From left: 1280 Fifth Avenue, 4 East 102nd Street and 1212 Fifth Avenue

A trio of Upper East Side developments will test the traditional northern boundary for luxury buildings, the Financial Times reported.

The projects — 1280 Fifth Avenue, 4 East 102nd Street and 1212 Fifth Avenue — will test the East 96th Street line Manhattanites have long considered the separation between the Upper East Side and Harlem. But the new developments offer the amenities of buildings to the south and all three were designed by “brand-name” architects. While 1280 Fifth Avenue and 4 East 102nd Street are new developments, by Brickman and Durst Fetner Residential, respectively, 1212 Fifth Avenue is a conversion.

The Robert Stern-designed 1280 Fifth, the furthest north, at 109th Street, is anchored by the African Museum of Art. [more]

From left: 1200 Fifth Avenue, 1212 Fifth Avenue and 1280 Fifth Avenue

Fifth Avenue north of 96th Street is finally becoming a developed, mature neighborhood, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Long home to middle-class residents, many of whom were employed by nearby Mount Sinai Medical Center, the area between Carnegie Hill and Harlem had resisted the luxury and expensive development that proliferated to the south. Now the area is home to new condominiums, foreigners buying in to those buildings and new museums. The only trailing component is retail. [more]

From left: 57 Reade, One57, 56 Leonard Street and 1212 Fifth Avenue

Since 2005 an average of 3,800 new condominium units have hit the New York City market each year, but in the first half of 2011 just 278 units hit the market. The New York Post reported that that’s about to change.

According to figures from Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group, 833 new condo units will hit the market in the second half of 2011, and over the next three-and-a-half years some 5,250 units will hit the market.

“People are sort of coming out of hibernation,” Town Residential’s Reid Price, a broker who specializes in new developments, told the Post. [more]

The 57th Street pyramid

From the April issue: Before we allow ourselves to get carried away at the prospect of Durst Fetner Residential’s recently unveiled and startlingly original proposal for a residential development on the far west end of 57th Street, and before we congratulate ourselves on inhabiting a city that welcomes the most progressive strains of contemporary architecture, we should remind ourselves that this is still New York. And, if experience is any guide, the end result of this daring project’s lengthy approval process, involving the community board, the Department of Buildings, and anyone else who wishes to weigh in, may well be a piece of architectural product that is as dull and unremarkable as most others in the five boroughs. [more]