5. The New York by Gehry Site Used to Be a Parking Lot

View from New York by Gehry

New York Downtown Hospital, also known as New York Presbyterian/Lower Manhattan Hospital owned the site, which was a parking lot. With the hospital in financial distress, it issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) to develop the site, stipulating that one floor be dedicated for hospital use and the land was sold to Forest City Ratner in 2004. Later, the developers were approached to include a Pre-K to Grade 8 school in the building (to help address a city-wide school shortage), which Forest City Ratner thought would help the marketing of New York by Gehry as well as raise the starting height of the residential units to make them more desirable.

Today, the school occupies first five floors and has over 600 students enrolled. Then there are three floors of amenities including a swimming pool, library, gym, virtual golf, kids play room, screening room, tweens den, drawing room with grand piano, and spa.