5 Franklin Place

Franklin Place has been on the map since 1809, a one-block passage between Franklin and White Streets that ran under the name Scott's Alley into the mid-nineteenth century before taking its name from the Benjamin Franklin street beside it. It is still private property, owned by the buildings that line it, and still paved in Belgian blocks and flagstone. In a neighborhood that turned its warehouses into the city's most expensive lofts, this is the rarer thing: a street the city never took.

Number 5 arrived in 2015, a condominium by Eran Chen's ODA New York for the Elad Group, its upper floors cantilevered over its Broadway neighbor and its lobby entered from the alley's cobbles. The building carries a full-time doorman and concierge, a gym, a children's playroom, garage parking, and a roof deck with a pool.

The paper trail on this apartment is unusually public. Model Martha Hunt bought the corner two-bedroom in 2017, and in October 2021 Architectural Digest published it as the work of Studio Giancarlo Valle, photographed by Stephen Kent Johnson. The story documents the renovation piece by piece: a wall opened, the floor plan redrawn, bedroom walls coated in sage limewash from Portola Paints, plaster by Kamp Studios, a bronze and ceramic dining table made with ceramicist Natalie Weinberger, and patinated copper shelving built to read like Judd stacks. Valle called the project a testing ground for the studio.

The offering is 1,707 square feet on the building's corner: two bedrooms, three full marble baths, five rooms wrapped in southern, northern and eastern glass. The kitchen is open and marble. The primary suite holds custom built-ins, a walk-in closet, a sitting area, and a windowed bath. Ceilings run 9.5 feet over five-inch plank oak floors, and Lower Manhattan sits framed in the corner windows, which is the reason, her broker says, Hunt chose the apartment in the first place: the light.

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