Rough diamond shines beneath glitzy towers.

Gallery owner, Max Protetch, is treating his first true development project with the same reverence he does any painting or architectural sketch hanging in his infamous Chelsea gallery.

"I have displayed the works of some of the best architects of our time in my gallery--from Frank Gehry to Rem Koolhaas and Zaha Hadid, and I wasn't about to do a development in which I would cut corners," he said.

Protetch, who is in the throes of converting the turn of the century Machinery Exchange Building on Hester Street into 14 condominiums, didn't cut corners with the building. He pitched a pretty penny to retain the historical flavor of the building originally a horse stable sporting bite marks gouged into high ceiling beams and ghostly lettering painted on it's facade harkening back to the buildings past fifty years as an aging machinery parts warehouse. Architects retained the interiors original structure while blending new elements such as beams made of expensive Southern yellow pine, a material which has not been used in any building in Manhattan in the past 100 years.

"The building was such a great old structure, and there were such wonderful bones to the project, it created a great canvas for an elegant modern design," said Mark DuBois, principal of Ohlhausen DuBois Architects who worked in tandem with Ed Rawlings of Rawlings Architects on the project. "It's the kind of project that will have an almost visceral effect on anyone who walks into the space, and you can feel that elegance."

Protetch was impressed with DuBois sensitivity in his work. and some of his previous projects through which he worked to blend old and modern designs, most remarkably when he renovated a turn of the century granite water pumping station to create the Gatehouse, a performing arts theatre in Harlem.

The project's inclusion of such luxuries as radiant heat, stone, glass and five layers of soundproofing materials between floors that will never be seen, satisfied Prortetch's overall vision for the building.

"Most of the new construction is Manhattan are really just plasterboard boxes without any texture or feeling for what the building originally was. With this building we set out to create something more like the buildings in Europe, where they take an old building and juxtapose extremely modern clean designs with the old, while maintaining some feeling of texture. We found the right architect and we succeeded in doing this," Protecht said.

Protetch admits he could never afford to actually live in the building himself, where prices will probably run between $1200 psf, and $1800 psf for the penthouse.

However he believes investing in such an artful building will pay off even in the event the economy takes a turn for the worse.

"This is part of the way I convince clients and banks the building makes sense. I always tell people in a bull market you can sell mediocre paintings for a good price, but in a bear market you can only sell the really excellent paintings for a good price. Even if the economy takes a downturn this building is something our clients have bought into that will hold its value," Protetch said.