Now showing
Every exhibitionist in New York wants to be on a stage; maybe all they need is a luxury condo By Penelope Green
Among the many vertiginous renderings for the penthouse apartments at 432 Park Ave. in Manhattan is one of its master (or mistress) of the universe bathrooms, a glittering, reflective container of glass and marble. The image shows a huge egg-shaped tub before a 10-foot-square window, 90 or more stories up. Lower Manhattan is spread out like the view from someone’s private plane. Talk about power washing. The dizzying aerial baths at 432 Park, while the highest, are not the only exposed throne rooms in New York. All across Manhattan, see-through chambers flaunt their owners, naked, towelled or robed, like so many museum vitrines.
It seems the former touchstones of bathroom luxury (Edwardian England, say, or ancient Rome) have been replaced by the glass cube of the Apple store on Fifth Avenue. In fact, the same developer built both 432 and that glassed Apple store.
Everyone wants a window, says Vickey Barron, director of sales at Walker Tower, a conversion of an old Verizon building on West 18th St. “But now it has to be a Window.” She made air quotes around the word. “Now what most people wanted in their living rooms, they want in their bathrooms. They’ll say, ‘What? No view?’”
It was a rainy, dull afternoon, but the US$47.5-million penthouse apartment Ms. Barron was showing me needed no artificial light. The architects had expanded the windows to nine and a half feet. In the master bathroom, a massive silvered Waterworks Candide French boat tub (US$12,000-plus), looked south, with unobstructed views of Lower Manhattan. This is not Rear Window territory; you won’t be seeing your neighbours from the 23rd floor, and they certainly won’t be seeing you. But you can see the World Trade Center’s Freedom Tower.
From the corner bathrooms at 215 Chrystie St., pictured, Ian Schrager’s upcoming Lower East Side entry, you can see the Chrysler Building and the 59th Street Bridge. The 19-foot-long bathrooms of the full-floor apart- ments are placed at the building’s seamless glass corners; one corner in each sports a poured concrete tub.
“Ian’s approach is always, ‘If there’s a view, there should be glass’,” its interiors architect, John Pawson, says. “It’s not about putting yourself on show, it’s about enjoying what’s outside. Any exhibitionism is an unfortunate byproduct. At this level you’re creating a gathering space. You can congregate in the bathroom, you can even share the bath or bring a chair in.”
During my visit to 737 Park, there were seven people standing in the master bathroom of a 20th-floor apartment (three bedrooms, 4,336 square feet, listed for US$19.695-million). At 21x11-feet, there was certainly room in the bathroom for a few more.
Nine of 737’s apartments express a clear idea: a wall of windows with two toilets at either end and a shower in the middle, which raised many an eyebrow among brokers and their clients because the toilets face each other. Design clarity — and a well-lit room — suggests questions about how private we want to be in our private spaces.
The developer of 252 E. 57th St. wanted the glass walls that enclose the ensuite toilets and showers to wear a stripe of frosted glass. The depth of the frosting, or fritting, says Julia Hodgson, director of development for the World Wide Group, was carefully considered. “There was a lot of sitting and standing behind that glass to get the fritting level just right,” she says.
Privacy, of course, is not an absolute value, but a value that has changed over time and circumstances, says Winifred Gallagher, an author who has written about the behavioural and psychological science of place.
“And like everything else, the rich can buy more of it,” she says. “In the city, privacy is about shielding yourself from all the stimuli. Most of us can’t drop the shield entirely even when we’re in our own homes, because the city is right outside. But if you’re high enough, you can waltz around pretending you’re in the garden of Versailles.”
Furthermore, Ms. Gallagher adds, for many, the bathroom can be the focus of anxiety. “You have the scale, and there’s the magnifying mirror,” she says. “And imagine striding around with all that glass. It puts the pressure on you to be thin and fit, which are also perks of the rich. If you’re thin and fit, why wouldn’t you have this jewel box to show yourself off in?”
Mr. Schrager bats away any cultural or psychological diagnoses. “Your thesis I don’t go along with,” he says. “At Chrystie Street, we put the bath by the window because I think it’s magical to take a bath and look out. It’s about style and material. I don’t think there’s a social trend towards exhibitionism.”
But it is the case that hotels and nightclubs made by Schrager and others have stretched the boundaries of public versus private, what we’re at ease doing where and in front of whom. Stephan Jaklitsch, a Manhattan architect, recalls using the bathroom at the Felix, a nightclub in the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong. Designed by Philippe Stark, its granite urinals are set against floor-to-ceiling windows. “It was like you were peeing on the city,” Mr. Jaklitsch recalls. “It was a very powerful feeling.”
Barbara Sallick, co-founder of Waterworks, whose jewel-like hardware and five-figure tubs are totems of the good life, says a tub in a glass box high above the urban landscape seems like a curious choice to her. “With the bath against the window, there is great light during the day but this sense of coldness at night. Nothing to make you feel closed, warm and private. And the cityscape is sort of active, so how do you ratchet that down? I wonder if it’s for a younger, cooler, audience, someone in a hurry.”
Ms. Gallagher is fascinated by the toilets facing each other in their glass boxes. “It was the rich that were able to separate the toilet in another room,” she says. “It’s interesting to me now if you’re really rich, you’re rich enough not to have privacy in the bathroom.”