- Year built
- 1929
- Flip tax
- 3%, buyer-paid
1 Beekman Place is, per Carter Horsley, "the most prestigious Beekman Place apartment building" — a 1929 Sloan & Robertson commission with Corbett, Harrison & MacMurray, developed by a group led by David Milton (husband of Abby Rockefeller and son-in-law of John D. Rockefeller Jr.).
The structural identity rests on three features. First, the architecturally complex East River facade — Horsley describes it as "an asymmetrical mass of balconies and bay windows that is not beautiful but as awesome as any castle's battlements." Second, the 1929 club facilities including an Olympic-size swimming pool — preserved across the building's ownership cycle and supplemented with a basketball court and golf simulator. Third, the trophy cultural resident roster — John D. Rockefeller III, David K. E. Bruce, William "Wild Bill" Donovan (OSS), Huntington Hartford, Henryk de Kwiatkowski, Stavros Niarchos (who reportedly brought eleven Rembrandts with his apartment), Mark Goodson, the Whitneys (Betsey Cushing Whitney and John Hay "Jock" Whitney occupied the penthouse triplex).
The CityRealty rating of 92 — ranked #4 in Beekman/Sutton Place, #5 in Midtown, and #21 in Manhattan — anchors the institutional benchmark.
Recent sales
- Duplex 5B6B (12 rooms, ~5,200 sf, 5 BR / 5.5 BA + staff apt, ~60 lf of East River windows per level): asking $11,500,000 in 2024-25
Limited recent open-record turnover — typical of small-unit-count trophy cooperatives. Apartment-level closing detail should be sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers for full transactional context.
What to know if you’re buying
The 1929 club facilities — Olympic pool, basketball court, golf simulator — are structurally distinguishing. Among the most amenitized prewar coops in Manhattan.
The Rockefeller-development pedigree is real institutional context. The David Milton developer relationship to the Rockefeller family anchors the building's institutional credentials.
The ~30% financing maximum is among the most conservative on the East Side. Plan for substantially-all-cash positioning.
The 3% buyer-paid flip tax is meaningful at closing.
The trophy cultural resident roster — Rockefeller, Bruce, Donovan, Hartford, Niarchos, Whitney — anchors the institutional buyer demographic.
The boutique 24-original-unit (now ~42) shareholder community is at the smallest end of institutional Manhattan cooperatives. Plan for the most institutional board review standards in the city.
The East River facade with cantilevered loggias and balconies is structurally distinguishing.
Comparable buildings
- 2 Sutton Place South — Emery Roth & Sons 1938; nearby East River trophy peer
- 1 Sutton Place South — Cross & Cross 1927 / Candela trophy peer
- 25 Sutton Place South — Cross & Cross 1928 trophy peer
- 870 United Nations Plaza — Harrison & Abramovitz 1966; nearby UN Plaza peer
- 425 East 51st Street (Beekman Hill House) — 1930 boutique Beekman peer
The Roebling Team at One Beekman
Corey Cohen · The Roebling Team at Compass 646.939.7375 · c.cohen@compass.com
Sources: CityRealty (Carter Horsley review, building 90); Wikipedia (Beekman Place); Christopher Gray, "Streetscapes/1 Beekman Place; A Rockefeller Co-op and Its 460-Foot-Long Garage," New York Times, October 1, 2000; Brown Harris Stevens; Compass (5B6B listing); Robert A.M. Stern, Gregory Gilmartin, and Thomas Mellins, New York 1930 (Rizzoli, 1987); NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers.