Broker Efraim Tessler on top left, late architect Charles Gwathmey on bottom right, and exterior and interior renderings of 323 Park Ave. South

A new 10-story, 18-unit condominium at Park Avenue South launched sales today, Keller Williams NYC, who’s exclusively selling and marketing the building, announced today.

The Tessler Developments-developed building has 16 1,350-square-foot half-floor residences on eight floors, one full-floor 3,100-square-foot penthouse on top, and a 2,643-square foot commercial space on the ground floor, which Tessler hopes to fill with retail space. Prices for the residences range from $1.8 million to $2.3 million. The sales office is located off-site — two doors down from the condo. Keller Williams broker Efraim Tessler, formerly of Prudential Douglas Elliman, is the building’s exclusive broker. [more]

Gene Kaufman, CEO of his eponymous architecture firm and the mastermind behind more than two dozen hotels for New York City developer Sam Chang, has purchased a majority stake in Gwathmey Siegel & Associates, making it Gwathmey Siegel Kaufman & Associates from now on, according to the New York Times. Kaufman will serve as CEO of both firms, and Gene Kaufman Architect will retain its current name and operations. At Gwathmey Siegel, Kaufman will work alongside the 43-year-old firm’s co-founder, Robert Siegel, whose original partner, Charles Gwathmey, died in 2009. [more]

Jeff Doder, and a rendering of the Town Astor Place office

Town Residential is opening its fourth Manhattan office tomorrow, at 26 Astor Place, in the East Village, the firm announced. The 6,000-square-foot space, located on the second floor of the Charles Gwathmey-designed Sculpture for Living tower, will eventually house 70 sales and rental agents. Town is renovating the exterior and installing an illuminated double-sided clocktower (see rendering to the right), that will be unveiled at a party at tonight (in time to start the clock at midnight) when the office officially opens. Jeff Doder, who Town recently hired from the Corcoran Group, will head operations at the office.

Matt Van Damm, director of operations at Town, said the office will open with management and support staff and just a handful of agents. “Our strategy all along has been to open an office and fill it out with the right people as they come along,” Van Damm said. TRD [more]

From left: Justin Timberlake, his new home in the Soho Mews, and his old building, the Pearline Soap Factory

Six months after vacating his Tribeca condominium unit for a Soho penthouse, musician and actor Justin Timberlake finally unloaded his former home, Curbed reported. The 3,000-square-foot full-floor apartment in the Pearline Soap Factory at 414 Washington Street near Vestry Street– which Timberlake purchased for $4.689 million in 2008 — was asking $4.995 million. Adam Modlin, head of the Modlin Group, had the listing, which originally asked $5.25 million. Timberlake now resides in the Charles Gwathmey-designed Soho Mews at 311 West Broadway near Canal Street, where he bought a unit for $6.57 million in December. [Curbed] Comments

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Setai Fifth Ave.From the January issue: Now that the grand Setai Fifth Avenue is finally open, this seems like a good occasion to consider not only that building, but the architect, Charles Gwathmey, whose firm designed it. These days, in America at least, the apprenticeship of the average architect usually lasts well into his 50s before he is fully fledged and the bigger, juicier commissions start to roll his way. As a result, if an architect does not live to be 80 years old, one is apt to feel that his career has been cruelly cut short. And yet, even though Gwathmey succumbed to cancer a year and a half ago at the age of 71, he started so young, and had been a distinguished presence for so long, that his death, though a sad loss for the architectural community, does not feel quite as untimely as it otherwise might. [more]

The only apartment ever designed by architect Charles Gwathmey went down in price from $19.95 million to $16.75 million, a 16 percent cut. The property is the Police Building at 240 Centre Street in Soho, and is being sold by ex-Bear Stearns COO Alvin Einbinder. Gwathmey renovated the one-time NYPD gymnasium into a barrel-vaulted, four-bedroom, 6,600-square-foot apartment. It first came on the market in May 2008, asking $30 million, and is being listed by the Corcoran Group.
[Curbed]

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Bob Siegel, co-founder of Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects

Bob Siegel who co-founded Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects in 1968, said his staff numbers 40 today, down from 65 two years ago. Plus, a few major projects are winding down, “and there are not a lot of replacements coming in” to the firm’s sole office, in Manhattan, Siegel said. One recently completed project is the new W Hoboken Hotel and Residence, a 26-story high-rise in New Jersey with 225 rooms and 30 condominium units, while the Financial District’s under-construction W New York Downtown Hotel & Residences, whose 58 stories contain 217 rooms and 159 residences, is set to debut within weeks, though the project has been somewhat troubled: the city has slapped it with 30 stop-work orders, and it’s wrapping up two years behind schedule. In an interview with The Real Deal, Siegel, 70, spoke about why his favorite New York neighborhood is Battery Park City, what apartment buildings will look like later this century and coping with the death of the firm’s other founder, Charles Gwathmey, last year. [more]

Architect Charles Gwathmey, who founded Gwathmey Siegel & Associates with Robert Siegel, died yesterday in Manhattan. Gwathmey was 71 and died of esophageal cancer, his stepson, Eric Steel, said. Projects completed by his firm included the International Center of Photography in Midtown, the Northgate apartment complex on Roosevelt Island, the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Hoboken’s W Hotel and an addition to the Guggenheim Musuem. Gwathmey himself designed houses for a number of celebrities, such as Steven Spielberg and Jerry Seinfeld.

Last year’s imaginative marketing of Soho Mews, an all but completed
residential development at 311 West Broadway, seems to belong to a
vanished world. Not only was Calvin Klein hired to design several of
the units, but brokers were traveling across Europe in hopes of getting
the locals to invest their almighty euros in the inflated, but to them
relatively inexpensive, Manhattan real estate market. Now, of course, Europeans are suffering at least as much as we are from
the economic downturn and the euro, though off its lows of a few months
ago, has declined steeply against the dollar, with fewer tourists
reaching our shores. In the meantime, Soho Mews, with 68 apartments and nine stories tall,
has reached completion — aside from a few finishing touches — and the
results possess an undeniable dignity. more

Soho Mews

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