In the heart of Downtown Manhattan, One Wall Street is a treasured Art Deco landmark reborn as Downtown’s finest luxury condominium. A remarkably masterful restoration by legendary developer Harry Macklowe, the building was originally conceived as the headquarters for the Irving Trust Company by famed architect Ralph Walker. Pentagram designed the brand identity, marketing campaign, and website for the building, working closely with Macklowe Properties.
One Wall Street’s defining architectural features include hand-carved limestone facades, intricately patterned metalwork and the truly dazzling Red Room, filled with a restored mosaic, landmarked masterpiece by Hildreth Meière. The impeccable restoration honors the building’s historic interiors and is inspired by the futuristic spirit of American Art Deco. Ada Louise Huxtable, the Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic, once noted that “New York City’s triumvirate of great Art Deco buildings would consist of the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, and One Wall Street.”
Pentagram worked alongside frequent collaborator, architectural writer Raul Barreneche, to craft the strategic positioning and supporting messaging for the project. The positioning places the all-star design team at the forefront, reflected in the tagline “Downtown luxury, uptown pedigree.”
As featured in the patterns and playful applications, the brand is signaling a youthful, fashion-forward vibe, promising the resurging mix of retail, restaurants, bars and parks that are blossoming in this newly thriving historic center of the city. The building itself contains the first US location of Paris-based luxury department store Printemps.
One Wall Street is part of the resurgence of a neighborhood synonymous with work not residential life. It is the most comprehensive and ambitious of many office-to-residential conversions. The developer completely re-engineered the guts of the building, even moving the elevators to the building’s core, allowing better apartment layouts with many windows.
The brand identity centers around a serif wordmark and a OWS monogram [Bianco Serif by AlfaType] that echoes the building’s bold, angular detailing. The color palette is dominated by a strong red, a differentiator in a world of beige and gray typically seen in luxury real estate marketing. The secondary font is a chunky grotesque [Marr by Commercial] with downtown charm.
The Pentagram team designed an oversized book as part of the building’s marketing campaign, showcasing the building’s extraordinary architecture and unique amenities, including The One Club, 100,000 square feet of exclusive amenities for residents and their guests.
