Apartment rentals New York with New York by Gehry

If there’s one thing luxury apartment hunters in Manhattan scrutinize more than their potential new home’s features, it would have to be the amenities being offered in the building they choose to inhabit. From grand swimming pools to state-of-the-art fitness centers, New York’s luxury rental buildings are putting out a stunning variety of amenities to lure in potential residents. Interestingly enough, out of all these dazzling services, it is the hotel-style concierge service that’s become an increasingly in-demand amenity in New York City apartment buildings.

Rich people things: New York City is full of them, from the hundred different takes on seared foie gras to the chilly boutiques of Soho and so on up and down the market. While our media has done a good job of making sure that New Yorkers are up on the latest trends among very wealthy New Yorkers -- and we've certainly done our part here at the Luxury Rentals Manhattan blog, at least insofar as noting the popular renting-a-condo trend among the city's  star athletes -- there's a sense, at least for those of us still living in the actual-existing economy, that these are trends not worth chasing. Which makes it all the more appealing that, albeit at the highest of high-end price points, the wealthiest New Yorkers are now making like everyone else in NYC. Where most of us live in Manhattan rental apartments, the richest New Yorkers long turned to ultra-exclusive co-ops. Now, though, with uncertainty the word throughout the economy, New York's rich are opting to do what everyone else does -- and rent. Yes, they're renting the highest of high-end Manhattan rentals, but for the wealthiest New Yorkers as well as everyone else, renting seems to be the move. The reasoning behind it, unsurprisingly, is proof that -- at least when it comes to finding a place to live in NYC -- the rich are not so very different from you and I.

Given all the attention that NYC real estate heads gave 8 Spruce Street, the game-changing new luxury rental building in the Financial District designed by Frank Gehry, it's something of a surprise that there are things about the building we don't already know. Any Manhattan real estate watcher can quote you the starting prices for studio apartments for rent at 8 Spruce Street -- around $2,600, if you were wondering -- and of course the name of the star architect behind this most well-observed of Financial District rental listings is right there in one of 8 Spruce Street's alternate names, New York By Gehry. But for all this celebrity luxury rental listing's sky-high profile, it's something of a secret that 8 Spruce Street belongs among on any list of green rental listings in Manhattan. And while that secret is out, there's also a reason why 8 Spruce Street isn't flacking its green building bona fides.