{"id":787316,"date":"2026-05-10T21:03:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-10T21:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/787316\/"},"modified":"2026-05-10T21:03:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-10T21:03:11","slug":"before-soho-this-building-was-at-the-heart-of-new-yorks-arts-district","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/787316\/","title":{"rendered":"Before SoHo, This Building Was at the Heart of New York\u2019s Arts District"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article is part of our Design special section<\/a> on retrofits.<\/p>\n

When the Beaufort was erected on West 57th Street, in the early 20th century, it was to provide living and working quarters for artists, one of several such buildings going up in Manhattan at that time. Big, double-height rooms on the north-facing front of the building were conceived as art studios. Sixteen-foot-tall bay windows let in the steady northern light esteemed by painters and sculptors, with single-story living spaces behind.<\/p>\n

But on a recent afternoon, the interior designer Stephen Sills<\/a> said he had been thinking less about artists and more about art buyers when he set out to decorate one of these units. That space is now a model one-bedroom apartment in a luxury condominium named Parc Beaufort. And Sills had hung collages, paintings and prints seemingly haphazardly on the warm-toned walls of a combined living and dining room, as if put up by an imaginary resident over time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI invented a fictional person from Los Angeles or Dallas who might have an apartment in the building as a weekend getaway,\u201d he said, explaining the chunky elm table, crinkly curtains of ocher performance taffeta and sectional sofa upholstered in violet twill. \u201cIf they came to auctions or galleries while they\u2019re in town, they might buy one piece and start collecting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sills added, \u201cThe outside of the building is so beautiful. I wanted to have a romantic history going into the interiors.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, the project, occupying a 14-story landmark of beige brick and limestone, is a retort to the glassy condo towers that have gone up in the vicinity in recent years. It is planned to have more of a boutique feel than those contemporary insurgents, with units significantly smaller and less stratospherically priced.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like a hybrid, it\u2019s the old with the new,\u201d said Jonathan J. Miller, the president of Miller Samuel Real Estate Appraisers and Consultants, who keeps tabs on residential real estate in New York and is among those who have wondered if old-school co-ops may be making a comeback<\/a> as luxury condos fall out of favor<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But even when the building first came on the scene in 1907, it was hardly intended for starving artists.<\/p>\n

The Beaufort was constructed at 140 West 57th Street along with its nearly identical next-door neighbor at 130<\/a> West 57th Street<\/a>, both designed by the architecture firm Pollard & Steinam, which specialized in what were called \u201cart studio\u201d buildings. The West 57th Street twins were erected on the south side of the block between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, with the wide east-west corridor ensuring maximum light for the studios. The buildings fit in with what was then a thriving arts district that included Carnegie Hall, steps away, and the Art Students League, one block west.<\/p>\n

It was a time when the city\u2019s population was exploding, Manhattan development was marching uptown and affluent New Yorkers were still acclimating to the idea of residing in apartment houses rather than single-family homes. The art studio buildings, it was believed, would help them warm to the new way of living.<\/p>\n

They were set up as co-ops, a financial arrangement then gaining traction<\/a> in New York, in which residents held shares in the properties. Because co-ops required a substantial investment \u2014 a down payment followed by installments \u2014 they were seen as a more elite form of multifamily housing, distinct from crowded tenements for the poor.<\/p>\n

And the West 57th Street look-alikes were certainly handsome, constructed with large cast-iron roof cornices and geometrically ornamented window frames.<\/p>\n

Inside the Beaufort, 10 apartments incorporated the lofty studios, which allowed artists not only to create work, but to display it for prospective patrons; the spacious units were interspersed with more modest ones. The building also offered the early 20th-century\u2019s version of amenities. There was, for instance, a central vacuum system so that residents, or their housekeepers, could plug a hose into a wall opening to whisk away dust and debris.<\/p>\n

The Beaufort did indeed attract artist residents, as intended \u2014 including the opera singer Beniamino Gigli and the sculptor Ernest Durig (he was best known for forging drawings by Auguste Rodin<\/a>) \u2014 along with lawyers and stock brokers.<\/p>\n

The building\u2019s first major change came in 1944, when the apartments became rentals, and that was essentially where things stood when Macklowe Properties bought it in 1981.<\/p>\n

The developer planned what would become Metropolitan Tower on an adjacent site and vacuumed up the air rights above the Beaufort so that it could send its angular black-glass building even higher into the sky. For a time the company had plans to reface the Beaufort in the same shiny material.<\/p>\n

That affront thankfully never came to pass, and once the city declared the building a landmark<\/a> in 1999, the exterior was protected forever. But alterations of a different sort unfolded inside: Macklowe bought out the last of the residential tenants and, with help from MdeAS Architects, converted the building to offices<\/a>. Brian J. McCarthy, an interior designer, had one incorporating a former studio that Architectural Digest<\/a> described as \u201ca calming world of order and grace.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Feil Organization, which acquired the Beaufort in 2009, went back and forth for years over whether to keep the offices or jump on the luxury-condo bandwagon.<\/p>\n

The pandemic finally settled the matter: As remote and hybrid work patterns took hold, companies gave up space and the office market tanked, Feil joined other developers in the drive to convert offices to residences<\/a> \u2014 which, in the Beaufort\u2019s case, means taking the building back to its original use.<\/p>\n

MdeAS has returned to the property to work with Sills on the $45 million project. An exterior restoration, now underway behind scaffolding and construction netting, is re-creating the cornice, which had been removed years ago; this time it is being rendered in lighter aluminum and painted gray to match the window frames.<\/p>\n

Inside the gutted interior, the lobby is currently a tangle of ductwork and wiring. Sills said that the space will have a coffered, barrel-vaulted plaster ceiling over a floor of burgundy marble and brown sandstone. The vacuum gizmo and other circa 1907 features are long gone; 21st-century condo amenities \u2014 gym, lounge and roof terrace \u2014 will soon take their place.<\/p>\n

Of the 47 units in the building, well over half will be one-bedrooms, ranging from 700 to 1,100 square feet and priced from $1.3 million to $2.5 million, according to the Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group, which is handling sales. There are also studios (about $1 million), two-bedrooms ($2.8 million to $3.4 million) and three-bedrooms ($4.5 million to $4.6 million).<\/p>\n

Miller predicted that prospective buyers would find those prices attractive. \u201cThis is like a throwback to the pre-uber luxury focus of new development,\u201d he said. The smaller units, he added, make sense for the Midtown location, which has tended to attract a transient population. (Sills inferred as much when he decorated the model unit as a pied-\u00e0-terre.) <\/p>\n

Apartments with the former studios, whose ceilings reach 19 feet, will likely be among the most desirable. \u201cAll those beautiful duplexes,\u201d said Dan Shannon, the managing partner of MdeAS. \u201cWho wouldn\u2019t want to live there?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This article is part of our Design special section on retrofits. When the Beaufort was erected on West…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":787317,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[1037,648,1032,257859,321739,198837,1033,171,321740,151364,11228,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-787316","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-art","9":"tag-arts","10":"tag-arts-and-design","11":"tag-building-construction","12":"tag-buildings-structures","13":"tag-corcoran-sunshine-marketing-group","14":"tag-design","15":"tag-entertainment","16":"tag-interior-design-and-furnishings","17":"tag-manhattan-nyc","18":"tag-real-estate-and-housing-residential","19":"tag-united-states","20":"tag-unitedstates","21":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116552309355721770","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=787316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787316\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/787317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=787316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=787316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=787316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}