- Year built
- 1856
- Type
- Condominium
- Units
- 12
- Floors
- 6
- Landmark
- No
Every recorded sale at this building, 2004–2022
Price-per-square-foot over time, the line- and floor-premium curves, and every recorded sale.
- Median $/sf
- $1,357
- Recorded sales
- 9
- On record
- 2004–2022
The Cary Building is one of the two or three most important cast-iron commercial buildings left in Lower Manhattan, and one of a very small number of individually designated New York City Landmarks that anyone can actually buy an apartment in. It was built in 1856–1857 to the designs of King & Kellum for the dry-goods firm of Cary, Howard & Sanger, and it does something almost no other building of its date does: it presents two full cast-iron fronts, on Chambers and on Reade, marching the same Italianate arcade around a through-block site. Designation came on August 24, 1982 under LP-01224, a decade before the Tribeca South Historic District was drawn around it in December 1992. The lot therefore carries two independent layers of landmark jurisdiction.
What that means in practice is worth stating plainly, because it is the building's dominant physical fact. Every element of the exterior — the ironwork, the storefronts, the window sash, the cornice, anything visible on the roof — is subject to Landmarks Preservation Commission review. Individual landmark status is stricter than historic district status, and here they compound. A buyer who wants to change a window, install a through-wall unit, or build on the roof should assume a permit application, not a contractor.
The residential building is much younger than the shell, and it arrived in pieces. The condominium itself dates to a December 1982 declaration filed while the property was still an all-commercial building. Residential use began at the top: by the mid-2000s the fifth and sixth floors and the roof were a single duplex, and DOB filings from 2005 through 2007 show a residential fire alarm and sprinkler system serving those floors and structural work at the sixth-floor roof. The larger change came in June 2012, when an ALT-1 filed by Nobutaka Ashihara, RA, proposed converting floors two through four from commercial to residential use and raised the building's dwelling-unit count from two to eleven. The recorded subdivision followed: DOB subdivision applications filed in October and December 2018 divided the existing commercial condominium unit into residential unit lots, and the amended declaration and condominium map were recorded in December 2021. The first of the new residences closed in January 2022.
The result is a genuinely unusual ownership shape. Eleven residences sit above a single ground-floor retail unit inside a six-story landmark, with the residential floorplates running the full through-block depth of the site — roughly 150 feet from Chambers to Reade — on a 50-foot frontage. There is no doorman, no amenity program, and no meaningful common area beyond the lobby, the elevator and the roof. What there is, instead, is a landmark exterior, high ceilings, and the light that two street walls buy you on a corner site.
The thing a buyer should understand before making an offer is how thin the resale record is. Of the eleven residences, four — units 2A, 2B, 2C and 2D — traded to unaffiliated purchasers during 2022, at recorded prices roughly between $2.08 million and $2.66 million. The residences on the third and fourth floors and the two penthouses did not; they transferred at nominal consideration among entities and individuals affiliated with the ownership group that carried out the conversion, and they remain in those hands. That is not a defect, but it is a market fact: price discovery in this building rests on a very small number of arm's-length trades, and a seller here is competing against comparable Tribeca loft inventory rather than against a deep internal record.
Architecture and unit composition
The site is 50 feet wide and just over 151 feet deep, and the building covers essentially all of it across six stories. That geometry is what makes the residences work: each floor is a long, column-lined loft plate with light at both ends and no interior air shaft. The 2012 conversion divided floors two and three into three and four residences respectively and the fourth floor into two, with the fifth and sixth floors and roof retained as the two penthouse units, designated PHN and PHS.
The cast iron itself is the point of the exterior. King & Kellum's arcade runs in tiers of round-arched openings separated by engaged columns, an Italianate palazzo idiom executed in iron rather than stone — the technology that made Tribeca and SoHo possible. LPC records masonry as the primary material and cast iron as the secondary, which reflects the construction: iron fronts on load-bearing masonry side walls, not an iron frame.
Later work reshaped the interior more than the shell. A 2000 alteration inserted a new stair and elevator shaft through all floors and reworked the Chambers Street storefronts; a proposed seventh-story enlargement was filed in 2001 and withdrawn, with the scope revised to reframing the existing sixth floor where heavy timber had to be replaced. Sidewalk sheds and façade work appear in the record in 2001, 2014 and 2015. Buyers should read the current Local Law 11 façade filing status carefully: on a landmark cast-iron front, cyclical repair is expensive and the specification is not the owner's choice.
Building operations
This is a self-contained small building, not a serviced one. The residential common elements amount to the lobby, one elevator, the stair, and the roof terrace serving the upper duplex. There is no doorman and no staff of the kind a full-service condominium carries, which keeps common charges low relative to Tribeca new-development inventory and puts a corresponding share of the maintenance burden on the board.
The commercial component matters more here than in most residential condominiums. The ground-floor retail unit is a separate condominium unit with its own ownership and its own history — it has traded, been financed, and been re-let independently of the residences — and the building has hosted commercial and institutional tenants on the lower floors within recent memory, including an educational use on the second floor approved in 2010 before that floor became residential. Any buyer should ask for the current declaration and by-laws to understand how common charges, roof and façade costs, and voting are allocated between the residential and commercial interests. In mixed condominiums of this vintage, that allocation is frequently the single most consequential document in the file.
Policy framework
There is no offering plan for 105 Chambers Street in The Roebling Research Library at the time of writing, and the building publishes no policy stack. Rather than infer one, we state what is documented and what is not.
Ownership form: Condominium. Transfers proceed through the board's right of first refusal rather than a cooperative-style approval, which is why closings here run on condominium timelines.
Financing, pets, subletting, pied-à-terre and entity ownership: Not documented in public records. Request the declaration, by-laws, house rules and the current budget from the managing agent, and confirm any transfer fee or resale capital contribution in writing before contract.
Tax posture: No exemption on any unit lot. Underwrite the full tax bill from day one.
Local Law 97
- 2024–2029 annual penalty
- $0 (under cap)
- 2030–2034 annual penalty
- $1,032/yr
- Per unit / month range
- $0 – $8
Source: NYC LL84 benchmarking and PLUTO · The Roebling Research Library. City record last verified September 2026.
See full Local Law 97 analysis — emissions history, scenarios, methodology →Recent sales
Tribeca loft condominiums price on ceiling height, light, floorplate geometry and the quality of the conversion, and the Cary Building's residences are long through-block plates in a designated landmark — a specific product that trades against converted loft stock rather than against tower inventory. Recorded activity here is limited: four residences traded to outside purchasers in 2022 in the low-to-mid two millions, and the balance of the building has not changed hands at arm's length since. Indexed to the last complete year, Tribeca loft pricing continues to reward renovated, high-ceilinged plates and to discount awkward interior layouts sharply; in a building with eleven residences and one recent sale cohort, condition and layout will do more work than any building-level premium.
Unit-level transaction history is maintained in The Roebling Research Library and shared with clients during diligence.
Recent closings at this building, curated by The Roebling Team research desk. Prices are the transfer amounts recorded with the NYC Department of Finance; apartment-level detail is checked against the building’s own file in The Roebling Research Library before publishing.
| Date | Unit | Apartment | Price | PPSF | vs. Ask |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 12, 2022 | PHN | 5,158 sf | $6,035,000 | $1,170/sf | off-mkt |
| May 20, 2022 | 2A | 1,620 sf | $2,197,801 | $1,357/sf | off-mkt |
| Mar 28, 2022 | 2C | 2 BR · 2 BA · 1,617 sf | $2,655,000 | $1,642/sf | -3.5% |
| May 10, 2006 | PHN | 5,158 sf | $4,174,825 | $809/sf | off-mkt |
| Aug 23, 2004 | 2 | 1,620 sf | $9,200,000 | $5,679/sf | off-mkt |
Market read. Most recent trades (2022) cleared a median $1,357/sf across 3 sales.
The retrade record
Lines that have traded more than once in the public record — the building’s appreciation arc, apartment by apartment.
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 1-00145-7501) 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; square footage from recorded condo declarations and offering plans.
What to know if you’re buying
Two layers of landmark jurisdiction is the headline. Individual designation plus a historic district means LPC review for exterior work, windows, storefronts and anything visible from the street or roof. Budget time as well as money, and ask what the building has already been approved for.
Read the mixed-use documents before you read the floor plan. The retail unit is a separate owner with a separate agenda. How the declaration splits façade, roof and elevator costs between commercial and residential is the number that will show up in your carrying cost for the next twenty years.
There is no abatement. Taxes are assessed in full. Compare monthlies against abated Tribeca new-development inventory with that in mind — the sticker gap narrows once you carry both.
The comparable set is thin and partly internal. Four arm's-length trades in one year is not a price history. Have your broker underwrite against the wider Tribeca loft market, not against the building's own record.
What to know if you’re selling
Lead with the landmark and the plate. An individually designated 1857 cast-iron building with through-block floorplates is a short list in Manhattan. That story does real work with the Tribeca buyer pool.
Be ready for façade and LPC questions early. Serious buyers' counsel will ask about the Local Law 11 cycle and any open LPC applications. Have the answers in the package rather than in a negotiation.
Expect the buyer to test the comparables. With so few arm's-length sales in the building, pricing has to be argued from the neighborhood set. Bring the loft comps, the ceiling heights, and the square footage math to the first conversation.
Comparable buildings
- 87 Chambers Street — a Chambers Street loft condominium on the same corridor, closest in scale and buyer profile.
- 91 Chambers Street — adjacent block, comparable boutique loft conversion.
- 100 Reade Street — the Reade Street side of the same Tribeca South fabric.
- 157 Chambers Street — a further-west Chambers Street conversion with a similar unit count.
- 165 Chambers Street — comparable small Tribeca loft condominium.
- 134 Duane Street — a Tribeca South loft building of similar date and scale, cooperative rather than condominium.
- 137 Duane Street — nearby loft condominium in a designated Tribeca block.
- 52 Thomas Street — small Tribeca loft conversion with landmark constraints.
- 30 Warren Street — the newer end of the Tribeca South buyer pool, useful as a pricing contrast.
- 166 Duane Street — boutique loft condominium in the historic district.
The neighborhood
For the full corridor — architecture, schools, transit, and pricing across Tribeca — read The Roebling Team Guide to Tribeca.
How to read the facts on this page. Items attributed to an offering plan describe the building as it was offered at that filing — unit mix, square footage, the amenity program as planned. They are not a statement about how the building operates today. Tax and compliance figures are sourced separately to current City records and carry their own dates. House rules, staffing and fee policy can change by board resolution without any public filing: treat every policy line here as a starting point for diligence and confirm it with the managing agent.
Considering a move at The Cary Building?
Request a private building brief with the relevant comparable sales, current and off-market availability, and an apartment-specific view of value.
Own an apartment here? See what it would sell for.
A Private Pricing Opinion — what your apartment at The Cary Building would likely sell for today, what it costs to sell, and what you’d walk away with — reviewed personally against condition, exposures, renovation quality, and the competition actually on the market.