Fashion Photographer Roxanne Lowit's Kips Bay Penthouse Is for Sale

A fashion photographer raised her daughter in a West Village artist-in-residence loft with a low monthly lease that later expired. After the rent rose sharply, she moved to a temporary place near the Javits Center while her career brought higher pay and wider renown for intimate backstage photographs. She searched for more than a year before finding a top-floor two-bedroom penthouse in I.M. Pei’s Kips Bay Towers. She bought it in 2006 for just under $1 million and spent 16 years there, splitting time with a home upstate until her death in 2022. Renovations by her partner expanded window views and added mirrored panels, creating a refracted light effect across the apartment. She used the home as a workspace, including renting a nearby studio for an office.

"By 2000, the deal had expired and the owners wanted $10,000 a month. It was time to move on. She rented a place near the Javits Center but knew it was always going to be temporary. Lowit had by that point gained renown and better paychecks for her intimate backstage candids of models and designers - an unguarded moment with Kate Moss done up for the runway, Jean-Michel Basquiat sitting stone still with his cigarette at the Palladium. She could buy something."

"It took more than a year of looking before she found the top-floor apartment in I.M. Pei's Kips Bay Towers, Salle tells me, but her mother knew it was right almost immediately. The spread of windows looking out onto the Manhattan skyline toward the East River brought in the perfect light - of course a photographer would fall in love. "She walked in, saw the view, and was like, This is the place," Salle says."

"Lowit bought the two-bedroom penthouse in the Brutalist tower for just under $1 million in 2006 and spent the next 16 years, until her death in 2022, between the apartment and a home upstate. She never tired of the view. "Whether it was snowing, whether it was raining, whether it was sunrise, whether it was sunset, or it was nighttime and the light was sparkling," says Salle."

"In fact, before Lowit and her lifelong partner, John Granito, a handy MacGyver type, moved in, the pair renovated to maximize the windows. There were already a few mirrored panels on the walls near the windows, and Granito installed more all around the apartment. He also pulled back a wall to open up the living room space to more windows. The result is a sort of dizzying refraction of light and view in all directions."

Read at Curbed