432 Park Avenue: Review and Ratings

Review of 432 Park Avenue by Carter Horsley

432 Park Avenue is a stunning skyscraper that when built was the tallest in the city without a spire as well as the tallest residential tower.  It is 1,396 feet high with 96 floors and 104 condominium apartments.

Harry B. Macklowe and the CIM Group were the developers.

Raphael Viñoly, the architect of the bulbous 20 Fenchurch Street tower in London that is known as the Walkie-Talkie building, was the design architect.  SLCE was the “executive” architect. 

Interiors were designed by Deborah Burke, Bentel & Bentel, which is the firm that designed 11 Madison Park restaurant and Gramercy Park Tavern.

The building, which is on the northwest corner at 56^th Street and goes through to a large mid-block site on 57^th Street, was completed in 2016. 

Part of the building's site was formerly occupied by The Drake Hotel.

Office units are located on the 18th through the 20th floors.

Bottom Line

With its high ceilings, 10-foot-square windows, abundant amenities, sweeping vistas, and  prime location, this tower is extremely appealing, especially since its sheer, square-plan column has been "vented" with two-story-high openings revealing well-illuminated, circular innards that give a warm inner life to this formidable shaft.

Description

It’s not a razzle-dazzle, convoluted supertall, but an awesome sheer tower of rather majestic simplicity.

Except for a low-rise retail bustle on the northwest corner of 56^th Street and Park Avenue that houses some retail space beneath mechanical spaces, this tower rises without setbacks or façade variations to a flat top.

Its huge windows are uniformly square and contained within the façades and not at the corners. 

During construction, different sections of the tower’s windows with covered with red, white and blue fabric, adding a very attractive and patriotic flourish to its burgeoning skyline penetration.

Unlike most towers that slowly but surely reveal themselves and their “true” external character, this tower, however, put off its unveiling even as it rose to great heights and when finished it was seen as a major monument to minimalism with its non-red, non-blue, non-white windows.

Moreover, some observers with less than perfect vision could be excused for thinking that its very, very white and apparently very, very smooth, façades were purest white marble. It’s concrete, stupid! A concrete, however, that is so marvelously treated that it makes a mockery of most “cast-stone” façade treatments.

It is brazenly creamy. Cholesterol be damned!  Big Bertha!

The tower has a  very large, "private" entrance plaza/driveway with a very broad and modern glass entrance marquee.  

There is a public plaza to the east of the "private" entrance that is very nicely landscaped and has attractive white benches with slightly curved seating niches.

There are 59 storage closet in the subcellars and 18 wine cellars in the first subcellar.

The 12th amendment to the offering plan dated June 18, 2014 said that the total offering of the residential unit was $3,078,543,000 and that the total offering of storage units was $7,951,575, $4,720,850 for the wine cellars, $35,600,000 for the office units. No total was offered fo the commecial units.

Amenities

The building has a doorman, a valet, a gym and swimming pool, parking, a children’s playroom, an 8,500-square-foot residents’ restaurant that serves three meals a day with 30-foot-high ceilings and 15-foot-high chandeliers and an open kitchen for chefs to create “a little theater,” and a 5,000-square-foot tented terrace restaurant.

The health club occupies the 12th through the 16th floor.  The 12th floor contains a tenant/recreational terrace on the north side of the building that is 44-feet-wide excluding the large landscaped areas, a dining room that is 68 feet long and adjoins a 23-foot-wide kitchen, a 19-foot-square lounge and a 80-foot-long health club lounge on the south side of the tower.  The 14th floor has a 28-foot-long children's play area, a 28-foo-long yoga studio, a 54-foot-long training roomn, an 18-foot-long reception area, a 30-foot-long screening room and two 28-foot-square multi-purpose rooms. The 16th floor has a builing-wide pool abd locker rooms.

Apartments

Full-floor penthouses on floors 91 through 96 have 8,255 square feet with six bedrooms and a 25-foot-long entrance gallery that leads in one direction to a 44-foot-long living room next to a 28-foot-long library with a wood-burning fireplace and in the other direction to a 33-foot-long dining room adjacent to an enclosed 31-foot-long kitchen with an island.  The corner master bedroom is 30 feet long.

Full-floor penthouses on floors 85 through 88 have 8,055 square feet and seven bedrooms with a 24-foot-long entrance gallery that leads in one direction to a 44-foot-long living room next to a 27-footlong library with a wood-burning fireplace and in the other to a 33-foot-long dining room next to a 31-foot-long kitchen.  The master bedroom is 29 foot long and there is a 22-foot-long family room.

Three-bedroom apartments on floors 77 through 84 have 2,633 square feet with a 24-foot-long entrance hall, a 30-foot-long living/dining room next to a 15-foot-long kitchen and a 13-foot-long library.

Three-bedroom apartments on floors 62 through 73 have 4,019 square feet with a 21-foot-long entrance gallery, a 29-foot-square living/dining room next to a 21-foot-long kitchen and a 19-foot-long library.

Three-bedroom apartments on floors 34 through 37 have 4,003 square feet with a 21-foot-long entrance gallery that leads to a 29-foot-square living/dining room next to an enclosed 21-foot-long kitchen. 

There are 26 studio units on the 28th and 29th floors and 14 more on the 34th floor.