Two new condos will soon be on the rise just across 5th Avenue. The larger of the two will be at 31 West 14th St. (rendering pictured below). The other one is at 5 West 13th St., the former block-through office of Social Services. Residents of the 14th St. side of our building will recall how many people mistook our building, at 12 East, for the office at 12 West. It was annoying.
The New School, has picked up 34-42 West 14th St, a five-story, 180,000 square foot building, for $153 million.
The seller was Samson Associates and the sale closed on Jan. 10, according to the Commercial Observer. Samson had owned the property since 1985. The building’s tenants will remain and pay rent to the school until their leases expire but those leases won’t be renewed. The school will take over space over time and convert it to academic uses. The building has about 25k SF of ground-floor retail space and comes with additional air rights.
Note that price: $153 million.
Delicious Korean gastropub Barn Joo has relocated from a few blocks up Broadway to Union Square West and the old Heartland Brewery site. Try it out. Very tasty.
Here’s what’s on display in the park:
Miranda July is a fiction writer (No One Belongs Here More Than You), a filmmaker (Me and You and Everyone We Know), a performance artist (Things We Don’t Understand and Are Definitely Not Going to Talk About), and an occasional sculptress. It’s that latter designation that’s the focus of a new public art installation, the comparatively terse “Eleven Heavy Things,” organized by Deitch Projects, which opened late last week in New York’s Union Square Park. (The installation will remain in the park through October 3rd.) The sculptures, many of which revolve around a line of text written in July’s own hand, prod the viewer into audience interaction. “What I look like when I’m lying,” reads one, a white tablet through which the viewer can stick his head. A trio of pedestals — labeled ‘The Guilty One,’ ‘The Guiltier One,’ and ‘The Guiltiest One’ — asks participants to gauge (and flaunt) their general culpability. Three of the sculptures are wordless “headdresses,” decorative sculptures that July compares to the dialogue-free stretches of a movie: “The shapes are those parts of this piece.”
Here’s an article about an upcoming book that sounds like it takes a very interesting and pictorial look at the history of our own Union Square.
Everything, including all those candles, is on deep discount, so hurry in.
The newest Citibank branch, at 14th and Broadway, is supposed to be a “flagship” and a model for future bank brances, with hotel-lobby-like amenities and a clubby feeling. Enjoy.