There is exactly one moment of idiosyncrasy in architect Robert A.M. Stern’s two-towered, limestone-clad, megabucks condo nearing completion at 15 Central Park West in Manhattan.

A stone trellis draws together a roofscape of asymmetric towers and a draping buttress. At 548 feet high, this silhouette is picturesque when seen from Central Park — a welcome relief from the bland calculation that otherwise infuses this 886,000- square-foot behemoth. 
 
What was in play is that Manhattan rarity: a full city block on Central Park with views on all sides. It’s a site that developers salivated over for three decades until a group including William and Arthur Zeckendorf ponied up an eye-popping $400 million in 2003.
 

The brothers’ company, Zeckendorf Development, poured another $400 million into the new building and realized record- shattering prices on the result. (Sales have topped $6,000 a square foot. Former Citigroup Inc. Chairman Sanford Weill paid $42.4 million for a penthouse.) All 201 units sold months ago. In real estate terms, the building is genius.

Zeckendorf hired Stern, the financial upper crust’s go-to guy for impeccable neo-Georgian country houses. There’s no one who understands the architectural DNA of Manhattan better than Stern, who has produced five invaluable books on the city’s architecture. He somehow also finds time to be dean of the Yale School of Architecture.