Sky-cell - Robert Brace

Can Bronaryre’s Manhattan “sky-cell” be visited?

For the first time in half a century, the penthouse at 70 Pine Street is open to the public. Floors 63-66 have been converted into a restaurant—Saga, opened just 4 weeks prior to the publication of FLOREAT LUX, and fittingly the site of a celebration for the book’s launch. The 66th floor—Bronaryre’s “sky cell”—has been preserved, including the pint-sized pinion-driven elevator emerging through the floor.

This photograph was taken from the terrace on the 63rd floor. The Empire State Building’s spire is brightly lit, center-left, emerging in Midtown taller than all the others. The Chrysler’s spire is also visible, although it appears squared off by the tall building behind it (the Citigroup Center). The catenary curves of the “noble Triborough” are visible to the right and, further right, a span of the distant Whitestone, where the East River becomes Long Island Sound. The golden triangular top in the center of the shot belongs to the Foley Square US Courthouse, site of many famous trials, from the Rosenbergs to Osama bin Laden (in absentia), and a place a little too well known to the many Manhattanites who, like the author, have become acquainted with it via jury duty.

In New York, no restaurant will long survive on location alone, but Saga has food & service to match the panorama and is destined to be listed among the finest in the city—thus, for the cost of a (superb) meal, anyone can see the same view that fascinated Sabrina in the sky-cell.

Is there a real apartment like Bronaryre’s Manhattan “sky-cell”?

Bronaryre’s apartment in a spire was inspired by the penthouse of 70 Pine Street, New York. This 1930’s Art Deco building was once the world’s third-tallest and twice the tallest in Downtown: firstly when it was built, and then again after 9/11. The solarium in the spire—the “sky-cell” of FLOREAT LUX—was for a time an observatory open to the public. Later, when AIG acquired the building, the space was used for private entertaining, and it was during this period that the author became familiar with it.

In FLOREAT LUX, Bronaryre’s building is situated not at 70 Pine Street but amid that mysterious warren of narrow lanes immediately below 48 Wall Street—once headquarters of the Bank of New York, and whose magnificent main banking hall is now an event venue, including conversion into “Club Ralph”: a Jazz Age nightclub created for the after-party following the 2019 Ralph Lauren fashion show, some features of which were incorporated into the Cavendish House episode in FLOREAT LUX.

This shot of 70 Pine Street’s spire was taken from the roof of the Beekman Hotel, about half a mile away.