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One Madison Park is a luxury residential condominium tower at 22 East 23rd Street, at the foot of Madison Avenue, across from Madison Square Park in the Flatiron District of Manhattan, New York City.
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Although much of the area nearby is included in various historic districts – such as the Ladies Mile Historic District, Gramercy Park Historic District and Madison Square North Historic District – the location of One Madison Park is not, enabling the building to be constructed "as of right" with the transfer of air rights from the shorter buildings that surround the site.
When the building was originally announced, it was to be 47-stories and called "The Saya"; the name was changed to One Madison Park around the time that construction began in 2006. The building as constructed has 50 stories.[2] At one point, a 22-story building designed by noted architect Rem Koolhaas was to be the "companion" to One Madison Square, on 22nd Street, but current plans call for an 11-story building designed by Cetra/Ruddy, the firm that designed One Madison Park. Koolhaas designed the interiors of many of the condominium's amenities, which included a private screening room, an upscale restaurant run by chef Charlie Trotter,[3] a spa and fitness room, and a wine cellar.[4] The building, which contains 91 residential units,[2] is topped by an 8,300-square-foot (770 m2) triplex penthouse, for which the original asking price was $45 million,[5] which, when the building was first put on the market in 2007, included an outdoor terrace, a butler and a one-bedroom apartment for him on a lower floor.[3]
As of April 2010, the building had topped out, but was still not complete, having run into financial difficulties. Sales of residential units had stopped, but the appointment of a receiver on April 15 allowed sales to start again.[6] The building continues to be mired in financial and legal problems, including multiple lawsuits and allegations of fraud.[4]
The building was designed by the architectural firm Cetra/Ruddy.[7]
Nicolai Ouroussoff, the architecture critic for the New York Times, called One Madison Park "a dazzling addition to a street that includes two of the city’s most celebrated skyscrapers: Pierre LeBrun’s 1909 Metropolitan Life Tower, across the street, and Daniel Burnham's 1903 Flatiron building, a half block west. It jolts the neighborhood into the present."[7] In the New York Observer, Dana Rubinstein was somewhat less enthusiastic. Conceding that the tower was "not ugly", she wrote that the building is "in its overpowering, hubristic way, kind of pretty."[4] One local resident called it "the turd in the punchbowl of Madison Square,"[4] but architect Dan Kaplan is quoted on a Wall Street Journal weblog as saying that the building is an "elegant, thin stalk", and represents a continuation of a long-held vision of Manhattan. Kaplan does say, however, that the sliver building "turn[s] its back, a little bit, on the park".[8]
