Architecture critic Paul Goldberger reviews architect Robert A.M. Stern's 15 Central Park West in this week's New Yorker. He's got some thoughts on the architecture, of course (yay, limestone!), but what's most notable about the building is its bottom line:
15 Central Park West has become the most financially successful apartment building in the history of New York. All the apartments were sold before the building was finished, at prices that started at more than two thousand dollars a square foot and were subsequently raised nineteen times. Demand was so extreme that brokers started to worry that the building was taking all the business away from other high-end buildings nearby. Someone I know who bought an apartment early on for about twelve million dollars was offered the chance to resell it for potentially more than sixteen million before ever moving in. (He didn’t bite.) The average three-bedroom, four-bath apartment went for more than ten million dollars, and the total selling price of the building was close to two billion.Scanning NYC's various property metasearch engines, we can't find a single unit in 15CPW that's currently on the market (though some that recently were are now in contract). Astounding.
· Past Perfect: Retro Opulence on Central Park West [The New Yorker]