Redeveloped Lever Home boasts Park Ave. views and fashionable design

Steve Cuozzo

Enterprise

realty examine

By Steve Cuozzo

Lever Home, the 390 Park Ave. masterpiece that first introduced curtain-wall design to business New York in 1952, is again in enterprise after a two-year closure and $100 million redevelopment.

The challenge by house owners Brookfield and WatermanCLARK isn’t any routine restoration, however a revelation to those that’ve walked by a thousand instances and by no means knew what lay behind the sunshine green-tinted window panes.

Our first look inside final week was an exciting shock. The landmarked, 260,000 square-feet tower’s diminutive workplace flooring — every a mere 11,000 sq. toes on all however certainly one of 21 flooring above a three-floor podium — are home windows on “Mad Males”-era Manhattan.

Its perpendicular orientation to Park Avenue and deep setbacks from East 53rd and 54th streets on the north and south sides present a diorama of mid-Twentieth Century, Worldwide-Model design.

Lever Home was famously constructed a lot smaller than zoning allowed.

It’s a pygmy amidst Park Avenue’s million-square foot towers.

However because the Landmarks Preservation Fee put it, Lever Home “signaled the transformation of the type from one related to an idealistic European social motion into one symbolizing company America.”

Mild flooding in on three sides brings the enduring environment to life for workplace employees who’re by no means removed from home windows — together with the Seagram Constructing, the Racquet and Tennis Membership and just-opened 425 Park Avenue.  

CBRE’s John Maher, the leasing agent, mentioned he was as shocked as we have been by the workplace flooring’ light-box impact.

“I hadn’t been inside for nearly 40 years,” he mentioned, as a result of the constructing was at all times totally or largely leased.

For all its architectural acclaim, Lever Home had a troubled historical past.

Former Mayor Ed Koch and preservationists narrowly saved it from demolition for a bigger tower earlier than it was designated a protected landmark in 1982.

After Lever Brothers mum or dad Unilever moved most of its workplaces to Connecticut in 1997, there have been frequent modifications in possession and tenants, of which Alcoa was the biggest.

By then, most of the constructing’s exterior spandrel panels, glass and metal have been badly decayed.

Aby Rosen’s RFR Realty, which purchased the leasehold in 1997, restored the facade a number of years later and launched a restaurant for the primary time.

However complete redevelopment didn’t begin till Brookfield and WatermanCLARK took management in 2020 and the few remaining tenants moved out the subsequent 12 months.

Amongst modifications the brand new house owners made in collaboration with authentic architect SOM, they restored the skin plaza paving and foyer terrazzo flooring; launched a subtle lighting system to enhance brightness and vitality effectivity; and put in new mechanical methods. Chrome steel columns and plaster ceilings have been restored.

An Ellsworth Kelly sculpture assortment was put in because the constructing’s first public artwork presentation.

Convector items from the Nineteen Fifties have been changed with a state-of-the-art devoted outside air system (DOAS). Y

anking the convectors added two toes of ground area on both facet of every ground and an extra foot of ceiling peak.

An expansive third-floor Lever Membership, designed by Marmol Radziner, features a fashionable central bar, eating rooms and 15,000 sq. toes of landscaped outside terraces that have been initially utilized by Lever Brothers employees. 

Meals and beverage service is supplied by Sant Ambroeus Hospitality which operates Italian restaurant Casa Lever on the bottom ground.

Maher mentioned that three leases with unidentified tenants have already been signed, together with on the bigger, 35,000 square-foot second ground, earlier than official advertising and marketing begins.

He declined to debate rents however exterior brokerage sources mentioned the “ask” begins at $200 per sq. foot.

Tenants will doubtless be monetary corporations similar to hedge funds and personal fairness needing small, jewel-box services and maybe client merchandise firms.

Maher mentioned, “What’s superb is the prescient view of the unique Lever firm to design a constructing within the Nineteen Fifties with the spirit of what everyone’s making an attempt to do at the moment — built-in facilities and air and lightweight for everybody.”

He mentioned that the redevelopment objective was to reinforce the present property with “totally built-in, holistic design to alter from a beautiful Nineteen Fifties workplace constructing to 1 for the trendy age. We’re very happy with the historical past however extra excited for the long run.”