Generous Rooms

Inside, Stern has brought impressive discipline to sprawling layouts by associate architect SLCE. This condo is not for a buyer, Stern has dryly observed, who “wants to sit in an arrangement of four Mies van der Rohe chairs on a rug floating like a raft on a sea of emptiness.” So there are “real rooms,” generously sized and handsomely proportioned (10-foot ceilings help), with oak herringbone floors.

They align in a civilized progression, and almost every apartment gets at least two exposures. These are qualities not to be taken for granted in New York, where velvet-draped Park Avenue parlors often feel dark and low-ceilinged, and fat columns obscure the views in glass-sheathed towers.

Stern delivers high-end posh. Terrace-wrapped duplexes as large as 6,000 square feet (with internal elevators) crown the house. Penthouses in the tower (one is 11,000 square feet) have 14-foot ceilings and fireplaces. A 39th-floor living room opens to three drop-dead views.

Attending to such niceties is so rare in Manhattan that it’s no wonder buyers are willing to pay top dollar. Yet one reason Manhattan’s skyline is so magical is that there was a time when architects remixed the standard ingredients to capture the city’s unstoppable energy in steel and stone. (The 1931 Century Apartments next door, built of humble materials and defaced by insensitive window replacements, has twice the pizzazz.)

For all the dollars and attention, 15 Central Park West lacks the courage of its nostalgic convictions.