Chelsea Stratus Condominum (New York City, New York)

 skyscraper, condominiums, 2008_construction, postmodern (architecture)

491-foot, 40-story modernst residential building completed in 2008. Designed by Schuman, Lichtenstein, Claman & Efron, it is clad in white cast stone and blue glass. The tower features glassed-in corner balconies at all four corners, slightly projecting outer window bays on the west and east facades, and on 25th Street, a portion of the tower cantilevers several feet over the older, neighboring building at 109 West 24th.

The base is four stories tall at the corners, dropping down to one floor where the tower rises, recessed, above it. The center of the tower's west and east facades has three bays of windows in a grid of beige pre-cast stone; each framing element is beveled towards the center. Flanking these center sections, the end are flared out and covered with a glass curtain wall. The north and south facades have two projecting bays of windows surrounded by white stone. The flat glass curtain walls on either side are bordered by the corner balconies. The top five floors on the south and north sides also have small balconies immediately to the west of the central projecting stone section. A tall, angled, grey mechanical penthouse caps the tower.

Chelsea Stratus is the tallest condominium tower in Chelsea and the only condominium tower in the phalanx of tall apartment buildings that sprouted in the city’s former Flower District on the Avenue of the Americas above 23rd Street after a rezoning in the late 1990s. The building’s lobby has slate walls and a waterfall. It is managed by Douglas Elliman.

It has 204 condominium units on the former site of a parking lot that had been used by Con Edision. The ground floor is occupied by a Veterinary Emergency Group, Oasis Nails & Spa, Pilar Beauty Spa, and Wine & Liquor store.