PICS: Views From The Rooftop Of Essex Crossing On Lower East Side

LOWER EAST SIDE, NY — While New York City's celebrities and politicians were awing at Manhattan's new west side neighborhood Hudson Yards, Patch got a glimpse at the apartments — and rooftop views — at the tallest building in the Essex Crossing development on the Lower East Side.

Images from the rooftop of the building show other to-be-completed sites at Essex Crossing and Extell's tower rising above longtime Lower East Side mid-rises in Two Bridges, where four more towers similar to it could rise in the coming years.

The Essex, at 125 Delancey St., is a part of the Essex Crossing development, previously known as the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area.

The site sat vacant since the late 1960s after walk-up tenement buildings were demolished, displacing more than 1,800 families, the New York Times reported in 2017. Decades of debate left the lots empty or filled with parking spaces.

Now, the entire complex will include 1,079 units, more than half set aside for below-market-rate apartments. Some 350,000 square feet of office space is expected too.

Former tenants of the demolished tenements were given priority for the below-market-rate units. Between The Essex as well as The Rollins and Frances Goldin Senior Apartments around the corner, 27 of the former tenants have moved into the new development — including one who moved into an apartment last summer across the street from where she grew up.

The 26-story building is more than 50 percent full after its 98 market-rate apartments hit the market in January.

There are no more below-market-rate apartments left at The Essex.

Studios to three-bedroom units for the remaining apartments start at $3,995.

But with skyline views, upcoming market spaces Essex Street Market and The Market Line, and luxury amenities — like an in-unit washer and dryer, two outdoor terraces on the sixth and 26th floors and a fitness room with Peloton bikes — Essex Crossing's development director Issac Henderson doesn't expect the apartments to last for long.

The Essex Crossing "vibe" aims to differ from its west side counterpart, Hudson Yards.

"Hudson Yards is insane and it's awesome," said JR Sena, senior marketing director at Douglas Elliman, which is handling leasing for the apartments, but on the Lower East Side's Essex Crossing, "it's a different vibe."

"It's a little more buttoned-up there," he said. "Whereas here, it feels a little more relaxed."

A public park adjacent to The Rollins, where the Lower East Side's Target and Trader Joe's are located, will open this spring and Regal Cinemas is expected to open in the coming weeks, according to Essex Crossing. The full project will be completed in 2024.

Essex Street Market and The Market Line, a separate bazaar-like marketplace, will open this spring. Vendors of the two markets include Nom Wha Tea Parlor, Formaggio, Doughnut Plant, Veselka among others.

"We're trying to make this equal if not better than some of the most famous markets in the world," Henderson said. "That's what we aspire to do."

Check out photos from Thursday at The Essex's rooftop terrace and model apartments below: