NUISANCE TO NORMAL NEW YORKERS

At the Steinway, the ‘cheapest’ studio flat costs £6 million ($7.75 million) and the prices soar up to more than £50.7million ($66million) for the penthouse. the latter — stretching over three floors connected by an oval staircase — provides 7,130 sq ft of interior space.

it includes four bedrooms, five bathrooms, 14ft high ceilings, a private lift and a hand-made nickel bathtub created by British designer William holland. the penthouse was bought by an international buyer who snapped it up after only taking a virtual tour.

At the bottom of the tower, the first five floors are taken up by expensive shops and recreation spaces including an 82ft swimming pool, private dining room and double-height fitness centre. Amenities include a 24-hour concierge and doorman (which sadly still doesn’t beat a smaller downtown rival that offers residents a concierge private jet service).

the Steinway building’s mainly glass facade includes blocks of bronzed terracotta so the tower will change colour at different times and from different angles.

the tower, which tapers strikingly up to its tip, was designed by New York architecture firm ShoP Architects to evoke the Art deco age during which so many of the city’s greatest skyscrapers went up, and took from 2013 to 2021 to build. its designers hail it as ‘a project of extraordinary proportions and epic grandeur’.

Other New Yorkers are more likely to hail it as yet another hideous monument to the vanity, arrogance and general excess of the world’s super-rich. the Steinway and Billionaires’ Row cast a lengthening shadow over the southern end of Central Park, which for many Manhattanites is their only recreational outdoor space.

Not content to look down on everyone, the pencil tower brigade wants everyone to notice that they’re looking down on them. Or so it might seem to poorer New Yorkers squinting up from down below.