252 East 57th

 skyscraper, condominium, 2016_construction, Modern (architecture)

712-foot, 59-story modernist residential building completed in 2016 for Rose Associates. Designed by Roger Duffy of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and SCLE, the building’s curved glass design is based on Alvar Aalto’s Aalto Vase of Finnish design created in 1936. The project also included the construction of two new schools and 78,000 square feet of retail space, in addition to a Whole Foods Market, next door at 250 East 57th Street. The Whole Foods supermarket and the two schools (PS 59 and High School of Art and Design) opened in the Fall of 2012. The lower part of the tower contains rental apartments, marketed under the name Aalto57, while the condominiums begin on the 36th floor.

The entrance is set within angled opaque glass panels and a secondary inner glass wall at the center of the north facade on 57th Street, and has glass double-doors and sidelights below a steel canopy. One of 252 East 57th Street’s defining features is a gated, attended interior porte-cochère on 56th Street. Within the porte-cochère is the largest automated parking garage in New York with electric car charging stations exclusively reserved for residents. The interior of the porte-cochère has a large flaring column and radiating ceiling.

The tower it is distinguished by its scooped-out curves on each major façade. These curves, furthermore, tilt slightly and widen as they rise and many have light blue glass balconies with rounded sides and railings adjacent to the scooped-out curves. While the curved grooves immediately begin to form above the ground floor on the north and south facades, the east and west elevations have 6-story bases that rise flush, with the tower set back behind them, and the grooves beginning above them. On 57th Street, the base on the west end has a metal service door and a secondary glass door, and the base section on the east also has a secondary glass door. These two sections frame the main entrance, with the tower slightly recessed above. The glass is has a greenish tint, and the spandrels between floors are a lighter grey-green, all with thin, dark-grey metal framing.

The east facade along the avenue is lined with glass storefronts with a dark-grey stone water table. Near the south end, there is a cutaway in the 6-story base, with a recessed entrance to the rental apartments, flush with the main tower. It is clad in grey metal panels at the ground floor, with a glass door and revolving door. The porte-cochère entry on 56th Street is also surrounded by grey metal panels, and the center of the base above it is recessed. There is a loading dock to the left of the porte-cochère. The tower is situated at the northeast corner, oriented north-south. Both the north and south facades have a columns of projecting glass balconies (at the west end on the north elevation and on the east end on the south elevation) with curved ends closest to the recessed scoops. At the south facade there is also a double-height recessed area at the 25th-26th floor level, with large round columns supporting the floors above.

The building has a total of 173 apartment units and 93 condominiums. The north end of the ground floor is occupied by a Bank of America branch, and the south end by a Starbucks coffee.

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