New video showcases One Manhattan Square’s ‘adult treehouse,’ tea garden

The development’s sprawling outdoor space will be 60% of the size of Gramercy Park.

By Rachel Sugar May 18, 2017, 1:29pm EDT

Renderings for the 815-unit One Manhattan Square have long depicted the Lower East Side uber-luxe towers as the height of urban romance. Among the most idyllic of the condos’ many selling points: the singularly sprawling gardens, which, based on the Wall Street Journal’s description, will be every bit as picturesque as the soft-focus renderings suggest.

Once the site of a large Pathmark supermarket, the fantasy garden will span 45,000 square feet over five levels—roughly 60 percent of the size of the legendarily exclusive (but adult treehouse-less) Gramercy Park. It will include a “Japanese-inspired pavilion surrounded with red maple and cherry trees,” per the WSJ, and residents will be able to “stroll up a hill sprinkled with flowering sumac plants,” and then “contemplate life” from what’s being billed as “an adult treehouse set amid hedges and azaleas.”

“A garden is not one thing,” philosophized Adriaan Geuze, a founder of West 8, the urban design and landscape architecture firm behind the project in a video hyping the project (which you can watch below). It will, for example, include a putting green, ping pong tables, an outdoor kitchen, and an elaborate children’s playground meant to resemble New York City itself, in addition to the pavilion, and the sumacs.

The video also offers some never-before-seen glimpses at West 8’s conceptual renderings for the project (including the treehouse and fire pit), along with how it ties into their work in spaces like Governors Island.

Aggressively marketed in Asia—sales launched abroad before they launched stateside—and slated to open next year, the apartments here start at just under $1.2 million for a lower-level one bedroom, while the priciest of the current offerings is a $4.4 million thee-bedroom on the 59th floor. (A $13 million duplex sold late last year.) Both, presumably, have equal access to the intimate fire pit.