PERFECT HOMES MAGAZINE ( Editor Stan Israel) ( Editor Stan Israel) | Page 112

F

rom William Zeckendorf’s work with
I.M. Pei and Minoru Yamaski in the
1960s and ’70s to his grandsons’ projects
with the likes of KPF and, most notably,
Robert A.M. Stern, who created both
the brand new 15 Central Park West and
the newly renovated 18 Gramercy Park
South, the Zeckendorfs have a thing for
high design.
Add to that now 50 UN Plaza, a 44-story
condo tower on the East Side that will
be Lord Norman Foster’s first residential
commission in the United States. Mr.
Foster is well known for his work on the
Hearst Tower, World Trade Center Tower
2 and the new Sperrone Westwater
Gallery on the Bowery, as well as a new
commission for 425 Park Avenue for
L&L Holdings.

With this latest commission, he cements
his place as an all-around architectural
power in the city. Arthur and William Lie
Zeckendorf, real estate scions like few
others, will break ground on the project
at 345 East 46th Street, on the corner of
First Avenue.
The location will afford the project prime
river views, as well as a prominent place
on the skyline right between the United
Nations headquarters and the Trump
World Tower.

Turtle Bay, which was once the stomping
ground of TV personalities, actors,
and writers, including Johnny Carson,
Katharine Hepburn, and E. B. White, hasn’t
really drawn celebrity A-listers for years.
Developers, too, have gone elsewhere,
perhaps turned off by the streetside
commotion that results whenever the
UN’s General Assembly convenes at the
end of summer. On a recent afternoon
in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, just steps
from 50 UN’s windows, protesters with
megaphones yelled at passing diplomats.

The project, which shows a glassy
building of in the high-tech vein for which
Foster + Partners is best known. More
demure than buildings like Hearst or the
so-called Gerkin in London, 50 UN Plaza
seems to strike the proper balance of
brash understatement.

But the Zeckendorfs are likely to have
invested in soundproofing, brokers say.
“Knowing them, there are probably few
details that have gone unconsidered,”
adds Forbes, who has sold units
in Zeckendorf developments since
the 1990s.