Vandewater captures the cultivated grandeur of Gotham’s unique skyscraper lifestyle in a gracious, tactile, and yet down-to-earth manner that draws it’s inspiration from one of New York City’s oldest, intellectually lively neighborhoods, Morningside Heights. The site is located at the top of the knoll for which the area was named and is surrounded by some of the City's most serene parks including Morningside and Riverside Parks. The Upper West Side’s academic architectural traditions exert a strong influence on the project. The permanence and gravitas of these venerable structures informed the evolution of the it’s gardens, facade and interiors. Vandewater’s stepped architectural piers rise uninterrupted, and continually taper in scale, to the towers apogee, lending an ever more glassy, delicate and ethereal skyline presence. Emphatically vertical linear proportions and a facade material the color of weathered limestone pays homage to both the Riverside Church and the first great residential towers of Manhattan. The Central Park West apartment buildings of the Art Deco heyday are characterized by a solid earth bound architectural scale that responds to the street and a soaring verticality that can be seen in Vanderwater. The interiors are a seamless extension of the buildings exterior with a rich palette of domestic natural hardwoods, limestone, marble, pewter, nickel, etched mirror and jewel toned textiles and furnishings that create an atmosphere indebted to the structure’s historical context and yet remains emphatically contemporary. Gotham’s glamour, surrounded by a scholarly, park-like setting tailored for today's urban dweller.
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