15 Central Park West is a 35-floor luxury condominium located at the corner of West 61st Street and Central Park West on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City, opposite Central Park. The building was designed in a New Classical style by the 2011 Driehaus Prize winner Robert A.M. Stern. Construction was completed in 2008, at a cost of US$950 million. 15 Central Park West was described in The Master Architect Series as one of New York's most prestigious residential addresses, and its residents have included actors, athletes, CEOs, hedge fund managers, and billionaires.
Development
The building's location, described as "the most expensive site in Manhattan", comprises an entire, albeit small, city block on Central Park West on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, formerly occupied by the somewhat dilapidated Mayflower Hotel and a vacant lot. The building was designed in a New Classical style by Robert A.M. Stern Architects. It was constructed by developers Arthur and William Lie Zeckendorf of Zeckendorf Development, grandsons of real estate developerWilliam Zeckendorf, in partnership with Goldman Sachs and Eyal Ofer's Global Holdings Inc. 15 Central Park West is considered by some to be one of New York's most prestigious residential addresses.
Architecture
As designed, 15 Central Park West is divided into two sections, a 19-story tower on Central Park West known as "the house," joined by a glass-enclosed lobby to a 35-story tower on Broadway. It includes such amenities as a private driveway to screen residents from paparazzi, a cinema with 20 seats, and a fitness center with a 75-foot swimming pool. 15 Central Park West's limestone facade uses material from "the same quarry that was a source for the Empire State Building". The floor plan was designed so that almost all rooms have an open view and layouts that borrow heavily from the styles commonly found in the 1920s. The AIA Guide to New York City lamented Robert A.M. Stern's "attempted re-incarnation" of the luxurious apartment buildings built on Central Park West between the two world wars. It criticized how "everything's exaggerated, retro and gigantic" and characterized the building as inferior to its next door neighbor, The Century. However, The New Yorker architecture critic Paul Goldberger wrote that 15 Central Park West was designed to "echo" Central Park West's many notable late Art Deco buildings. He described the building in Vanity Fair as an "ingenious homage to the classic Candela-designed apartment buildings on Park and Fifth Avenues." He compared 15 CPW to the great apartment houses of the 1920s, 778 Park Avenue, 834 Fifth Avenue, 1040 Fifth Avenue, and 740 Park Avenue.
