Claremont Hall (100 Claremont Avenue)
100 Claremont Avenue, New York, NY 10027
BBL 1019927501 · BIN 1086559
- Year built
- 2022
- Type
- Condominium
- Units
- 165
- Floors
- 41
- Landmark
- No
Claremont Hall is the first new condominium of consequence built in Morningside Heights in a generation, and it exists because an institution decided to monetize the sky above its campus rather than sell the campus itself. Union Theological Seminary — founded 1836, on its Claremont Avenue quadrangle since 1910, and affiliated with Columbia University — carried a maintenance obligation on a landmarked Gothic complex that its endowment could not comfortably fund. The transaction that followed is the building: a development team of Lendlease, LMXD (an affiliate of L+M Development Partners) and Daiwa House built a 41-story tower on the northwest corner of the seminary block, and the seminary took back academic space and faculty housing inside it.
The structural point buyers should understand first is what this is not. Claremont Hall is not a ground lease. The offering plan on file is explicit: each unit owner takes fee title to the unit, in the ordinary condominium manner. The seminary relationship instead runs through three other instruments, all documented in the plan. The first is a Declaration of Zoning Lot Development Agreement — the mechanism by which the seminary's unused development rights were merged into the zoning lot that produced the tower's height. The second is a set of reciprocal easements with the seminary: for ventilation of the building's parking areas onto seminary property, for access and egress from exit doors abutting the seminary courtyard, and for construction, maintenance and pedestrian passage through the Cloister, a one-story enclosed corridor running east–west from Hastings Hall to the renovated Refectory. The third is the seminary's own purchase, in bulk under the same offering plan, of 28 UTS residential units and one UTS academic unit.
The consequence is a genuinely unusual building. The condominium is divided into two sections — a Tower Section of 165 residences plus a resident manager's unit, and a UTS Section of the seminary's units — governed by a Condominium Board over the general common elements and a separate Tower Board that sets common charges and handles matters exclusive to the tower. Amenities in the cellar and on floors one through three and eight are shared between tower residents and the seminary's residential occupants. A prospective buyer is therefore buying into a building whose neighbors include an operating theological seminary, whose amenity floor was once that seminary's dining hall, and whose governance runs on two boards rather than one.
Robert A.M. Stern Architects took the assignment seriously in the way the firm usually does when handed a campus. The base is stone-detailed Gothic Revival, deliberately continuous with the 1910 quadrangle; the tower above it is a masonry-and-glass shaft that reads, from Riverside Drive and from Sakura Park, as the tallest thing in Morningside Heights. SLCE Architects served as architect of record per the plan, with WSP as engineers; CetraRuddy handled the lobby arrival and amenity interiors. The Refectory Pool — a 48-foot saltwater pool installed beneath the seminary refectory's retained Gothic ceiling and chandeliers — is the single most photographed amenity built in Manhattan in the last several years, and it is not a marketing conceit: it is an adaptive reuse of a real room.
For buyers, the trade is straightforward. Claremont Hall delivers new-construction condominium product with a marquee architectural credential in a neighborhood that has almost none of it — Morningside Heights is a market of pre-war academic co-ops, and the closest peer inventory sits fifteen blocks south. Pricing reflects that scarcity in both directions: the building prices above everything around it, and the pool of comparables against which it prices is small.
Architecture and unit composition
The 165 tower residences occupy portions of floors 10 through the penthouse — construction floor 40 — in one- through four-bedroom layouts across roughly 255,000 square feet. The resident manager's unit sits on the fourth floor and, per the plan, is owned by the condominium board. Below the residences, the building's lower floors carry the shared amenity program and the seminary's own space; the plan also documents windowless accessory storage rooms attached to a handful of low-floor and G-line units, which are explicitly non-habitable.
Exposures are the building's product. At 41 stories on a Morningside Heights ridge that sits roughly a hundred feet above the Hudson, upper-floor residences look west across Riverside Park to the river and the Palisades, north toward the George Washington Bridge, east across the Columbia campus, and south down the length of Manhattan. Interiors are new-construction contemporary rather than pre-war-referential — the Gothic argument is made on the exterior and in the amenity spaces, not in the apartments.
Building operations
Full-service at the new-development standard: 24-hour concierge, a live-in resident manager, handyman and porter staff, bicycle storage, 68 parking licenses and 24 storage-bin licenses. The amenity program spans a portion of the cellar and floors one through three and eight — the Refectory Pool, a double-height lobby, a reading room, a fitness center, a children's playroom, and a residents' lounge opening to a terrace over Sakura Park.
Two governance facts belong on any buyer's diligence list. First, the two-board structure: the Condominium Board administers the general common elements, while the Tower Board determines common charges for tower unit owners and handles tower-exclusive matters. Second, the sponsor's reserved rights. The offering plan expressly permits the sponsor to rent rather than sell tower units, and discloses that a significant proportion of tower units may be sponsor-owned and tenant-occupied for some period. The plan also opened with a deliberately reduced offering — 36 of the 165 tower units released initially, with the remaining 129 released to market over time. Anyone underwriting the building today should ask the managing agent for the current owner-occupancy and sponsor-retention figures rather than assuming a fully sold-out condominium.
Recent sales
Claremont Hall is the price ceiling of its neighborhood by a wide margin, which makes it a difficult building to comp and an easy building to mis-price. Morningside Heights trades primarily as a pre-war academic co-op market — Riverside Drive and Claremont Avenue prewar buildings, largely Columbia- and seminary-adjacent, at per-room pricing that bears no relationship to new-construction condominium dollars per square foot. Claremont Hall's true peer set is not local: it is the Upper West Side's contemporary condominium inventory fifteen to fifty blocks south, discounted for location and credited for architecture, views and the amenity program.
Two features shape negotiation. The first is the release cadence — with the sponsor originally releasing 36 units and holding back 129, resale sellers have at times competed directly against sponsor inventory, and sponsor pricing sets the reference point. The second is exposure. The spread between a west-facing high-floor line with river and Palisades views and an interior or low-floor line is unusually wide in this building, because the view premium is the thing Morningside Heights cannot otherwise offer. Line-level comparables, not building averages, are the right anchor. Unit-level transaction history is maintained in The Roebling Research Library and shared with clients during diligence.
Recent closings at this building, sourced from NYC Department of Finance records. Apartment-level detail (line, condition, asking-price context) verified upon consultation request.
| Date | Unit | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Jul 20, 2026 | 19D | $1,270,000 |
| Jul 15, 2026 | 35C | $3,800,000 |
| Jul 7, 2026 | 16G | $1,635,000 |
| Jun 30, 2026 | 12E | $1,685,000 |
| Jun 22, 2026 | 18B | $2,360,000 |
| Jun 24, 2026 | 14F | $2,727,000 |
Full closing history with price-per-square-foot over time, the complete retrade record, and every line that has traded.
Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 1-01992-7501) and verified listing data. Apartment-level facts (line, condition, asking-price context) curated and cross-verified by The Roebling Team research desk. Not all transactions cross-verify with ACRIS records — sponsor and LLC purchases sometimes record at stipulated values rather than market price.
What to know if you’re buying
Read the seminary documents, not just the by-laws. The Zoning Lot Development Agreement, the Cloister Easement Agreement and the reciprocal access and ventilation easements are all on file and all bind the property. They are not onerous, but they are unusual, and your attorney should read them rather than assume a standard condominium fact pattern.
Confirm the sponsor's remaining position. The plan permits renting rather than selling, and the initial offering was deliberately partial. Owner-occupancy ratio matters for lender approval, for the building's day-to-day character, and for resale.
The two-board structure affects common charges. The Tower Board sets tower common charges; the Condominium Board governs general common elements shared with the UTS Section. Ask how general common expenses — including the shared amenity floors — are allocated between the sections.
Amenity access is shared with the seminary's residents. The pool, lounge and lower floors are shared amenities under the plan. This is a feature for most buyers and a consideration for a few; know it before you close.
Location is academic, not commercial. The building sits on the seminary block with Columbia's campus, Riverside Church, Sakura Park and Riverside Park within a few minutes' walk. The 1 train at 116th Street is the closest subway; the neighborhood's retail depth is thin by Upper West Side standards.
What to know if you’re selling
Lead with the architecture and the pool. Robert A.M. Stern Architects and an adaptive-reuse Gothic swimming hall are the two facts that travel outside the neighborhood, and buyers who will pay this building's numbers are usually coming from outside the neighborhood.
Price the line, not the building. The west-facing high-floor river-view lines and the interior lines are effectively different products. Anchor to the most recent closed sale on the same or an adjacent line.
Know what the sponsor is asking. If sponsor inventory remains, it is your direct competition and it sets the buyer's reference price. Price against it deliberately.
Be direct about the neighborhood. Morningside Heights is a genuine, well-defined market with excellent parks, institutional stability and limited new-construction supply. Sell it on its own terms rather than positioning the building as an Upper West Side substitute.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering Claremont Hall, also evaluate:
- The Vandewater (543 West 122nd Street) — the other new-construction Morningside Heights condominium tower, two blocks east; the single closest local comparable
- 600 West 115th Street (The Luxor) — the pre-war Morningside Heights alternative near the Columbia campus
- 395 Riverside Drive (The Matincote) — the Riverside Drive pre-war co-op tier that defines the neighborhood's resale market
- 392 Central Park West — the park-front pre-war alternative at the top of Central Park West
- 88 Morningside Avenue — the eastern Morningside alternative at a materially lower price tier
- 15 Central Park West — Robert A.M. Stern Architects' defining New York condominium; the architectural benchmark against which this building is read
- 220 Central Park South — RAMSA's trophy tower; the top of the firm's Manhattan residential range
- 800 Fifth Avenue — a further RAMSA-associated Manhattan comparison point
- 200 Amsterdam Avenue — the contemporary Upper West Side new-development tower most often cross-shopped against uptown condominium product
The neighborhood
For the full corridor — architecture, schools, transit, and pricing across Upper West Side — read The Roebling Team Guide to Upper West Side.
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