Posted May 1, 2014, 7:25 PM
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Homo sapiens sapiens
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Join Date: May 2012
Location: 3rd planet from the Sun
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An Early Skyscraper Becomes a Hotel With a View
APRIL 29, 2014
By C. J. HUGHES
A skylight-topped atrium distinguishes the 19th-century building at 5 Beekman Street. | Credit Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times
Quote:
For years, development plans came and went at 5 Beekman Street like City Hall workers filing in and out of their nearby offices in Lower Manhattan.
Expectations for the property were high. The nine-story brick-and-terra-cotta building at Nassau Street was one of New York’s first skyscrapers when completed in the late 1800s, even if others quickly eclipsed it.
For fans of antique architecture, 5 Beekman has also been a source of fascination because few have seen its distinctive interior feature — a tall atrium topped by a large pyramid-shaped skylight that was sealed up for much of the 20th century.
Soon, though, admirers may be able to share the view. A developer is converting the office building to a 287-room hotel with restaurants and bars, and adding a condo tower next door.
The timing for this $350 million project seems apt, after all these decades. The financial district is undergoing a spurt of hotel construction along with surging tourism.
“Not only is there a market down here for this, there’s not a person who hasn’t walked into this building without their tongues hanging out,” said Allen Gross, the president of GFI Capital Resources Group, a real estate company in New York whose development arm is undertaking the project. GFI Capital previously developed the trendy Ace and NoMad hotels.
The Beekman Hotel, as it will be called, will mostly be contained in the existing brick building, which is actually two joined structures: one, with nine stories, from 1883, and an annex with 10 stories from 1890. In recent years, it served as an office building but essentially has been empty for more than a decade.
[...]
Entered through arched doorways, many of those law offices were clustered around the atrium, under the skylight, which is also where hotel rooms will be tucked. Two duplex rooms will be in two cupolas whose pointed slate roofs were recently refurbished.
An additional 75 rooms will be in the lower floors of that condo tower next door, a 600-foot building at 115 Nassau Street. The tower will also contain 68 condo units on its upper floors, which will be called the Beekman Residences, as well as amenity spaces for residents.
When sales start this summer, prices at the units, with 16-foot ceilings, are expected to be more than $2,000 a square foot, though the sales plan has not been approved.
Since the hotel has been declared a landmark and few alterations could be made to the older structure, adding a wing with hotel rooms was one of the few ways to make the project economically sound, Mr. Gross said.
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Scheduled to open in summer 2015, the hotel will be operated by Thompson Hotels, a brand under the umbrella of Commune Hotels & Resorts, whose New York properties include a pair nearby: Gild Hall, on Gold Street, and Smyth TriBeCa, on West Broadway. The condo will open a few months later.
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The building is now part of a hotel-condo project. | Credit Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times
Last edited by Hypothalamus; May 2, 2014 at 10:39 PM.
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NEW YORK | 115 Nassau St. (5 Beekman) | 687 FT | 47 FLOORS
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