The late High Modernist architect and educator Charles Gwathmey created a body of work defined by playfully bold geometric forms and a spare use of adornment employed with formal elegance. The Yale-trained minimalist began his career in the 1960s creating fantastically unique beach bungalows in the Hamptons and other coastal communities around the Northeast, which are still highly prized today. 

Gwathmey quickly became a favorite with the aesthetically adventurous. He did Faye Dunaway’s apartment at the Eldorado in 1969, transformed David Geffen’s Fifth Avenue co-op in 1979, and worked with Steven Spielberg several times, including on a six-acre waterside compound in East Hampton. The North Carolina native is, however, probably best known for his meticulous renovation and expansion of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum on Fifth Avenue during the early 1990s. 

About a decade after he completed the Guggenheim overhaul, he set out to design a sprawling loft in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood for his stepson, filmmaker and producer Eric Steel, whose award-winning 2006 documentary, The Bridge, controversially captured several suicides from San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge.

Once leased by Ariana Huffington—an arrangement that resulted in a $275,000 lawsuit—Steel last had the loft up for rent in 2023 for a whopping $32,000 per month, according to StreetEasy. Now, the roughly 4,800-square-foot condo has come up for sale for the first time in almost a quarter century, looking much as it did when Gwathmey designed it nearly 20 years ago. Kristi Ambrosetti of Sotheby’s International Realty, East Side Manhattan Brokerage, holds the $10.5 million listing.

Gwathmey placed the kitchen, bathrooms, and other services at the far ends of the roughly 40-foot-wide and 100-foot-long full-floor apartment, leaving the central area as a vast space large enough to rollerskate through. Just off the foyer is a powder room with an interestingly angled mirror that adds a new dimension to the apartment’s otherwise rigid linearity.

The living and dining space stretches nearly 50 feet long with a rhythmic row of massive windows that flood it with southwestern sunlight; a steel and glass pocket door leads from the lounge area into a study with a built-in desk integrated with a full wall of bookshelves. A peninsula snack bar divides the kitchen from a casual lounge, creating a cozy space complete with a wall-mounted TV and more library shelves. Behind the sleek oak cabinets and steel countertops—which include an undercounter ice maker and a six-burner commercial range—a 17-foot corridor offers generous storage, leading to a large pantry and one of the most stylishly simple laundry rooms imaginable.

The secondary bedroom is ample and en suite with built-in wardrobes, while the primary bedroom is a spacious retreat with a custom-fitted walk-in closet and a bathroom big enough to do yoga in. Stainless-steel twin vanities are tucked into niches at opposite ends of the 20-foot-long space, while the water closet and double shower are obscured behind frosted glass and metal doors.

The eight-story building, with a high-end furniture showroom occupying the ground floor, has fewer than 10 residences, adding to its sense of privacy. And its location, just around the corner from at least five subway lines and about equidistant from the Chelsea Market and Union Square, makes it convenient for getting just about anywhere in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Click here for more photos of the New York City loft.