Skyscrapers Reborn: Inside New York’s Office-to-Residential Conversions
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| 219 and 229 East 42nd Street. Rendering courtesy of Streetsense. |
Lower Manhattan Conversions
Lower Manhattan, especially the Financial District and SoMA, leads the way with high-profile projects. One flagship case is 25 Water Street, a hulking 22-story JPMorgan Chase building, now reborn as “SoMA New York.” Developers added 10 floors (to 32 stories total) and gutted the interior to deliver 1,320 rental units. About 25% of those are income-restricted under the new law. Inside, apartments boast lofty ceilings, custom Italian kitchens and in-unit washers/dryers, with many offering water or skyline views. The conversion provides a massive 100,000 square feet of amenities – a fitness center, spa, co-working spaces, plus luxury extras like two swimming pools, a rooftop terrace and even a private bowling alley and karaoke lounge. Architect John Cetra of CetraRuddy, which designed the project, calls it “a unique and completely unprecedented project in both scale and vision… a new paradigm” for giving old offices new life.
Nearby on Broad Street, 55 Broad Street has likewise been transformed. Silverstein and MetroLoft converted the former Goldman Sachs headquarters into a 36-story tower with 571 luxury rental apartments and 25,000 square feet of amenity space. CetraRuddy again led the design, reconfiguring the façade to maximize corner light and skyline views. The new building is fully electric (targeting LEED certification), and units feature 10-foot ceilings, keyless entry and in-unit laundry. Residents enjoy a lavish amenity deck: a rooftop pool with sweeping harbor views, a two-story attended lobby with a library, a gym with yoga studio and Technogym equipment, and even a pet-washing station. In Cetra’s words, converting this drab office made “a building for the future that reflects New York’s long history of reinvention”.
Other FiDi projects are in progress. 222 Broadway (a 31-story 1970s office) is being overhauled into 798 rental apartments plus 40,000 square feet of retail. Work begun in 2025 will add a new penthouse floor and a glassy curtain wall at the base. Plans show a roof deck with an outdoor pool and terraces, and crews expect to wrap up by mid-2027. At 111 Wall Street, InterVest Capital (with MetroLoft) is planning an even bigger conversion: the 27-story tower would gain five floors and contain over 1,500 apartments (about 25% affordable by city rules). The financing plan calls for amenities such as a spa, rooftop pool and bowling alley. Together these conversions would add several thousand homes to a neighborhood where zoning and geography have long limited new housing.
The Seaport’s Pearl House
Across the South Street Seaport area (adjacent to FiDi) a massive adaptive reuse is reshaping the skyline. Pearl House (the former New York Savings Bank at 160 Water Street) is being converted by developer Vanbarton Group into 588 apartments in a 30-story tower. Architect Gensler inserted six new floors and sheathed the brick building in modern glass to flood apartments with sunlight. The amenity package tops 30,000 square feet: it includes a 3,500-square-foot gym, spa, bowling alley, high-tech sports simulator, children’s playroom, pet wash station and multiple lounges. Inside each apartment, new features range from recessed lighting and smartphone-controlled lighting/heating to bird-friendly glazing on low floors. The renovation slashes the building’s carbon footprint from about 5,000 metric tons of CO₂ per year to roughly 1,400. Vanbarton executives say the goal is to give Pearl House a “hospitality feel” through thoughtful finishes and top-notch management. The Seaport has traditionally been commercial, so this conversion exemplifies how office reuse is bringing 24/7 life and housing to a once-evening-only district.
Midtown East’s Transformation
Even Midtown is seeing conversions at scale. In Midtown East, the former Pfizer headquarters (219–229 East 42nd Street) is being reinvented by MetroLoft into a 1,600-unit rental community. The 33-story tower at 229 and a neighboring ten-story annex at 219 are being completely gut-renovated and reclad. A new 19-story addition atop 219 will bring it to 29 stories high, for a total of 536 of the 1,600 units. All told, the project will offer 100,000 square feet of amenities and ground-floor retail space. New renderings show the dated metal façade replaced by expanded glass and aluminum panels, with landscaped roof terraces on both buildings. Early plans call for a rooftop swimming pool, fitness center and other high-end amenities. Construction began in 2025 and is expected to top out in late 2027; this conversion alone could eclipse all previous NYC office reuse projects. Like its Lower Manhattan counterparts, the Pfizer project is 80% market-rate with the remaining 20% targeted as affordable, illustrating the model of using tax breaks to subsidize mixed-income housing in new locations.
Broader Implications
Altogether, these conversions will add tens of thousands of apartments, many with modern layouts and luxury touches. They make use of buildings that might otherwise sit empty, helping to preserve neighborhood vitality and supporting local businesses. However, experts caution that office-to-residential projects are only part of the solution to New York’s housing crisis. Even if all planned conversions are built, the new units (roughly 17,000+) pale next to the roughly 500,000 new homes city planners say New York needs in the next decade. Conversions tend to produce mainly small units (studios and one-bedrooms) and are often luxury rentals – by law only about a quarter of units must be affordable to lower-income families. At the same time, these projects demonstrate creative reuse: they “create a building for the future,” as architects note, by blending sustainable design with housing production. Observers say office conversions buy time by adding stock quickly, and may spark complementary policies (like rezoning and incentives) that boost housing city-wide. Looking ahead, the office-to-apartment trend may permanently reorient parts of Manhattan away from 9-to-5 commerce toward a more mixed-use, residential character – a tangible sign of how New York is adapting its skyline to meet 21st-century needs.