most common shape being used about 300 times. The 12,000 psi strength concrete is used from the ground level to floor 26. or and a maximum height of . Structurally, the superstructure is made of concrete flat plates, with floor slabs between thick and columns up to apart at their centers. The building also contains two subterranean stories, as well as a foundation composed of spread footings on the Manhattan bedrock. The dampers are meant to provide stability against high winds or earthquakes. Interior The interiors of One57 were made of material from around the world. Roy Kim, the senior vice president of design at Extell, traveled to Carrara in Italy to approve every piece of white marble used for the apartments' bathrooms, The lobby contains of steel panels, which collectively cost $800,000; they had to be carried into the building through a narrow gap without being damaged. The hotel occupies the lowest 18 physical stories of the tower, There are 12 rooms each on the fourth and fifth stories, 16 each on the sixth through eleventh stories, 14 each on the twelfth through sixteenth stories, and 10 each on the seventeenth and eighteenth stories. The design includes 350 contemporary artworks spread across the hotel, as well as furnishings and fabrics, many of which were designed specifically for the Park Hyatt. The suites cover at least and have sitting areas with glass partitions. which guests could request through iPads. The ballroom and meeting rooms are on the second story. The spa's name was derived from the word for "serenity" in the Munsee language, originally spoken by the Lenape Native American population of Manhattan. Also included is a bar called The Living Room. The Onyx Room, the hotel's event space, has backlit slabs of white onyx on the walls. Condominiums Above the hotel are 92 condominium units, of which 52 face Central Park directly. The apartment corridors have silk coverings on their walls, which contain asymmetrical doorways to each unit. There are slightly different floor plans throughout the building. Floor numbers 22–23 have five units each, plus a duplex split between the two stories, while floors 24–30 have six units each. Floor numbers 31–41 each have three full units, in addition to another duplex split between floors 31 and 32. There are two apartments each on the 42nd through 44th stories and three apartments each on floors 45 and 46. Floors 58–59 and 71–72 each have a single duplex unit. Two of the units have outdoor terraces and are branded as the "spring garden" and the "winter garden" residences. The spring garden apartment is on floor numbers 41–42 and has five bedrooms and a living room, in addition to an eastward-facing solarium. The building's original condominium owners were given a choice of materials for the interior finishes: for example, they could choose between rosewood or white oak for the floors. Some of the kitchen appliances, such as dishwashers and refrigerators, were built into the apartments. The bathrooms have bidets and toilets manufactured by Duravit, as well as in-room televisions. Some units have two juxtaposed toilet rooms within their master bedrooms, Another unit, 61B, was decorated with $2.5 million of furnishings designed by Jeffrey Beers International. By 2014, Extell had filed for an amendment with the Attorney General of New York to include 21 storage bins. A larger bin measuring had an asking price of $216,000, or about , a square-foot price comparable to a condominium unit at the Puck Building in Lower Manhattan. ==History==

Planning Land acquisition and financing Extell Development Company's founder and president, Gary Barnett, acquired the property and air rights over fifteen years, signing no fewer than 22 agreements with at least 18 property owners. These assemblages cost $200 million and included the demolition of seven buildings. The first property on One57's present site was acquired in 1998, He soon envisioned a larger building with views of Central Park as the assemblage got larger and markets started rising. By the mid-2000s, as he expanded his land acquisitions and air rights purchases, Barnett realized that he could construct a supertall skyscraper with up to of space. Barnett acquired a small building at 161 West 57th Street in 2001, The area at the time contained several brownstone townhouses, as well as a parking garage and the Park Savoy hotel. Even though Barnett was able to acquire the garage and townhouses, he did not buy the Park Savoy because the building's owners asked $80 million, almost eight times what Barnett was willing to pay. and the structures at 151 through 161 West 57th Street were being demolished by May 2007, when Barnett announced that a residential and hotel building with at least 50 stories would be built on the site. By then, he was contemplating a structure of up to 90 stories overlooking Central Park. No further progress had been made by the following August when the New York Post reported that Extell had not yet filed plans with the New York City Department of Buildings. Although al-Qubaisi had pledged at least $400 million toward the project, this was not yet enough for Barnett to get a construction loan, especially amid the 2008 financial crisis. Despite the precarious global financial situation, al-Qubaisi told Barnett that "There will be buyers". The following month, the media reported that the website of project contractor Aegis Security Design indicated that the site would include a Park Hyatt hotel, along with stores and luxury condominiums. At the time, Extell was consulting with city agencies to purchase air rights from neighboring sites, including the Alwyn Court and 165 West 57th Street. The air rights transfers would allow the developer to construct a tower with up to . SLCE Architects was listed as the architect of record, with input from Frank Williams and Costas Kondylis, although de Portzamparc was also rumored to be involved. The plans called for a 73-story, tower with 210 hotel rooms on the lowest twenty floors, amenity rooms on the 21st story, a mechanical space on the 46th story, and 136 residences on the other stories between floors 22 and 72. Barnett asked the interior designer Thomas Juul-Hansen to help design the building's interiors. Juul-Hansen later reflected that he was initially incredulous at Barnett's request, saying that the financial situation was so bad that "people were standing on window ledges, figuring out which car to land on", Barnett was contemplating selling apartments for up to $100 million. The development was to be the first major project in New York City after the Great Recession. In 2010, the city's unemployment rate was a relatively high 10%, and many major projects had been either canceled or delayed. Even for existing luxury developments, apartment asking prices had been reduced by up to 20% compared with before the recession, and sales of condominiums in Manhattan had dropped 60% between the first quarters of 2008 and 2009. According to Juul-Hansen, the overall design was redone "three or four times" before the final design was created. Construction Early work Partial work permits for 157 West 57th Street were issued in September 2009. Revised plans were submitted to the Department of Buildings in March 2010. The changes included adding two floors, combining some of the units into duplex apartments, and enclosing some of the setback terraces that had been included in the original design. Two months later, the media announced that the development would be called Carnegie 57. Upon its expected completion in 2013, Carnegie 57 was to surpass the Trump World Tower as the city's tallest residential building, with a height of just over . Few other luxury skyscrapers in New York City were being built at the time, although several other condominium projects were underway across Manhattan. The main contractor, Lendlease, started constructing the skyscraper's reinforced columns in August 2010. At the time, Barnett said Extell was negotiating with a potential lender for a $1.3 billion loan. In May 2011, the project was officially renamed One57, a reference to its house number of 157 and to the fact that the building would be located on 57th Street. This rebranding was made in advance of the expected launch of sales for the building. By that July, construction had reached the 22nd floor. Extell received a $700 million construction loan for the project in October 2011 from a syndicate led by the Bank of America, which included Banco Santander, Abu Dhabi International Bank, and Capital One. Of this loan, $375 million was to be paid off by the expected opening of the Park Hyatt hotel. After Russian businessman Dmitry Rybolovlev paid $88 million for a unit at the nearby 15 Central Park West in late 2011—making it the most expensive residence ever sold in New York City at the time—Barnett filed plans to increase apartment prices at One57. where prospective buyers could see interior photographs or floor plans and listen to a video about One57. The smallest units (starting at $3.5 million) and the two-bedroom units (starting at $6.5 million) both sold quickly. There was so much interest in the building that the agents sometimes scheduled tours to prospective residents one after the other, and some repeat visitors to the sales office were blacklisted after failing to provide their financials. Completion and incidents Facade installation was underway by January 2012. buyers for the building's condos came from all over the world. Framework for the top floor was completed by mid-2012. On October 29, 2012, in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, the construction crane on the building partially collapsed. Thousands of residents were required to evacuate, some with a few minutes' notice. and it took a week to remove the damaged boom. The incident prompted several lawsuits, and the New York City Department of Buildings (DOB) received multiple complaints about the worksite. In May 2013, Extell announced it would hoist a new crane after the DOB had approved it. The co-op board at the Alwyn Court attempted to block the replacement of the boom, but the crane was hoisted as planned after Extell and the Alwyn signed an undisclosed agreement. Displaced residents of the neighboring Alwyn Court and Briarcliff apartment buildings received up to $1,500 each. Barnett later reflected that apartment sales started to decline after the crane was damaged. That October, the crane experienced another mechanical failure that caused a closure of the surrounding block of 57th Street. The crane was removed by the next month. In March 2014, a fire broke out in the loading dock of One57, spreading into the courtyard behind the building and then onto the adjacent property at 152 West 58th Street. Later the same year, the building's condominium sales office was moved to One57's 41st floor. The stop-work order was rescinded two days later. Use Early sales The building was substantially finished in 2014. Each of the units on the top eleven floors was listed at no less than $50 million, and 27 owners had moved into their homes in the first six months. By May 2014, three-fourths of the residential units had been sold, with sales on thirteen units having been closed and sixty more in contract. By the end of the year, the total value of condominium sales at the building had surpassed $1.5 billion. Competition from other developments on Billionaires' Row had caused sales to stall at the 75% point. Among One57's issues was that 57th Street was not traditionally considered an upscale address, while the nearby 432 Park Avenue benefited from being on an avenue that was already widely recognized as being high-end. As such, One57's sales team advertised the building's proximity to structures such as Time Warner Center and its hotel-like amenities. One57 had become the city's most expensive building per square foot by 2015, with residences selling for an average of . The high prices were reflective of the fact that the developer was marketing the apartments as "trophy properties" from the outset, whereas previously, a buyer would have been required to combine several apartments. Although condominium prices at One57 had increased to an average of about , this was less than the average rate of at the nearby 220 Central Park South. In addition, sales at Billionaires' Row's luxury developments had slowed considerably by the mid-2010s, with apartments being sold at deeply discounted rates. At One57, there was particularly low demand for units near where the construction crane had struck the facade. Several politicians opposed the exemption, including city comptroller John Liu, who described it as billionaires' subsidy. In May 2015, as part of the program, Extell was renting out 38 apartments on the seven stories immediately above the hotel. The rentals, which consisted of one- to four-bedroom units measuring , were marketed at between $12,000 and $50,000 per month. The rental units were still extremely expensive compared to other developments in the city; The Wall Street Journal estimated that potential renter would need a minimum annual income of $534,000 to rent a one-bedroom unit and $2 million for a three-bedroom unit. With a general decline in the rate of luxury rental agreements, Extell changed its plans in April 2016 and instead marketed the rental units as condominiums. Ultimately, Extell only created 66 affordable units in the Bronx using the tax abatement for One57, which normally could have been used to create 370 affordable units. Media outlets reported in 2016 that the International Petroleum Investment Company—the parent company of the building's main financier, Aabar—was linked to the 1Malaysia Development Berhad scandal. Because Aabar's head, al-Qubaisi, had been implicated in the scandal, the financing of One57 was investigated as well. The first foreclosure in the building, for an apartment owned by heiress Sheri Izadpanah, took place in May 2017. after Izadpanah had unsuccessfully tried to sell it for a year. The same year, Nigerian businessman Kola Aluko was investigated for money laundering; the suspected laundering included his purchase of a penthouse apartment at One57. Aluko's $51 million apartment was foreclosed upon and was ultimately sold for $36 million in September 2017, the largest foreclosure auction in city history. The foreclosures, amid a slowing luxury real estate market and an increase in foreclosures citywide, raised public scrutiny about the viability of Billionaires' Row's skyscrapers. They also negatively impacted One57's reputation among real-estate brokers. During that time, the average price of units at One57 declined from in 2014 to in 2020. The downturn was severe enough that Nikki Field, a broker who had sold several of the condo units, told residents not to resell their condos until she told them to, as they would have otherwise lost large amounts of money. The COVID-19 pandemic also forced the Park Hyatt hotel to close from March 21, 2020, to April 1, 2021. By early 2021, only five units remained unsold. Though some units were resold for a profit during that time, many others were resold at significant discounts. One unit sold in January 2021 for less than half its original listing price, and The Wall Street Journal reported the same June that some owners had seen "percentage losses in the double digits" during the preceding years. The Real Deal magazine attributed the reduced prices to the existence of "newer, nicer and taller trophy properties" nearby. An August 2025 analysis by The Real Deal found that, of 35 original owners who resold their apartments after 2015, almost ninety percent had sold their apartments at a loss. == Residents ==

When sales of One57 were launched, Barnett initially did not identify buyers, Many buyers had previously owned property at other luxury developments such as 15 Central Park West. The New York Times published so many headlines about high-profile sales in the tower that The Observer said, "It would be difficult for even the most creative writer to make sale after sale at the same new-construction building sound fresh." According to the bylaws of One57's condominium board, residents could have up to two "orderly domestic" pets, of which residents were required to send photos to the board. Certain pets, such as pigs, hens, rabbits, and gerbils, are banned. Notable buyers The building set the record for the city's second-most expensive residence in 2012, when hedge fund manager Bill Ackman paid $91.5 million to obtain the "winter garden" penthouse, though this sale was not publicized for several years. The highest penthouse was sold for $100.5 million in 2014; the buyer's identity was initially kept secret, but the media subsequently announced that the buyer had been Michael Dell, the CEO of Dell Technologies. The Prime Minister of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, agreed to purchase a penthouse unit for $100 million. as well as businessmen Kola Aluko, and Robert Herjavec. The youngest buyer on record was a two-year-old Chinese girl, whose mother paid $6.5 million for a unit in 2013 so her daughter could use it when she attended college in fifteen years. Several prospective residents had their contracts canceled. ==Impact==

Architectural reception When One57 was finished, it was heavily criticized. One57 was named "Worst Building of the Year" in 2014 by Curbed, which said, "Pretty much everyone (or at least most archicritics) agrees that its wavy blue facade is ugly." New York magazine's architecture critic Justin Davidson said that One57 was "so clumsily gaudy that a fellow architect surmised [that de Portzamparc] must be a socialist pranking the plutocrats", and he continued to regard One57 as "repulsive" in 2021. Another architecture critic, James Russell, characterized the facade as "endless acres of cheap-looking frameless glass in cartoonish stripes and blotches of silver and pewter". Michael Kimmelman, in The New York Times, described One57 as having a "pox of tinted panes", while Robbie Whelan said that the design "tries to draw too much attention to itself", even considering 57th Street's architectural diversity. Ralph Gardner wrote for The Wall Street Journal that One57's construction had "obliterated" the views of the "claustrophobic thicket of towers in the Carnegie Hall vicinity", including Metropolitan Tower, Carnegie Hall Tower, and CitySpire. Influence and media When the building was being constructed, New York magazine called the project "an act of extreme confidence or epic folly (or both)", since the city had not fully recovered from the recession. In 2014, PBS described One57 in a fifty-five-minute clip entitled "The Billionaire Building", the second part of a four-part documentary entitled Super Skyscrapers. The 2017 book ''Life at the Top: New York's Most Exceptional Apartment Buildings'', published three years after One57's completion, did not mention the building even as it mentioned 432 Park Avenue. ==See also==