Enneadic Apartment Almost 800 Feet Above Broadway Okayed by Landmarks Panel
After almost a decade on the market, the nine-story residential space at the pinnacle and lantern levels crowning the Woolworth Building finally sold in 2023 for two-thirds off its original asking price of $110 million. But the 12,000-square foot condominium (along with 400-plus feet of terrace space) that art collector Scott Lynn picked up for $30 million is a bit of a fixer-upper. The raw space, used for maintenance and storage since the tower opened in 1913, has never been configured as a home, and is likely to cost the buyer tens of millions of dollars more to fit out.
Mr. Lynn got around to requesting permission to begin renovating his new property – legally required because the Woolworth Building is a protected landmark – this summer. Among the changes his design team proposes for the unit, which spans floors 49 to 58 in the 790-foot tower, are modifications and enlargements to existing windows, new mechanical louvres (the vents that mask mechanical spaces), changes to the tourelles (the decorative turrets at the four corners of the roof), and the addition of guardrails to terraces, where the new owner also wants to add landscaping.
While most of these modifications will be invisible to the eye from street level, it is an attestation to how much New York has changed in the past century that the City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission, which reviewed these plans in July, felt obliged to consider how they would appear from above, because the Woolworth Building – the world’s tallest structure from its opening until 1929 – is now dwarfed by several nearby skyscrapers.
Community Board 1 (CB1) enacted a resolution in July describing the Woolworth Building as “one of the City’s most beloved landmarks,” and approving most of the proposals, but calling upon the designers to retain the original, historic terracotta to the greatest extent possible, and “to improve earlier renovation work consisting of the removal of non-historic metal panels on the existing tourelles and on the west side of the lantern to allow for the upper level lantern and tourelles to be brought back to its historic condition.”
In August, the City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) issued its decision, agreeing with CB1 that “the proposed louvers and metal panels at the tourelles will match other existing conditions, and will restore visual symmetry to the top of the building,” and approving the proposal, with the caveat that “the applicant work with [LPC] staff to refine the details of the louvers, vision glass, and spandrel glass with regard to final configuration and finish selections to ensure the intended uniform effect.”