Blooming Buildings
Friendly faces in windows or on fire escapes make for kind, lovable neighborhoods, according to Jane Jacobs's brand of urban understanding. Just imagine what friendly faces admiring their blooming window flower boxes can do.
Unfortunately, flower boxes have not yet entered the official real estate agent's "amenity" blue book — or should we say "green book?" They are found only irregularly on elegant townhouses and not-so-elegant tenement buildings.
Turning the tide toward increased flower boxes is the recently completed Flowerbox Building at 259 E. 7th St., between avenues C and D in the East Village.
The building, with eight condominium apartments, has a glass-and-metal entrance marquee and large, multipaned windows that recall some of the handsome pre-war industrial buildings in SoHo and TriBeCa. Its window planters are 18 inches deep and run the width of the lower floors.
The tree-lined block on East 7th Street is one of the nicest in the East Village, with several handsome townhouses and proximity to several of the area's very lush and impressive community gardens.
The Flowerbox Building is among the most attractive new low-rise buildings in the city, and easily the most appealing in the East Village — even more so than the huge Lower East Side Consolidation II developments nearby that boast three-story red-brick buildings surrounding large communal gardens.
Seth Tapper is the developer of the Flowerbox Building, and Derek Sanders of CAN Resources — of the Mercer Hotel and Joe's Pub at the Public Theater fame — is the designer. WSE Design Partnership Architects is the architect of record.
Other buildings with flower boxes include 30 E. 85th St., where they can be found on ledges flanking the entrance — a convenient solution to providing sidewalk landscaping on very narrow sidewalks.
The prettiest flower box in Manhattan is probably at 52 Riverside Drive, and perhaps the cutest is at the base of the curved corner of 160 Riverside Drive.
Flower boxes help soften the edges of our brick-and-mortar environment, and thanks to perennials, they can add visual warmth even in winter.
Indeed, their pretty presence in even the most humble surroundings is a sign of optimism and of the indomitable power of beauty to make us smile, knowing that someone cares.
Mr. Horsley is the editor of CityRealty.com.
