PRIME PERCH
From art to graves, unconventional views win over NYC renters and buyers
KEW Gardens isn’t known as the city’s most scenic locale, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to look at.
Like, say, airplanes. Smack-dab between LaGuardia and JFK, the Queens neighborhood is a prime spot for flight fans, notes Dyana Buttacavoli, who, with her husband Matthew Miller, rents a one-bedroom in the area.
On a recent night, the couple was outside on their terrace. “I don’t know if there was a hold on flights landing or something,” she recalls, “but there were so many planes in the sky, it was insane.”
Their place also looks out to Citi Field, giving them a view of the fireworks after Mets home games. “We didn’t seek this place out because of the Citi Field views,” Buttacavoli says. “But it definitely added to the apartment’s appeal.”
“I actually hate baseball,” she says. “But my family is obsessed. My brother even has a Mets tattoo. So he’s enamored by the view.”
Harbor vistas and Central Park panoramas have long enticed New Yorkers to buy or rent apartments. But there’s plenty of love out there for the city's less conventional scenery, too. There are views that may lack obvious allure, but are full of quirky charm.
For example, Buttacavoli isn’t the only Kew Gardens resident to notice the neighborhood air shows, says Bond New York broker Ari Silverstein, who helped the couple find their apartment.
“I’ve had a lot of people who take apartments because they can view the flight path of all the planes landing at the airports. It’s . . . a calming view,” he says. “One tenant would actually look out of the windows at night with binoculars to look at the planes. Every time I showed his apartment, he would go on this spiel about how you could see up to 13 planes at one time. To him, that was just magical.”
At Related Companies’ Hudson Yards, meanwhile, Thomas Heatherwick’s massive "Vessel" sculpture already appears to be a potential New York icon in the making. And, says Sherry Tobak, senior vice president at Related Sales, at the company’s 15 Hudson Yards condo development (prices from $3.9 million to $13.8 million), units overlooking the installation are drawing as much, if not more, buyer interest than those with Hudson River views.
“Of course people come in and say they want a river view, but many people have come in and said that they want views overlooking the 'Vessel,' ” she says. “We’ve gotten tremendous feedback.”
Back in Kew Gardens, the neighborhood’s views of Maple Grove cemetery are, well, to die for, broker Silverstein says. He adds, “One of the big requests I get is people want to face the cemetery.”
At Synapse Development’s 34-unit rental building Perch Harlem, tombstones are similarly proving an unlikely draw. The property, at 542 W. 153rd St., backs up to Trinity Church Cemetery, giving residents two blocks of green, leafy views peppered with grave markers.
The development officially launches leasing June 1, with one-bedrooms for about $2,700 and twobedrooms for $3,700. To date, at least, the open space
seems to outweigh any issues potential renters might have with facing a graveyard.
“We haven’t had any negative feedback,” says Synapse CEO Justin Palmer. “Everyone realizes it’s just very rare to get that kind of light.”
In the market for something a little less serene? Try Times Square. Corcoran’s Christopher Palminteri represents two-bedroom condo at 1600 Broadway (asking $1.83 million) that looks out onto the Hershey’s Chocolate World store.
“They’re so boring — those amazing waterfront, Central Park views,” he jokes. “When you have dancing M&M’s and Hershey’s Kisses out your window — now that’s a view!”
The appeal of Midtown Manhattan, Palminteri notes, is “person by person. I’ve found that it’s definitely more of a foreign [buyer] attraction than it is for your typical New York dweller.”
Apartments at 1600 Broadway currently on the market range from $859,000 to $2.99 million.
Foreign buyers “think of New York City as Times Square,” Palminteri says. “That’s their quintessential New York.”
Then there are your more prosaic landmarks. Triplemint broker Greg Moers recalls an apartment his uncle used to own at 255 Hudson St. that looked out onto a massive billboard.
“He was like right on top of it,” he says. “The lights on it were super bright, and he used to have to close the blinds at night sometimes so that the glare didn’t get through.”
“Not a very sellable view at all,” Moers adds. “But he told me that when he bought it, he thought it was cool and kind of ‘New York,’ in a sense.”
He’d find a kindred spirit in Greenpoint, where Angelo Paravolos owns a rental building at 109 Clay St. that for years had a similar bill- board view, which at one point advertised “Of Mice and Men” on Broadway starring James Franco. “It wasn’t a negative at all,” he says. “In New York City, that’s how it is. People look and see, and then really don’t pay much attention to it.”
In fact, says Citi Habitats agent Todd Logan, who represents the building for Paravolos, the billboard featured prominently in his marketing for the property. “That was my main photo on StreetEasy, and it really drew a lot of attention.”
Alas, the apartment’s grand vista is no more — obscured, as the story so often goes, by more recent construction.
Luckier in (real estate) love was a client of Stribling broker Confidence Stimpson, who some 15 years ago purchased an apartment across from Morgan’s Market in Tribeca because she loved the views of the the store's outdoor flower stand. Stimpson warned her buyer at the time that, given the pace of change in the neighborhood, the market might not last. Happily, it’s still there today.
All the same, it could be safer to save yourself the heartache and just opt for no view at all. That was the request a recent client gave Keller Williams New York City agent Yuan Cao.
“He works in the finance industry and has very long hours, so when he gets home all he wants is to be able to sleep in a quiet environment,” she says. “I think at one point he said he was looking for his ‘Batcave.’ ”
That might be a slightly grandiose description of a Gramercy co-op apartment looking onto an airshaft, but, as they say, the heart wants what it wants.
“We actually went over the asking price by $13,000 to get the unit,” Cao said.
True, its weirdly desirable view isn’t the only draw. Cao’s client’s building, Sage House at 4 Lexington Ave., is a block from Gramercy Park.