Roxanne Lowit’s I.M. Pei Kips Bay Penthouse Is for Sale

Lowit liked the view from the residence, which seems out on the U.N. and the East River.
Photo: DD Reps

The trend photographer Roxanne Lowit raised her daughter, Vanessa Contessa Salle, in a West Village artist-in-residence loft the place she had wrangled a $500-per-month 20-year lease. By 2000, the deal had expired and the homeowners needed $10,000 a month. It was time to maneuver on. She rented a spot close to the Javits Center however knew it was at all times going to be momentary. Lowit had by that time gained renown and better paychecks for her intimate backstage candids of fashions and designers — an unguarded moment with Kate Moss carried out up for the runway, Jean-Michel Basquiat sitting stone still along with his cigarette on the Palladium. She may purchase one thing. It took greater than a 12 months of wanting earlier than she discovered the top-floor residence in I.M. Pei’s Kips Bay Towers, Salle tells me, however her mom knew it was proper virtually instantly. The unfold of home windows searching onto the Manhattan skyline towards the East River introduced within the excellent gentle — after all a photographer would fall in love. “She walked in, saw the view, and was like, This is the place,” Salle says.

Lowit on the launch of her e-book Yves Saint Laurent in 1994.
Photo: John Lamparski/Getty Images

The mirrored cupboards permits the view to be seen from any angle within the residence.
Photo: DD Reps

Lowit purchased the two-bedroom penthouse in the Brutalist tower for just below $1 million in 2006 and spent the following 16 years, till her death in 2022, between the residence and a house upstate. She by no means uninterested in the view. “Whether it was snowing, whether it was raining, whether it was sunrise, whether it was sunset, or it was nighttime and the light was sparkling,” says Salle. In reality, earlier than Lowit and her lifelong accomplice, John Granito, a helpful MacGyver sort, moved in, the pair renovated to maximise the home windows. There have been already a number of mirrored panels on the partitions close to the home windows, and Granito put in extra throughout the residence. He additionally pulled again a wall to open up the lounge area to extra home windows. The result’s a form of dizzying refraction of sunshine and examine in all instructions.

Lowit in her residence.
Photo: Courtesy of Vanessa Contessa Sallé

Lowit used the residence as a workspace, at one level renting a next-door studio residence to make use of as an workplace. Salle, who labored for her mom on the time, recalled a bustling scene of workers, fellow artists, and brokers: “She would always have her meetings at the apartment, anytime she had to entertain a potential client or anything like that. If we had castings for models, we would do it in the apartment.” The floor-to-ceiling mirrored cupboards in the lounge saved Lowit’s archives, with extra overflowing into her bed room. “She had her closet area and then there was just … more prints,” Salle remembers.

Lowit liked to entertain, and Salle recollects a rotating forged of tourists, from Fran Drescher to Dianne Brill to an Italian prince, usually having fun with takeout. (“She wasn’t a cook, as you might guess from the size of the refrigerator,” Salle tells me with amusing.) Lowit, by means of sheer pressure of character and can, had introduced a downtown temper to East thirty third Street. Even the opened-up front room made it really feel extra like an artist’s loft. “She was really able to fulfill her dream,” Salle says, “of finding another spot that felt like home.”

Lowit didn’t prepare dinner, however the kitchen remains to be nicely appointed.
Photo: DD Reps

The closets have been overflowing together with her archives.
Photo: DD Reps

Lowit’s coveted view.
Photo: DD Reps

Granito redid the entire flooring within the residence earlier than the couple moved in.
Photo: DD Reps

The itemizing is on the highest ground of I.M. Pei’s Brutalist Kips Bay Towers.
Photo: DD Reps