Bear House
114 West 81st Street, between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues · Upper West Side
Upper West Side
BBL 1012110040 · BIN 1031983
- Type
- Cooperative
- Landmark
- Designated
Every recorded sale at this building, 2007–2025
Bedroom-by-bedroom medians, the full transfer record, and how units trade against ask.
- 1BR median
- $778K
- Recent range
- $778K – $778K
- Listing discount
- 1.2%
- Recorded transfers
- 11
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Bear House occupies a brownstone rowhouse designed by Neville & Bagge for Giblin & Taylor in 1892–93. The house was part of a three-house commission, using Renaissance and Romanesque Revival ornament on a masonry structure with a raised basement. Its conversion into apartments retained the narrow house form and produced a wide range of interior sizes.
The cooperative dates to 1985. Its West 81st Street entrance stands on the Columbus-to-Amsterdam Avenue block, with the American Museum of Natural History grounds east across Columbus Avenue. The property falls within the historic district designated in 1990.
Architecture and unit composition
The original design uses a brownstone façade and a stoop leading above the raised basement. Window openings and the vertical arrangement of the façade express the house's four main floors. LPC identifies masonry bearing-wall construction, a characteristic that matters when evaluating substantial changes to internal openings.
The apartment inventory includes studios, one-bedroom homes and larger configurations extending to approximately 1,500 square feet. Some lower homes incorporate outdoor space. Upper apartments retain features such as high ceilings, tall windows, original doors and decorative fireplaces, with the extent of surviving woodwork varying after successive renovations.
Smaller layouts include homes around 550 to 600 square feet. Open kitchens and loft storage make use of the interior height in some apartments, while larger combined plans occupy more of the original house. Laundry equipment has been installed in selected homes.
Building operations
This is a walk-up cooperative. Upper-floor access is by the common stair, while the raised entrance and basement arrangement create different routes into the lower homes. The building's scale supports a small shareholder association maintaining one historic façade, roof and stair system.
Exterior alterations are subject to LPC review. Work involving the brownstone, front windows and stoop has to respect the property's historic-district status. Inside, the bearing-wall structure makes the location of a proposed opening more significant than the apparent amount of floor area available for a renovation.
Recent sales
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 7, 2025 | 2F | 1 BR · 1 BA | $778,000 | +0.0% | |
| May 7, 2024 | GF | 1.5 BA · 550 sf | $535,000 | $973/sf | -2.7% |
| Feb 7, 2024 | 2F | 1 BR · 1 BA | $778,000 | +0.0% | |
| Jan 31, 2023 | GR | 1 BR · 1 BA | $1,150,000 | -4.2% | |
| Jan 21, 2020 | 1R | 3 BR · 1.5 BA | $1,750,000 | +0.0% | |
| May 7, 2015 | 3F | 1 BR · 600 sf | $585,000 | $975/sf | -2.3% |
| Oct 11, 2013 | 2R | 2 BR | $1,035,000 | +5.1% | |
| Aug 30, 2012 | 1 | 2 BR · 2 BA · 1,500 sf | $1,750,000 | $1,167/sf | -9.1% |
Market read. $/sf is measured on the latest sales with reliable square footage (2024): a median $973/sf across 1 sale. The building has traded as recently as 2025. Median listing discount 2.5% 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 1-01211-0040) 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.
Buying here? Co-op closing costs typically run 2 to 3% of the price. See NYC co-op and condo closing costs, line by line.
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Comparable buildings
- 153 West 80th Street — Another Neville & Bagge design, built as a larger Renaissance Revival flats building.
- 134 West 82nd Street — A small prewar cooperative with an elevator and part-time superintendent.
- 71 West 83rd Street — Dundonald Flats, a nineteenth-century apartment house offering a purpose-built flats comparison.
- 35 West 82nd Street — A nine-story Schwartz & Gross cooperative, with a larger operating scale and elevator access.
- 107 West 82nd Street — Three historic houses combined in a condop structure with separately owned professional space.
More Upper West Side buildings
- 112 West 79th Street — 1925 co-op
- 114 Morningside Drive — 1910 co-op
- 114 West 70th Street — 1922 co-op
- 119 West 71st Street — 1916 co-op
- 119 West 82nd Street — co-op
- 121 West 72nd Street — 1926 co-op by H.I. Feldman
The neighborhood
For the full corridor — architecture, transit, and pricing across Upper West Side — read The Roebling Team Guide to Upper West Side.
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. Where this page compares one building or neighborhood to another, that is our analysis of the recorded record — it names the measure, the period and the sample it rests on, and it is an observation about medians rather than a prediction about any particular apartment.
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