15 Central Park West (also known as 15 CPW) is a luxury residential condominium along Central Park West, between 61st and 62nd Streets adjacent to Central Park, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States. It was constructed from 2005 to 2008 and was designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects in the New Classical style. The building consists of two sections: "the House", a 19-story structure occupying the eastern part of the city block, and "the Tower", a 35-story structure occupying the western part of the block. It has approximately 200 apartments, of which two-thirds are in the Tower and one-third are in the House.
Both the House and the Tower contain several setbacks, complementing the design of older apartment buildings on Central Park West. The Tower rises above a retail podium, which faces west toward Broadway. The two sections are connected by an elliptical entrance pavilion, which abuts a cobblestone courtyard and a private garden. The facade of 15 Central Park West is made of Indiana limestone, with large window openings and metal balconies. The building's main entrance on Central Park West connects with two lobbies, one for each section of the building. Each unit has one to eight bedrooms, and there are also studio apartments for servants. The building also contains amenities such as a fitness center, wine cellar, and movie-screening room.
15 Central Park West was built on the sites of the Mayflower Hotel, which dated from 1926, and a vacant lot. In May 2004, a joint venture composed of Arthur and William Lie Zeckendorf, Whitehall Street International, and Global Holdings Inc. purchased the Mayflower and the vacant lot for $401 million. Robert A.M. Stern Architects was selected to design the building in August 2005, and construction began the next month, when the building's sales office opened. All apartments had been sold by early 2007, and the first tenants moved into the building in early 2008. Following 15 Central Park West's opening, many condominiums were sold at high prices. Its residents have included actors, athletes, CEOs, hedge fund managers, and entrepreneurs.
Site 15 Central Park West is on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. The building's land lot occupies the entire trapezoidal city block between Central Park West to the east, 61st Street to the south, Broadway to the west, and 62nd Street to the north. The land lot has an area of , with a frontage of along Central Park West and a depth of . The building is adjacent to Central Park to the east, Trump International Hotel and Tower to the south, Park Loggia to the west, and the Century apartment building to the north.
The current condominium building replaced the Mayflower Hotel at 15 Central Park West, as well as a vacant lot. The Mayflower, on the eastern part of the site, had been designed by Emery Roth in the Neo-Renaissance style. The hotel, originally known as the Mayflower-Plymouth, was completed in 1926 and contained 365 rooms across 18 stories. The vacant lot contained several buildings until the 1970s; the wealthy Goulandris family of Greece acquired the Mayflower and all other buildings on the block from 1973 to 1978. The Mayflower had been built with ornate terracotta ornamentation, which was removed in 1982. All buildings on the western part of the site had been razed by 1987. Several developers unsuccessfully offered to buy the site, which was valued at $300 million by 2001. By then, several luxury residential buildings and hotels had been developed around Columbus Circle, three blocks to the south.
Architecture 15 Central Park West (also known as 15 CPW) was designed in a New Classical style by Robert A.M. Stern Architects. It was developed by a joint venture of Arthur and William Lie Zeckendorf, grandsons of real estate developer William Zeckendorf; Whitehall Street International, a subsidiary of Goldman Sachs; and Global Holdings, a company headed by Eyal Ofer. 15 Central Park West is divided into two sections: the 19-story House on Central Park West and the 35-story Tower on Broadway. Because some floor numbers are skipped, the House's highest story is numbered 20, while the Tower's highest story is numbered 43.
Form
The House measures tall, while the Tower measures tall. The Tower rises from a ground-level retail podium, aligned with the diagonal axis of Broadway, though it was intended to blend in with other mid-rise buildings along Central Park West. According to Robert A.M. Stern Architects, the design complemented Central Park West's twin-towered developments: the Century, the Majestic, the San Remo, and the El Dorado. The two sections are connected by an elliptical entrance pavilion with a copper dome. The design of the entrance pavilion was inspired by that of the Sanssouci, a palace in the German city of Potsdam.
South of the entrance pavilion, accessed from a driveway on 61st Street, is a "motor court" paved in cobblestones. The motor court measures and is arranged around a black-granite fountain. The building's management discouraged chauffeurs from waiting in the motor court; many chauffeurs instead wait on a shoulder along Central Park West, which is designated as a no-parking zone. After the building opened, there were controversies over the fact that chauffeurs were using the shoulder illegally. There is also a private outdoor garden for tenants along 62nd Street, north of the entrance pavilion. The private garden contains a reflecting pool, which serves as a skylight above the swimming pool in the basement. The garden can also be arranged to accommodate additional seating for the building's dining room.
The penthouse apartments on the upper stories of both sections contain setbacks with terraces. The House includes symmetrical setbacks, while the Tower has a more complicated massing with asymmetrical setbacks. The southern elevation of the Tower contains multiple setbacks, allowing direct sunlight into these apartments. The Tower's northern elevation complements the Century and other high-rise buildings on Central Park West. The penthouse atop the House contains a terrace measuring long. The top of the Tower contains a crown, which consists of an open loggia.
Facade The facade of 15 CPW is made of Indiana limestone, sourced from the same quarry as the Empire State Building. The developers and the architect had selected limestone because of its durability and because there were other limestone structures along Central Park West. There are 85,000 pieces of buff and gray limestone, collectively weighing over . The facade is primarily clad with 2,832 limestone panels. There are also 80,000 pieces of ornamentation, of which 50,000 were designed specially for the building.
There are large windows, many of which contain small balconies. The windows were intended to appeal to buyers while also retaining the character of the limestone facades. Some of the windows are narrower than the others, indicating the internal arrangement of each apartment. The southern elevation of the Tower is visible from Columbus Circle two blocks away. The center of the Tower's southern elevation contains a vertical strip of bay windows, emphasizing the building's vertical dimension. On the Tower's western elevation, there is a deep indentation at the center of the facade, just above the retail podium on Broadway.
The building's main entrance is through a curved limestone doorway on Central Park West, which contains a set of double doors topped by a transom. There are lighting sconces on either side of the entrance, above which are grilles. On the Broadway elevation of the Tower, the lowest two stories contain double-height storefronts. These large storefronts were required under zoning regulations.
Features The building has a doorman, chef, and concierge service. There are two lobbies, both of which are staffed by concierges. The building has more than 50 employees. In 2009, these included six doormen, seven concierges, eight lobby attendants, eight porters, and twelve engineers. At any given time, there were fifteen staff members in the lobbies.
Lobbies The House's lobby on Central Park West is designed in English oak with marble trim, as well as two fireplaces with elaborate mantels. The lobby contains an elliptical dome at its center, as well as four Sarrancolin marble columns carved from linenfold. Two groups of seating, arranged around the fireplaces, flank the main passageway through the lobby. Arthur Zeckendorf also commissioned two paintings, one above each fireplace, which depict Central Park in summer and winter. Next to the House's lobby is a private library and dining room for residents. The library is paneled in walnut, giving what Robert A.M. Stern Architects described as "an atmosphere of calm sophistication". The dining room is decorated with stucco veneziano walls and can fit 60 people. , it was one of three private restaurants at an apartment building in New York City.
A gallery connects the House with the Tower's lobby and the Tower's residences. The gallery is decorated with marble frames and mirrored panels. The Tower's lobby is underneath the elliptical entrance pavilion connecting the two sections of the building. It contains Sarrancolin-marble window frames, limestone walls with niches, as well as a monitor above the middle of the ceiling. The gallery also gave the Tower's residents the impression that they lived on Central Park West, since it had a direct view of the Central Park West entrance.
Apartments The building contains either 201 or 202 apartments. The Tower contains about two-thirds of the apartments, while the other one-third are in the House. Each section has two elevator cores, which each originally served no more than two apartments per floor, although some apartments have since been combined. The arrangement of the elevator cores allows each apartment to have exposures on at least two elevations. Each unit has one to eight bedrooms. When the building opened, the average apartment covered . Almost all rooms have an open view and layouts that borrow heavily from common 1920s and 1930s architectural styles, such as Art Deco.Goldberger, Paul. "Past Perfect" , The New Yorker, August 27, 2007. Accessed October 28, 2015. The secondary bedrooms of each apartment have a flexible layout and could be converted into another type of room, such as a study. The ceilings of the smaller apartments measure high, but many rooms have taller ceilings. Some of the penthouses have ceilings measuring up to high. Floor 9 (physically the sixth story) of the Tower contains four apartments, each with large terraces above the retail podium on Broadway.
In the original condominium offering, the largest residence covered . This residence, on the 19th floor of the House, has an entrance hall with a skylight, as well as a three-sided terrace. Mica Ertegun redecorated the unit in materials such as mahogany, onyx, and plaster; the apartment's roof contains wind, moisture, and temperature sensors. Before the building opened, the Zeckendorfs combined two apartments to create a unit on floor 39 of the Tower (physically the 31st story). The eight-bedroom unit contains a library, a private screening room measuring , and private yoga and massage rooms.
The lower levels also contain 27 or 29 studio apartments for tenants' live-in servants. These units originally cost $650,000 to $1.74 million, though they could only be purchased along with an apartment; some of these apartments were sold for more than $2 million. One such studio is apartment 6H, formerly owned by banker Sanford I. Weill, who sold it for $5.34 million in 2017. It contains a private bedroom, two closets, a bathroom with a tub, a kitchen with a bar, and a private terrace.
Amenities and retail