The Centurion

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171-foot, 16-story modernist residential building completed in 2009. Designed by Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, it is clad in limestone and glass. The stone used on the buildings facade, ‘Chamesson limestone from Burgundy’, has been hand-cut in France – as only there can one obtain limestone which has the specific hue which Pei wanted for the building. This gives the building a distinctive look different from most residential buildings in Manhattan, which use greyish Indiana limestone. Each hand-set stone is a warm beige color animated by gentle wisps of brown veining.

At the ground floor there is a dark-grey granite water table, and two large openings, one for the underground parking garage at the left, and the main entrance at the right. The entrance is recessed, with an angled west wall, and has glass double-doors framed by plate-glass windows, set under a grey metal-and-glass canopy that extends past the building line.

The upper floors are organized into seven bays, four of which have triple-windows, alternating with wider bays of four windows, each group with shorter lower panes, and all in grey metal framing. There are also very short windows above the parking garage entrance. The project is notable for its cascading terraces beginning above the 6th floor and its five “lanterns,” which is what Mr. Pei calls the five-double-height windows on the 56th Street façade that are in living rooms with 17-foot-high ceilings and the “lanterns” extend above the tapered setbacks that are angled at the building’s east and west sides. Two of these double-height windows are at the outer 4-window bays at the 6th-7th floors and 12th-13th floors (with larger plate-glass panes taking the place of the two middle panes), and the fifth is in the center bay at the 9th-10th floors. There are 13 terraces created by the various setbacks.

The building contains 47 condominium units. The ground floor is occupied by Aristocrat Plastic Surgery.

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