This new apartment building, on Jane Street, is located on a site previously occupied by a 1920s, two-story parking garage. The six-story building comprises basement parking, duplex townhouses, lateral apartments, and a penthouse with its own roof garden. Mediating between the different sizes of the surrounding structures, the inserted volume both respects the street scale and reflects its architectural context.
On the northwestern edge of the Greenwich Village Historic District, Jane Street is characterized by a mix of red brick townhouses and larger apartment blocks, mainly dating from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Restrained but solid materials are used throughout, with bronze railings, window and door frames outside, and terrazzo floors in the communal areas. The townhouses and apartments feature Carrara marble and natural oak floors. The roof terrace and a rear garden are designed by Belgian landscape architect Peter Wirtz, ensuring that all apartments have a connection to nature.
The five stories that can be seen from street level offer an interpretation of the surrounding brick townhouses, with an articulation of base, middle and crown. The scale of the entrances references the architecture of the West Village. Local context is also referenced through the colors and materials of the façades.
Red pigmented concrete is used for the ground floor, giving it a strong sculptural presence. The upper stories are clad in Roman brick, with string courses, lintels, and mullions in the same red concrete, providing color variations throughout.
The street front is crowned by a cornice, which echoes the projecting string course between ground and first floors and gives articulation to the façade. The structure of the penthouse also uses red concrete.
The building has a symmetrical composition, with the townhouse entrances recessed at either end of the ground floor. In the center is the larger double entrance for the apartments and the garage.
The windows differ in design for each element of the residential scheme. The two-story townhouses, for example, have balconied French windows, while the lateral apartments above have broader openings divided by concrete mullions.
The penthouse at the top, with its higher ceilings, is set back from the street. It can be read as a simple post and beam structure, framing large windows that overlook a private garden.
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