Sean O’Connor drove his Jeep through the “porte cochère,” or car entrance, crossed the wide garage door at the other end and got out of the car.
From there, the garage took care of the rest, but without an assistant at the wheel. The garage in the O’Connor luxury building in Lower Manhattan is automated. No one touched the Jeep as it climbed into its parking lot, located five stories up.
This parking system is a high-tech turnaround that is only possible in buildings that have porte cochère, the urban version of the open garage: a covered entrance for cars and people that was popular at the time of horses and carriages .
“Porte cochère” —which is pronounced port kosher— is a French term that initially described a building entrance that was wide enough to pass a carriage to the inner courtyard. Imagine the palaces before. Imagine the time of Louis XIV.
As New York is living a new golden age, porte cochères are back in luxury buildings, such as the one located at 565 Broome Street, where O’Connor is the resident administrator and the least expensive department in the market It sells for 3,925 million dollars.
The essential of the modern carriage is the invisibility, or at least the option of hiding from the curious looks on the streets of the city.
Celebrities, high-profile people and individuals with ultra-high net values, particularly those who don’t usually appear in gossip columns, don’t want to be seen coming and going. La porte cochère serves as a protection for photographers, other professionals and fans, or even the average passers-by who take their phones to take a picture.
In New York 2019, many of those residents live in buildings where apartments are sold for seven or eight digit amounts. “Only a building with very wealthy tenants can afford this,” said Mosette Broderick, a professor at New York University.
Carriers take up a lot of space – more space than the departments of many New Yorkers – and space is very valuable, of course. With more than 185.8 square meters, the porte cochère located at number 40 on East End Avenue, in a new building on the Upper East Side, is about three times larger than the average department in Manhattan (68 square meters of agreement with the leasing website RENTCafe).
At number 111 on West 57th Street, an 82-story tower in the ultra-high-rise skyscraper complex known as Billionaires ’Row, developers removed a section of the former Steinway & Sons company building to create the porte cochère.
The Waldorf Astoria hotel is going to divide its famous porte cochère, which is actually an underground passage that extends across the entire width of the building between East 50th and East 49th streets.
Half will be for hotel guests, who will occupy one part of the building when its total remodeling is finished in 2021, and the other half will be for condominium residents, in the other part. Condo prices have not yet been announced.
“Having a private carriage has become a benchmark for buildings of this level; in fact, it is already a requirement, ”said Dan Tubb, sales director of Douglas Elliman at the Waldorf hotel. “The need to have a transition between the bustle of the streets and a more serene and controlled environment is growing, especially here in Manhattan.”
These types of buildings have staff that can help carry the bags that are taken to their weekend homes in Connecticut or the Hamptons into the cars of the residents. The porters and the porters are responsible for keeping track of the procession of identical models of Mercedes S-Class sedans and Cadillac Escalade vans.
Scott J. Avram, senior vice president of Lightstone, the building company of the building located at 40 East End Avenue, said the carriage was “more important than many other more traditional interior amenities” such as private dining rooms, halls Reading or game rooms.
However, some critics believe that the carriage must never have been brought back.
“They resumed that concept at a time when the need to have a car is less and less patent,” said Adrian Benepe, former commissioner of parks in New York City.
In recent years, the city has begun to distance itself from the car culture, which dominated the streets for most of the twentieth century. Miles of bus and bicycle lanes have been installed, and New York is emerging to become the first American city with a charging plan to avoid traffic jams and keep cars away from the most congested streets. Starting in 2021, motorists will have to pay a fee when driving in the busiest parts of Manhattan.
Julia Vitullo-Martin, principal investigator of the Regional Plan Association, commented that car culture had “become the maximum inequality” in New York.
“The wealthiest people not only have cars, but have one per adult – one sport utility vehicle per adult – in each house,” he said, adding that in some distant neighborhoods residents need a car to get to the subway lines or from the bus.
Everything seems to indicate that the rise of the porte cochères ended decades ago. Few buildings were built with them after World War II.
“They were already going out of style when the car was still dominant,” said Benepe, “and now that public transport alternatives are prevailing and the car is becoming less and less important as a means of transportation, it is confusing that the carriage bearing is of return”.
But, according to Avram, on East End Avenue is nothing confusing.
“It is certain that the predominant buyer of apartments with these prices has a car,” Avram explained. “From 5 million to 25 million. That is the number of homeowners and car owners. Many of them have drivers. So, whether you drive or someone else takes you, the car is part of your life. ”
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