Previewing the ‘Jewel Box’ Condos at Noho’s 1 Great Jones Alley

What was once a flea market is on its way to becoming 1 Great Jones Alley, one of the more unique new developments that's rising in New York City. The building itself is a collaboration between BKSK Architects, which designed both the interior and the exterior; landscape architect HMWhite; and developer Madison Realty Capital, which has been planning a condo on the site for several years now. The design for the building was enthusiastically approved by the Landmarks Preservation Commission in 2012. Now, four years later, a "design gallery" for the development shows off what parts of the luxe structure might look like.

There are really two elements to the design gallery: There’s the model apartment (which is really just a few mocked-up rooms, though they're done to the exact specifications of a typical unit), and the model of the building itself, meant to give context to both the structure’s design and its location.

And the location is one of the biggest selling points here: While one side of the building faces Broadway, the other sits on Great Jones Alley, providing a private entrance for the development’s residents. The alleyway entrance is intended to be the main one, and features touches that nod to the neighborhood’s industrial past—like corten steel, which carries through from the entrance into the lobby to the Broadway side of the building—along with lush greenery and dark tiles that provide a serene feeling.

Will Femia

As for the model, it replicates the unique facade of the building's Broadway-facing side, which is made up of terracotta panels that are meant to evoke the look of the cast iron buildings found along Broadway. "Every architect kind of strutted their stuff," says BKSK principal George Schieferdecker of the buildings surrounding 1 Great Jones Alley, and so the firm did as well. An artist in the Netherlands crafts every asymmetrical terracotta panel lining the exterior, meaning that no two are exactly the same; they're also placed in such a way that no two apartments will have the same pattern from the panels. "For the unit owner, the facade is an amenity," explains Schieferdecker.

"The facade is usually a building element that's more for the public than for the people who buy the apartment," says Dan Cobleigh of Madison Realty Capital. But that's not the case with 1 Great Jones Alley, where each apartment has sliding glass doors that allow residents to actually touch and interact with each hand-crafted terracotta pane.

Of course, residents will pay dearly for the pleasure of owning that facade. ("Beauty doesn't come cheap," says Cobleigh.) Sales for its 16 units launched earlier this spring, starting at $4.9 million for the cheapest unit; the most expensive, the penthouse, is asking a whopping $23.75 million. And demand for the "16 hand-crafted jewel boxes," as Cobleigh refers to them, is there: four of the 16 units have already sold.

Check out more photos from the design gallery below:

• 1 Great Jones Alley [Official Website]
• Noho Condos With a Private Alleyway Entrance Launch Sales from $4.9M [Curbed]
• Noho's 'Exclusive' Alley-Fronting Condo Reveals More of Its Interiors [Curbed]
• New Looks Inside Noho's Pricey Private Alley-Fronting Condos [Curbed]