The Galleria is a mixed-use skyscraper at 115–119 East 57th Street in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, New York, U.S. The Galleria was designed by David Kenneth Specter with associate architect Philip Birnbaum, and it measures 55 stories high, with a roof height of . The building has an eight-story atrium wing facing south toward 57th Street, which has a granite facade and a sloping ceiling. Behind the atrium section is the residential tower, which faces 58th Street to the north; it features "winter garden" balconies enclosed by glass. The commercial section of the building spans 16 stories, while the residential portion, with 253 apartments, spans 38 stories. The top of the building includes a four-story penthouse initially built for the philanthropist Stewart Rawlings Mott, who never lived there.
The Galleria was one of several large apartment buildings developed in the area following the implementation of the 1961 Zoning Resolution. Madison Equities proposed a mixed-use office and apartment building on 57th Street in early 1972, and it was completed in 1975. After the building went bankrupt, Morgan Guaranty bought the land and both parts of the building in August 1976 and sold off many of the remaining apartments. The building's atrium remained underused through the early 1980s. Through the 21st century, the Galleria continued to operate as a condominium building. Joseph Moinian acquired the Galleria's commercial condominium in 2002.
Site The Galleria is at 115–119 East 57th Street in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. It occupies a T-shaped site in the middle of a city block bounded by 57th Street to the south, Lexington Avenue to the east, 58th Street to the north, and Park Avenue to the west. The land lot covers approximately . It has a frontage of on 57th Street, a frontage of on 58th Street, and a depth of between 57th and 58th streets. The city block is shared with the Ritz Tower to the west and 135 East 57th Street to the east. In addition, 731 Lexington Avenue is to the northeast, while 432 Park Avenue is to the southwest.
Architecture The Galleria was designed by David Kenneth Specter, while the apartment interiors were designed by associate architect Philip Birnbaum. It measures 55 stories high, with a roof height of . The highest floor is numbered 57. The building is made of reinforced concrete, brick, granite, quarry tile, and concrete masonry units, and the design also includes terrazzo floor tiles and glass windows. A brick and granite cladding is used to cover up the concrete frame.
Form and facade
The building has an eight-story atrium wing, which was included at the suggestion of Jaquelin T. Robertson, a city planner with the New York City government. The atrium has a low-rise entrance on 57th Street, complementing the low-rise nature of the other buildings that once existed to the east. A glass column separates the entrances to the atrium and the residential stories above. The ceiling of the entrance slopes downward at a 45-degree angle, concealing the lower stories' offices; stairs ascend outside the entrance to the upper-story lobby. Although the city's zoning code required that the atrium include openings at both ends measuring high, without any doors or other obstructions, Specter added doors at both of the atrium's entrances to provide climate control. The rest of the atrium has granite walls.
Behind the atrium section on 57th Street is the residential tower, which faces 58th Street to the north. The tower rises straight from the 58th Street facade, extending 47 stories above the atrium wing. The placement of the tower was necessitated because of the lot's shape, which widens toward the back, and because the owners of the neighboring Ritz Tower also owned an easement that required the tower to be set back at least from the Ritz Tower's eastern wall. The upper-story facade includes double hung windows and brick, similar to conventional apartment buildings on nearby Third Avenue.
There are nearly-square "winter garden" balconies enclosed by glass, which are placed on alternating floors, allowing each winter garden to have a glass ceiling unobstructed by a balcony above. The winter gardens each measure across and are placed on the southern sides of odd-numbered stories. To avoid having the winter gardens count toward the official floor area under zoning regulations, they cannot be used as bedrooms. The winter gardens have doors that separate them from their respective apartments, and they are heated internally. When the building opened, apartments with winter gardens were typically sold for higher prices than the other apartments. The winter gardens, a novelty for New York City apartment buildings, were popularized in later years.
Features As designed, the building has a total of and was split into 254 ownership condominiums, with one condominium unit for all the commercial space. There were originally 253 apartments, comprising the penthouse and 252 other units. Mechanically, the building uses different cooling and heating systems for the perimeter and the core portions of each floor.
The underlying bedrock descends from just beneath ground level to deep, requiring deep footings in some places. Since the building was constructed with a roof garden with of soil, for a maximum load of , the rest of the building was structurally reinforced for this purpose. The entire building has a concrete superstructure, making it New York City's largest poured-in-place concrete building at the time. The lowest 22 stories have a high-strength concrete frame that can handle loads of up to . Since the lower and upper portions of the building have columns in different locations, the 15th story contains girders that transfer loads between the upper and lower columns. Cantor Seinuk designed the building's structural system.
Atrium
In exchange for constructing the atrium, the developers were given a zoning bonus in the form of additional floor area; the law granting this bonus was still being written when the building was designed, so the Galleria does not make full use of this bonus. The presence of the atrium allowed the building to include an additional . The building's atrium extends through the entire block from 57th to 58th Street, accessed by 12 steps descending from the 57th Street entrance. A passageway flanked by stores leads north from the entrance, with a ceiling. The passageway itself is decorated with granite walls, steel beams, and tile-and-terrazzo floors, while the stores span .
The central portion of the atrium has a ceiling skylight rising to or . The skylight is supported by three girders and is tilted at a 45-degree angle. This portion of the atrium is crossed by numerous pedestrian bridges, and the walls have granite slabs with horizontal steel channels. There are a cafe and a seating niche on either side of the atrium's central portion, both with skylights in their ceilings.
Commercial and residential space The commercial section of the building spans 16 stories, including a 94-space parking garage on two levels. The lower five stories of the atrium are surrounded by offices. Three intermediate stories above these offices originally contained the Atrium Club, a membership-only private club, which was designed by Ellen McCluskey Associates and spans . It included lounges, dining spaces, swimming pools, and decorated spaces such as a music room with mirrored walls. In the 1990s, the Atrium Club space became part of a space for the New York Health and Racquet Club, which also occupies part of a fourth story. Above the atrium are four additional stories of offices. The building has about of commercial space in total, including that is used as office space.
There are 38 stories of apartments above the offices. The upper stories were originally divided into eight apartments each, with a single two-bedroom apartment, three apartments of one bedroom each, and four studio apartments per floor. Originally, 109 of the apartments abutted winter gardens. Due to zoning regulations, and to attract wealthy tenants, each apartment's rooms measure at least . Part of floor 54 (physically the 52nd floor) includes a tenant amenity space, which spans and has a fireplace, two outdoor terraces, a kitchen, and a bar. The presence of the amenity area was also mandated by the zoning regulation, which required of tenant amenity space for each room in an apartment. All tenants could use the amenity area, housekeeping, and other services, which included butlers, maids, valets, and multilingual concierges.
The portion of floor 54 not occupied by the amenity space, and the three floors above it, originally had a penthouse built for the philanthropist Stewart Rawlings Mott, though he never lived there. The penthouse was designed by Gerald L. Jonas. It has a library, two living rooms spanning multiple levels, and five or six bedrooms. There is also a private elevator, a swimming pool, and terraces spanning a combined . The unit was intended to include a garden with trees. To accommodate Mott's requirements, one bedroom faced east toward the rising sun, while the unit's personal office faced west to allow Mott to view the sunset; in addition, the penthouse did not have air-conditioning or double-glazed windows because Mott wanted sunlight.
History Development
The Galleria was one of several large apartment buildings developed in the area following the implementation of the 1961 Zoning Resolution. Edwin J. Glickman of Madison Equities had acquired seven land lots and two neighboring buildings' air rights in 1967, planning an office tower there, but he changed his plans after demand for office space decreased. Madison Equities proposed a mixed-use office and apartment building on 57th Street in early 1972, following a modification to the 1961 zoning code; previously, the zoning code had banned the construction of such buildings. That February, Mayor John Lindsay announced plans for two privately-developed mixed-use skyscrapers in Midtown Manhattan, one of which was to be Madison Equities' $20 million building on 57th Street. David Specter's original design called for 35 residential floors above a series of stores, offices, and a spacious public atrium. It was the first major structure designed by Specter, who had previously built single-family homes for the most part.
Originally, the plans called for a tower of 45 or 46 stories. By 1973, Glickman had revised the plans to 52 stories. at which point costs had increased to $30 million. The top penthouse was supposed to be occupied by the philanthropist Stewart Rawlings Mott. Construction had reached the 13th story by late 1973. Since the building was to include enclosed balconies, the New York City Board of Estimate had to approve a zoning change to permit them; the board approved the plans that December, with restrictions on how the balconies could be used. Because the building had been developed on an "underutilized" plot, which previously had consisted mostly of low-rise residential buildings, it qualified for a tax abatement worth millions of dollars.