Claremont Hall, climbing 41 stories above the historic Union Theological Seminary campus, was designed to delight the eye without disrupting the neighborhood.
Claremont Hall, a 41-story luxury residence on the campus of Union Theological Seminary in Morningside Heights, can be easy to overlook. In a sense, it was designed to be. The neighborhood is the closest thing New York has to a Gothic Quarter; among the weathered stone and brick of the seminary, the nearby Teachers College and — directly across Claremont Avenue — the soaring Riverside Church, a showy newcomer would have stuck out like a rude guest. Claremont Hall fits in as though it’s lived there for ages, although it was only completed in June.
Developed by Lendlease, LMXD and Daiwa House Texas and designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects with interiors by CetraRuddy, the building offers private residences ranging from one to four bedrooms. Some have private terraces, and the amenities include a 48-foot swimming and lap pool, art and music studios, a gym, a children’s playroom and a 68-car garage. Prices on the remaining units range from $1.25 million to $5.225 million.
Sarge Gardiner, one of the lead architects, is known for blending new construction into historic neighborhoods. For Claremont Hall, his team’s challenge was to place Morningside Heights’s tallest tower not beside, but within the Gothic Revival seminary campus, and to complement but not upstage it.
“One of the things that we’re very intentional about is looking at the physical materials that we’re building with before they go into place,” Mr. Gardiner said. Prototypes of the custom-made, stone-hued brick walls were trucked to the site for a viewing, to ensure that they looked correct in situ, not just under factory lights. The doors to the garage are fitted inside a pair of Gothic archways with decorative upper panels, or tympanums, like those on medieval cathedrals. “We used that as a place to delight the eye,” Mr. Gardiner said. “Parking entries can look fabulous.”