Tour a Lavish Luxury Condo Inside the World’s First Art Deco Building
Jazz Age architect Ralph Walker designed several of New York City’s most beautiful Art Deco buildings, but perhaps none are more beloved than the old Barclay-Vesey Building, completed in 1926. Serving as headquarters to New York Telephone and then Verizon, the 32-story building survived the September 11th attacks (albeit with a lot of damage that cost $1.4 billion to fix) and remains one of the most striking facades in the Financial District, with its vertical piers designed as buttresses, setbacks at upper floors, and elaborate ornamentation. The building, renamed 100 Barclay Street, has now been converted to private luxury residences with offices on the lower floors.
It’s not open to the public, so most people never get a peek at the Barclay building’s stunning lobby filled with travertine, black marble, and frescoes depicting the dawn of telecommunications. But every now and then, real estate listings for the outlandishly expensive apartments inside give us a sliver of insight as to what it’s like to live in a historic New York City landmark. While the duplex penthouse at the top stayed on the market for years due to its eye-watering $39.95 million asking price, a new opening will probably get snatched up by some deep-pocketed buyer in the weeks to come.
This four-bedroom $8.8 million condo is undeniably beautiful, with interiors that live up to the building’s reputation as a design gem. Listed by the Corcoran Group, unit 20B enjoys incredible views from the Hudson River to the Midtown skyline with One World Trade Center right across the street. Enjoying 3,665 square feet of space with four bedrooms and 4.5 baths, the apartment offers 10-foot ceilings, seven-foot casement windows, white oak floors, and a walnut-paneled entry door opening into a formal foyer and generously sized great room with north and west exposures.
“The adjacent open kitchen features custom cabinetry and hardware with calacatta gold marble countertops and back splash, including an island with seating for five,” reads the listing. “The kitchen is fully equipped with state-of-the-art appliances by Sub-Zero, Wolf, and Miele, as well as a garbage disposal and vented range hood. The primary suite features two large walk-in closets and a luxuriously finished primary bath with radiant floor heating, polished Calacatta gold marble floor and wall tiles, custom vanity, fixtures and deck-mounted tub by Waterworks, and steam shower.”
“The secondary bedrooms offer generous closet space and en-suite baths, combining high-honed vanilla cream marble vanity top and herringbone floor tile with crackle-glazed white ceramic wall tile. The residence conveniently features a laundry room with washer and vented dryer by LG, as well as built-in cabinets and sink. No detail was overlooked in the design of this residence with a multi-zone heating and cooling system that carefully controls the interior climate throughout. One Hundred Barclay offers an unprecedented amenity program. Over 40,000 square feet of carefully considered amenity spaces afford the most comprehensive offering in Tribeca.”
Curious just what your bills might look like living in a place like this? The listing lays it out: your monthly mortgage would be about $30,000, plus an additional $11,000 in taxes and fees. No problem, right? Other units in the building currently on the market range from $3 to $6 million, most of them smaller and somewhat less lavishly decorated than 20B.
