There’s a reason those hotshot 1980s real-estate developers were called brassy.
They used a lot of brass.
But for a lot of people these days, brass has no class.
“Now, we’re more refined, more restrained,” said William Lie Zeckendorf, of the development family. Brass is out. Polished or brushed nickel is in. In the company’s 1920s-style limestone-and-brick condominium rising at 515 Park Ave., only nickel will be used in the bathrooms. “If you look at the great 1920s apartment buildings, it’s all nickel-plate,” he said. “It’s less shiny.”
In another new tower — at an unannounced location in the East 60s — shine is also out. “We won’t be using a glitzy, polished-brass marquee,” said Robert Skolnick, development director for Jack Parker Corp.
“We’ll be using a dark green or dark gray canvas awning, just like you see on Park or Fifth Avenue, something that doesn’t scream: `Hey, look at me!”‘
As new money copies old money, there’s only one thing new tenants like to see polished: their doorman’s buttons. And developers are getting the message.
Whether they’re putting up mega-story, superluxury condominium buildings or fancy rentals, developers are now taking up, with their customary vengeance, what decorators and style-setters have been using in their widely publicized homes for years.
When Martha Stewart puts an article on replating antique nickel faucets in her magazine — as she did four years ago — the consumer, not to mention the real-estate developer, can’t be far behind.
John Saladino, an interior designer known for his understated look — and his millionaire customers — agrees that brass is outre.
Although he has been using nickel faucets for decades — at first, he had to have them custom-made — he acknowledged a widespread trend towards silver metals.
“It’s basically a reaction against the often bright choices of the 1980s when all of Wall Street put brass on everything that didn’t move,” he said.
“And the brass was rarely solid brass. It was plated, and it betrayed itself in four years or so.”
Within the past five years, the use of nickel and stainless steel has become rampant. Stainless now blankets counter tops and appliances. Apartment owners who stripped the paint off their 1920s metal door frames were surprised to find steel with the warm look (and even the tiny dents) of old Mexican jewelry. They asked how they could keep it without rust; lacquering it was the answer.
A few years ago, design mavens — again publicized by Stewart — started buying dental cabinets in stainless steel, old and new.
It was institutional — but institutional with a patina.
And now, for the first time since the go-go 1980s, sales of brass faucets by the United States’ manufacturers, Kohler and American Standard, have been eclipsed by chrome and nickel fixtures. And inspired by the very high-end success of the English company, Czech & Speake, the American companies began to develop the nickel fixtures in old-fashioned styles.
At American Standard, the nickel faucets were introduced only a year ago. In the first six months of 1998, sales more than doubled over the last six months of 1997, according to David Lipkin, vice president of marketing.
Lipkin called the growth spurt “the most astounding I’ve ever seen.” In just one year, brushed nickel has grown to 12 percent of the company’s total faucet business, about the same percentage as brass. Sales of chrome faucets are up 17 percent over the last three years, while brass has risen only 1 percent.
At Waterworks, a manufacturer and retailer of a whole line of indulgently expensive bath and kitchen fittings, based in Danbury, Conn., nickel far outsells other finishes, said Elana Cooper, the director of marketing.
“Nickel has a jewelry feeling,” Cooper said. In the kitchen, she added, brushed nickel — not polished — is a big seller because it most closely matches the stainless steel that is so popular for sinks. The prices of brushed or polished nickel fixtures are actually about the same as those for brass. At Waterworks, an old-fashioned exposed shower with a gutsy round head costs $1,150 in chrome, $1,381 in brass and $1,381 in nickel.
Cooper, among others, credits the vogue for art deco fixtures, often found at flea markets, as the reason that manufacturers began to produce faucets resembling those of the 1920s and 1930s.
The real art deco fixtures, with their chunky, silvery silhouettes and cross-bar handles, can be found at places like Urban Archaeology in Manhattan and United Wrecking in Stamford, Conn. The antique faucets, especially English ones, are the horror of plumbers, because of their out-of-date parts and differing pipe sizes.
For their part, the manufacturers cite not only changing style but practicality. They say there is buyer resistance to both modern and restored brass because it’s hard to maintain: It peels, it flakes — and household detergents can wreck it.
For those who insist on brass, the big companies are coming out with a new look, really a brass-colored finish on chrome. Kohler calls it Vibrant; at American Standard the new finish will be phased in by late September. The new brasslike faucets will come with a lifetime warranty.
But for the developers — and a lot of their clients — practicality is not the issue.
“Brass is glitz,” said Skolnick, whose company put up the Knickerbocker, a condominium building on East 72nd Street, whose brochure is distinguished by its veddy, veddy English air, with butlers turning on the “taps” — chrome ones, of course. “Brass is a substitute for gold,” he said, “and we think people prefer the more traditional look of chrome and nickel.”
