Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions below about it.
1 How long does it take to reach the 85th floor?
2 How far from the ground is the living room?
3 When will the building be finished?
4 How tall is the building?
5 Are they having difficulties selling the apartments?
6 How much does a standard apartment in 157 cost?
7 What does 'three years' refer to at the end of the clip?
To check the answers you can read the transcript below.
Bronx right, so you’re seeing deep into the Bronx…
This is Alexei Barrionuevo, I cover the world of high and real estate for The New York Times.
It took six minutes in the construction elevator to reach the 85th floor of New York’s tallest residential building. Standing in the living room of this four-floor apartment, 850 feet from the ground Central Park lays out like a giant green carpet. For now it’s just bare walls and concrete on the inside, but by early 2014 the owners of apartment 85 will stand in their master bathroom with his/her showers and stare out giant windows at the Statue of Liberty, the World Trade Center and the Empire State Building.
Already several of the world’s billionaires have signed up to live here, including some from the United States as well as China, Russia and the United Kingdom.
Rising to just over 1,000 feet at the top, 157 was built with them in mind. The French architect Christian de Portzamparc designed the shimmering outside. The Danish designer Thomas Johanson is doing the apartment finishes.
Even as the global economy struggles to recover, there seems to be no shortage of millionaires and billionaires willing to pay upwards of 95 million dollars for a chance to live here.
157 once seemed a risky prospect in the dark days after Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008 but now it is set off a tall-building’s arms race.
157 will hold on to the title of tallest residential building in the city for about three years, when another building at 432 Park Avenue it is expected to soar almost 400 feet higher, but will it have views like this?
