After living in the same Upper East Side apartment for three
decades, Veronica Hackett, co-founder and managing partner of the
developer the Clarett Group, was finally inspired to move by one of her
own projects: Sky House.
Hackett, whose company has developed six condominium and three
rental projects in New York City, says she regularly contemplated
moving with each new development. Yet the 55-story Sky House
condominium, located at 11 East 29th Street between Fifth and Madison
avenues, won her over.
Sky House, a sliver building with three apartments to a floor, has
expansive and largely protected views in four directions, a result of
the deal the Clarett Group made to build on the site of the former
parish house of the Church of the Transfiguration at 1 East 29th
Street.
Hackett — who paid $2.635 million for her 1,612-square-foot,
two-bedroom space, according to PropertyShark — chose a 50th-floor
apartment in the skyscraper’s A line, which has views in all
directions.
“As a developer, you always fall in love with your buildings,” says
Hackett, who moved in last summer, adding, “I knew this site pretty
well from the ground.
“But it wasn’t until I had family in town and took them to the Top
of the Rock that I realized where the site was. It was like, ‘Oh my
God, there’s absolutely nothing around it.'”
She and her husband, Jack, thought the 2,817-square-foot penthouse,
which is still on the market, would be too large for them as “empty
nesters.”
“My son, Jeff, is now 25, and I don’t anticipate him moving
home any time soon,” Hackett says with a chuckle. “And Jack and I have
a commuting marriage. He’s a scientist and spends most of the week in
Charlotte, N.C., where he owns a small start-up high-tech crystalline
laser company.”
For Hackett, who passes most of her time at the Sky House except
when traveling for business (or visiting the couple’s other home on
Long Island), the draw was floor-to-ceiling views to the south, east
and west — and a view to the north, which is more limited but includes
almost the entire Empire State Building.
“I have views of both rivers and the harbor,” Hackett says. “I love
architecture, and this neighborhood has so many interesting buildings.
You can see such detail — the whole city is like a jewel of an art
piece.”
Architect Bruce Fowle, senior partner of FXFowle Architects, says
he designed Sky House in a way that would complement the Church of the
Transfiguration, built in 1849. That meant building a narrow tower
constructed of brick masonry similar to that of the church. The tower,
which narrows a bit at the top and is reminiscent of a campanile,
houses the elevator core and staircase, surrounded by a lot of glass.
Also, Hackett’s apartment, along with all the others in the A line,
has vertical windows so residents can gaze down into the English-style
churchyard. Apartments in the other lines have punched and horizontal
windows.
“We tried to make each one unique and avoid the cookie-cutter approach, so
people had choices not only in the shape of the apartment, but the expression of the façade,” Fowle says.
On the advice of her interior designer, Emily Abrahams of Katherine
Gormley Architects, Hackett and her husband kept the apartment largely
empty at first and moved furniture in slowly to get a sense of the
spaces and the play of the ever-changing light.
It was good advice, Hackett says. She ended up forgoing the
architect’s specifications and moving the dining area from one side of
the massive living room to the other.
“We really wanted something that wouldn’t compete with the views,” she says.
She also realized that very little of the furniture from her former
Upper East Side apartment would work in her new “great room” made of
glass.
“We had a French Provincial dining room set … and a huge English
chest that wasn’t going to work in here,” she says. She ultimately went
with furnishings that are simple but strong. For instance, two spindly
metal coffee tables by the French designer Christian Liaigre remind her
of attenuated sculptures of the human figure done by Italian artist
Alberto Giacometti.
To keep everything spare, Abrahams even designed some of the
furnishings herself, including two delicate dark walnut chairs and lean
coffee tables with off-center steel bases. All the pieces, including
two upholstered chairs by Liaigre, are sleek with fluid lines.
“There’s nothing that’s bulky in there,” says Abrahams. “The
upholstery is not overstuffed. The dining room table from BDDW in Soho
has a charred texture and a beautiful cast bronze trestle base that
looks very light — though it actually weighs a lot.”
Hackett says she decided to go with two parlor sets in the lofty
living room to capitalize on every angle of the dramatic views. The two
groups also give her the option of seating up to 20 people.
“We don’t entertain that much, but we do holidays,” she says. “For
Thanksgiving, we moved some chairs and added another table and served
16 people.”
Hackett says that the views were so alluring in Sky House that an
unusually large amount of the square footage is given over to public
spaces. The master bedroom, at 154 square feet, is modest, though its
floor-to-ceiling views to the south and east lend the illusion of
vastness.
Hackett sometimes watches the sunrise from bed or with a cup of coffee in
hand at her desk with Pepper, a mostly
Belgian schipperke dog rescued by her
husband, by her side. A Louis Ghost Chair,
a transparent design by Philippe Starck,
and a slender antique English writing
desk that Hackett bought in London in
1976 cut elegant figures near the eastern window, yet serve to keep the focus on
the view.
A second bedroom, typically used as a den and library, has a sofa
bed, closet space and en-suite bathroom, and is frequently occupied by
Hackett’s sister Cheryl when she visits.
As far as color, Hackett decided to go with a very neutral palette.
“The design philosophy, so to speak, is a contrast of neutral, with
dark woods and the interplay of textures with fabrics and lines,” she
says.
For instance, one of the larger, heavier pieces is a low bureau
tucked into the short breezeway between the dining area and kitchen,
but it’s made of an unusual smooth holly wood that is cream colored.
Though she’s not a collector, finding the perfect fine art for the
apartment was a big goal, Hackett says. Abrahams helped her select some
pieces with the advice of gallerist Lori Bookstein of Lori Bookstein
Fine Art.
“Before I saw Sky House, I’d never seen a view like that in my
life, and I’d never seen light like that in my life,” says Bookstein, a
gallerist since 1997.
“The light is so tangible,” she says. “The color of the walls is
constantly changing, and there are times when the white paint looks
green or yellow or super white, so my feeling was that all of the
paintings should almost have light as the subject.”
Bookstein ended up focusing on second-generation New York School
painters, such as Paul Resika and Robert De Niro Sr., along with
younger painters who came out of that tradition, such as John Dubrow
and Tine Lundsfryd.
One painting by Lundsfryd is a luminescent white crossed with
little lines, and an abstract painting by De Niro Sr. is a study in
neutral colors tinted with mauve, pink and orange. “With a view like
that, it’s very difficult for any object to compete,” Bookstein says.
“So rather than the paintings being very material, I was thinking of
things that were more evocative.”
While she modified the living room, Hackett decided to retain the
kitchen of cherry woods by KitchenAid chosen by the building’s
architect. It includes a paneled refrigerator, black mist granite
countertops and a sea-green glass backsplash.
Even though Hackett says she is generally finished decorating, it
seems the work may be ongoing; she finds that she’s discovering
something new about its aesthetics each day.
“I came in one brilliantly sunny afternoon, and the sun was just
hitting the Verrazano Bridge and pulsating,” she says. “It was like the
bridge was shimmering.
“And then the next day, light from the sunrise will bounce off the
clouds, and you get these brilliant but unexpected colors in the West,”
she says.
“And as the sun goes down at night, the lights go on in the city, which is beautiful,” she continues.
“One night I fell asleep on the couch just watching the Empire State Building changing colors.”