- Year built
- 1913
- Type
- Cooperative
- Units
- 21
- Floors
- 12
- Landmark
- No
- Amenities
- Marble lobby, video intercom, planted roof deck, bicycle storage, bulk-rate internet and cable, superintendent on site Monday through Friday (not live-in). There is no doorman
- Financing
- 75 percent maximum — 25 percent minimum down, per management-sourced records
Every recorded sale at this building, 2003–2025
Price-per-square-foot over time, the line- and floor-premium curves, and every recorded sale.
- Median $/sf
- $1,196
- Listing discount
- 3.9%
- Recorded sales
- 39
- On record
- 2003–2025
Ruggles House is a 1913 office and loft building that became a cooperative in 1976, and both halves of that sentence matter. The 1913 half explains the product: twelve-foot-plus ceilings, structural columns, and window walls sized for daylighting a workroom rather than a bedroom, on floor plates wide enough to hold a full apartment on each half-floor. The 1976 half explains the economics: this was among the first wave of Gramercy loft conversions, done years before the loft co-op became a recognized Manhattan asset class, and the building has been in shareholder hands for half a century.
The name is local. Samuel B. Ruggles laid out Gramercy Park in the 1830s on drained marshland he had bought and subdivided, and the co-op corporation formed in 1975 took his name. The building sits one block south of the park itself, on the Park Avenue South side of Irving Place. Marketing copy for the building — including the cooperative's own description on the board-package portal — places it on the "Block Beautiful," which is the stretch of East 19th Street between Irving Place and Third Avenue. Ruggles House is one block west of that stretch. The distinction is small on foot and real in a comparable set.
What the building does have, and what the Block Beautiful buildings cannot offer, is height. Twelve stories rising directly beside a protected low-rise historic district produces light and open sky on the upper floors that is structurally difficult to build out, because the buildings that would block it are landmarked at four and five stories. The upper F line looks north over the district toward Gramercy Park.
The other structural fact is scale. Twenty-one apartments is a small denominator for a full building's fixed costs, and the cooperative's answer is the ground-floor and lower-level commercial space it owns outright — roughly 3,600 square feet in city records. Store rental income was contemplated in the original 1976 plan and remains part of how a 21-unit building funds a twelve-story elevator house with only a part-time superintendent and no doorman. Any buyer should read the current financials for what that income is, what the lease term is, and when it resets.
Architecture and unit composition
The building is a masonry commercial loft of its period: piers and spandrels expressed on the East 19th Street elevation, large multi-pane openings, and no ornamental program to speak of. It was never a residential building in its first sixty years, and the conversion did not attempt to make it look like one. The lobby was finished in marble; the two elevators are key-locked and open onto semi-private landings.
Layouts follow directly from the conversion. The sponsor created two apartments per floor on the eleven floors above the ground floor — a front line facing East 19th Street and a rear line facing the backs of the East 18th Street buildings — which is why the apartment numbering runs F and R rather than A and B. City records now count 21 residential units against the 22 created, consistent with a combination somewhere in the stack; ACRIS carries at least one share transfer for a combined 8/9R designation. Ceilings are high, the floor plates are open and column-broken rather than corridor-divided, and the plans are unusually flexible: several apartments have been reconfigured under alteration filings over the past two decades, including full renovations on the fourth, sixth, eleventh and twelfth floors.
Rear-line apartments face a shallow lot and look at the backs of the East 18th Street buildings; front-line apartments carry the street outlook and the northern sky above the historic district. Exposure is the single largest driver of value between two otherwise identical plates.
Building operations
Ruggles House is a self-contained, lightly staffed cooperative: a superintendent on site weekdays rather than in residence, no doorman, a video intercom at the entry, bicycle storage, a planted roof deck, and bulk-rate internet and cable negotiated for the building. Two elevators serve twelve floors, which is generous for the unit count.
The building has run a normal prewar capital cycle in public view: roof replacement in 2002, exterior brick and Local Law 11 façade repairs in 2009 and again under a 2013 filing, window replacement work on the eleventh floor in 2012, and a 2019 sidewalk-shed, hoist and debris-chute package consistent with another façade cycle. The underlying mortgage has been consolidated upward roughly every four to five years, most recently to $3.6 million in April 2021 — a modest number against 21 apartments, but one whose maturity and rate should be confirmed in the audited statements rather than assumed.
Policy framework
Ownership form: Cooperative. Apartments are not real property. A purchaser acquires shares in Ruggles House, Inc. together with a proprietary lease for the apartment those shares are allocated to, and the transfer is recorded in ACRIS as a share transfer — property type SP, single residential cooperative unit, which is the code carried on the great majority of the building's recorded residential transfers. The ground-floor commercial interest has transferred under property type CP, commercial cooperative unit.
Board approval: Full board package and interview. There is no right of first refusal; the board's consent is required and may be withheld.
Financing: 75 percent maximum, 25 percent minimum down, per management-sourced records.
Subletting: Permitted in extreme circumstances only, at the board's determination. Short-term rentals and Airbnb are prohibited.
Pets: Permitted case by case, subject to disclosure in the application.
In-unit washer/dryer: Permitted.
Transfer fee: A flat $800 transfer fee payable by the selling shareholder at closing appears in the management-sourced fee schedule, alongside application, credit-check, move-in and move-out charges and refundable move-in and move-out deposits. No percentage flip tax appears in that schedule.
Pied-à-terre, trust, LLC and guarantor policy: Not documented in the offering plan on file or in management-sourced records. These are exactly the questions a small self-managed-feeling co-op answers by practice rather than by publication, and the answers must come from the managing agent.
Local Law 97
- 2024–2029 annual penalty
- $0 (under cap)
- 2030–2034 annual penalty
- $5,669/yr
- Per unit / month range
- $0 – $22
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 →Facade safety — Local Law 11
The latest available FISP filing classified the facade as Safe — no repairs were required at that inspection. Facade inspections run on a fixed five-year cycle; future inspection, repair, and any assessment decisions remain building-specific.
How to read this, and where it comes from
QEWI = Qualified Exterior Wall Inspector — the licensed engineer the city requires to sign the report (the independent expert, not the managing agent).
Penalties shown are amounts DOB assessed against filings on record across 2005–10 to 2020–25. The FISP dataset does not record whether they were paid, contested or remain open, so treat the figure as history rather than a current balance and confirm the building’s standing with the managing agent.
Source: NYC DOB facade filings (FISP) · The Roebling Research Library. City record last verified September 2026.
Recent sales
Ruggles House trades as a Gramercy loft co-op rather than as a prewar apartment house, and the comparable set should be built accordingly. Value in the building is driven by three variables in order: line (front versus rear), floor, and the state of the renovation. Because the plates are open and the ceilings are high, the spread between an original conversion-era interior and a gut renovation is wider here than in a building with fixed prewar room counts — the renovation is not a refresh, it is most of the apartment.
Co-op pricing in this corridor is best read per room and against maintenance rather than per square foot, and at Ruggles House the maintenance line needs to be read together with the building's commercial rental income and the underlying mortgage. Unit-level transaction history is maintained in The Roebling Research Library and shared with clients during diligence.
Recent transfers 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 17, 2025 | 6F | 3 BR · 2 BA | $3,000,000 | -7.7% | |
| May 13, 2024 | 8R | 4 BR · 3.5 BA · 3,900 sf | $4,750,000 | $1,218/sf | -32.0% |
| Mar 4, 2024 | 12R | 3 BR · 2 BA | $3,200,000 | -7.2% | |
| Mar 23, 2023 | 6F | 3 BR · 2 BA | $2,950,000 | -4.8% | |
| Jan 18, 2023 | 10F | 3 BR · 2 BA · 1,912 sf | $3,600,000 | $1,883/sf | +3.0% |
| Sep 20, 2022 | 5F | 2 BR · 2 BA | $2,975,000 | -4.0% | |
| Sep 9, 2022 | 11F | 3 BR · 2 BA | $3,400,000 | +1.5% | |
| Aug 29, 2022 | 7F | 3 BR · 1 BA · 1,800 sf | $2,575,000 | $1,431/sf | -11.1% |
Market read. $/sf is measured on the latest sales with reliable square footage (2024): a median $1,196/sf across 1 sale. The building has traded as recently as 2025. Median listing discount 3.9% from the last ask — a recurring negotiation gap worth pricing into any offer or listing strategy.
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 1-00874-0069) 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 on co-ops is not officially recorded, figures shown are approximate.
What to know if you’re buying
You are buying shares, not real estate. The closing is a share transfer with a proprietary lease, a stock certificate, a UCC-1 filing and a recognition agreement if you are financing. Budget the timeline for board review accordingly, and note that New York City Local Law 58 of 2026 now sets acknowledgment and decision deadlines for cooperative board applications.
The financing ceiling is 75 percent and the liquidity test is unpublished. Twenty-five percent down is the stated floor. What the board expects you to hold after closing is not published anywhere and never will be — it is a practice, not a rule, and it is the single most common reason a qualified buyer is turned down in a small co-op. Ask the managing agent what post-closing liquidity the board has been looking for before you make an offer, and run the Co-op Board Qualification Calculator honestly.
Treat this as an owner-occupancy building. Subletting is permitted in extreme circumstances only. If your plan involves renting the apartment at any point, resolve it in writing with the managing agent before contract.
Pied-à-terre, trust and LLC purchase are undocumented. A small co-op with 21 shareholders will have a settled view on all three, and it will not be in any published source. Ask.
Confirm the fee stack. The published schedule shows a flat $800 transfer fee and no percentage flip tax. Percentage flip taxes are adopted by shareholder amendment and do not always reach a portal fee table. Get the current answer in writing.
Read the commercial lease and the underlying mortgage together. A 21-unit building with 3,600 square feet of income-producing retail has a maintenance number that depends materially on both. Ask for the lease expiry, the current rent, and the maturity date and rate on the $3.6 million underlying.
The building is not landmarked — its neighbors are. Window replacement, façade treatment and rooftop work here do not require a Certificate of Appropriateness. That is an asset, and it is also why the building's façade cycles show up as ordinary alteration filings rather than LPC permits.
What to know if you’re selling
Sell the ceiling height and the light, and prove them. Loft buyers in Gramercy are buying volume and window wall. Photograph and measure both; do not rely on "prewar loft" as a description.
Be accurate about the block. The building's own marketing language places it on the Block Beautiful, which begins one block east. Buyers who verify will discount everything else you said. The honest version — a full twelve-story building on the Park Avenue South side of Irving Place, one block from Gramercy Park, rising above a protected historic district — is a stronger position than the inaccurate one.
Front the sublet policy. It is restrictive, and a buyer who discovers it during attorney review after falling in love is a buyer who renegotiates. State it early and price to the owner-occupant pool, which is the only pool this building has.
Prepare the buyer for the board. Small boards read packages closely. A seller who briefs the buyer's agent on what the board has been asking for shortens the deal by weeks.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering Ruggles House, also evaluate:
- 117 East 18th Street (The Ram Building) — 1930 condominium around the corner; the condominium alternative in the same prewar-loft idiom, with no board approval
- 105 East 19th Street — 1920 prewar cooperative on the same block; the conventional-apartment-house alternative at the same address range
- 220 Third Avenue — 1901 mixed-use building converted to condominium in 2006 and enlarged in 2010; the other loft-vintage conversion on this tax block
- 157 East 18th Street (The Gramercy Regent) — 1955 building converted to cooperative in 1991; the postwar co-op alternative one block south
- 81 Irving Place (Gramercy Square Apartments) — George F. Pelham, 1929–30, converted from rental in the early 1980s; the prewar Irving Place co-op
- 61 Irving Place (The Gramercy) — mid-century cooperative on Irving Place; full-service alternative at lower ceiling heights
- 130 East 18th Street (Gramercy Plaza) — 1962 building converted to cooperative in 1984; the postwar balconied option a block south
- 211 East 18th Street — 1957 cooperative; the plainer postwar co-op comparison for maintenance and policy
- 151 East 20th Street — 1950 boutique condominium; small-building condominium economics near the park
- 230 East 20th Street (The Modern at Gramercy Square) — 2016 new construction; the full-amenity contemporary alternative in the same submarket
The neighborhood
For the full corridor — architecture, schools, transit, and pricing across Gramercy — read The Roebling Team Guide to Gramercy.
The full playbook — what goes in the package, how boards read your financials, the interview, and the timeline — plus sample cover, reference, and personal letters you can adapt.
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 Ruggles House?
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 Ruggles House 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.