Selected Projects

110th St Central Park West Development Proposal | New York, NY



The design for One Fredrick Douglas Circle addresses two defining opportunities: The first of these is to establish an exemplar of planning and design excellence for what can easily become one of America’s great urban spaces and the second is to respect and reinforce the quality of the pedestrian amenities, experience and connectively to Central Park for all residents within the stewardship Community Board 10.

The urban scale volume/massing of the building is generated directly from the curvilinear arc of the property line edge which is, in turn, generated from the center of the Fredrick Douglas Circle. Each of a series of south-facing vertical building faces begin at the tangent point of this property line and create a stepped building volume which is south-ward facing down Central Park West. This stepped façade of the 60’-0” base of the building is tied together by the residential light shelf/shading horizontal bands which follow the same radial center point as the property line and thereby express the buildings inherent recognition of it’s center point.

The incorporation of street trees, restaurants, sidewalk cafes, retail and Community Facilities at the sidewalk level of 111th Street, Fredrick Douglas Avenue and Fredrick Douglas Circle are expressions of the design priority given to the pedestrian domain.

The relationship of the development to the residential street wall of 110th Street at Central Park North is particularly challenging since there is only a 9’- 7-3/4” portion of the property facing south that could continue that street wall. Here the building massing is held back from 110th Street as required to form a residential forecourt which is framed on its eastside by the full height green ‘living wall’ which rises on the existing side wall of 241 Central Park North. The resulting residential frontage and lobby facing Central Park South is 25’-0” wide and set back approximately 45’-0”. The extension of the street trees along the sidewalk in combination with the living wall and the 25’-0” wide residential front creates a more comfortable scale transition than any attempt to ‘mimic’ the 110th Street wall at Central Park North.

The Retail/Commercial facade facing Fredrick Douglas Circle is organized as two-stories above grade and is expressed as four two-story bays, each of which is dimensionally unique and tangent to the curvilinear property line. This presence of retail/restaurant services directly adjacent to the additional open space between the curved façade of the project and the existing sidewalk/curb is key to the future development of a major civic amenity (Park, Trellis, outdoor Dining) that can fully realize the connectivity of Fredrick Douglas Circle to Central Park.