125 East 74th Street

Goldstone gave the building a neo-Italian Renaissance elevation: a rusticated Indiana limestone base carrying English-bond rough-textured red brick above, with the ornament concentrated at the entrance and cornice rather than spread across the facade. LPC's record notes no significant alteration. The nine-story-plus-penthouse massing is typical of the mid-block Upper East Side apartment houses of the period, built to the street wall with a rear yard.

Apartment layouts follow the original room-count logic rather than square footage. The 1953 schedule of 30 apartments across 150 rooms, plus eight separate servants' rooms leased individually under their own proprietary leases, describes a building of five-room average apartments with staff space held apart. Where those servants' rooms and adjacent apartments have since been recombined, the resulting homes are larger and less regular than the original plan — the by-laws on file give the board discretion to permit combinations, conversions and share re-allocation, and the lower unit count in the audited statements suggests it has been exercised. Wood-burning fireplaces, inter-apartment soundproofing and generous ceiling heights were called out in the original marketing; confirm which survive in a given apartment. Two professional units at the base operate as doctors' offices and are carried on the corporation's books as such.

A small full-service prewar house with a union staff, two elevators, a four-room superintendent's apartment, individual storage rooms and a common laundry. Fixed charges are dominated by real estate taxes rather than debt service, which is unusual and follows directly from the small underlying mortgage. Management is outside and professional. The most recent financial statements on file cover the corporation's operations in detail, including the union pension and health-fund exposure that comes with 32BJ staffing; those documents are available to clients' counsel during diligence.

Ownership form: Cooperative. You are buying shares in 123 East 74th Street Corporation together with a proprietary lease, not real property. Closings run on the board's calendar, not the contract's.

Transfer fee: 2 percent on the purchase of shares, payable to the corporation, per the notes to the audited financial statements on file. This is a documented figure, not a market estimate.

Assignment and subletting: Both require written board consent under the proprietary lease and by-laws on file. Current seasoning requirements, sublet term caps and fees were not established in the reviewed materials; request the current house rules from the managing agent before you write an offer.

Financing ceiling, post-closing liquidity and debt-to-income: Current terms were not located in the reviewed materials. Upper East Side prewar cooperatives of this scale commonly cap financing well below conventional levels and require substantial post-closing liquidity, but we will not put a number on this building that we cannot source. Ask the managing agent directly, and ask before you fall in love with an apartment.

Pied-à-terre, co-purchase, guarantors, gifts, trusts and LLC ownership: Not documented. Assume a board-discretion posture and confirm.

Pets: Current terms were not established in the reviewed materials. Confirm in the house rules.

Real estate taxes: No J-51, no 421-a, no exemption of any kind on the tax lot in the Department of Finance record, historically or currently. There is no exemption phase-out to model, but future bills still change with assessments, rates and any other benefits; check the current bill.

Recent sales

Recent transfers at this building, from The Roebling Research Library. 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.

Market read. Most recent trades (2026 to date) cleared a median $1,186/sf (floor-adjusted) across 2 sales. Floor-adjusted means each sale is restated to a constant mix of floors, so the figure can differ from the plain median of the sales listed above. Median listing discount 5.1% from the last ask — a recurring negotiation gap worth pricing into any offer or listing strategy.

Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 1-01409-0009). Apartment-level facts (line, condition, asking-price context) curated and cross-verified in The Roebling Research Library. 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.

Get the numeric policy stack in writing before you offer. The financing ceiling, post-closing liquidity requirement, sublet policy and pied-à-terre posture at this building were not established in the reviewed materials and cannot be inferred. In a 28-apartment cooperative, a single undisclosed threshold can end a deal after you have spent money on it. Run the Co-op Board Qualification Calculator against whatever the managing agent tells you.

Underwrite assessments, not just maintenance. The audited statements say plainly that no reserve funding is required, no reserve study exists, and capital work is done as needed. The shareholder-contribution schedule on file shows improvement assessments in most years going back to the 1990s. Budget for that pattern to continue.

The 2029 mortgage maturity is a date to put in your model. The underlying loan is small and interest-only at 3.75 percent through August 1, 2029. It will need to be refinanced or repaid then, at whatever rates prevail, and the corporation may choose to fund deferred work at the same time. Ask your attorney to read the current statements, not the 2019 ones.

Landmark status is real here. Windows, terrace work, through-wall units and anything visible from the street run through LPC in addition to the board, plus DOB where the scope of work requires a permit. Price renovation timelines accordingly, and run the Renovation Cost Calculator with a landmark contingency.

Confirm the corporate name at contract. The audited statements name 123 East 74th Street Corporation; the Department of Finance carries 125 E 74th Street Corp. Your attorney should reconcile the two on the stock certificate and in the lien search rather than discovering it at closing.

Do not confuse this building with its neighbours on East 74th Street. 175 East 74th Street sits on the same tax block at lot 33 but is a 1963 building of roughly 95 units and carries no landmark designation; 225 East 74th Street is on a different block entirely. Their economics, policies and pricing have nothing to do with this one.

Lead with the balance sheet. Present the reported $815,000 mortgage with its statement date, current lender balance and terms, assessment history, reserves and capital plan; that loan amount alone does not establish financial strength.

Correct the unit count before a buyer's analyst does it for you. Automated valuation tools will pull 30 residential units from PLUTO. The corporation's own accountants count 28 plus two professional units. The smaller number is the better story, and it is the one in the audited statements.

Document the combination. If the apartment incorporates former servants' rooms or an adjoining line, the share allocation and the board's re-grouping consent are part of the file. Having that ready shortens attorney diligence materially.

Price by room and by condition. Assess the dated comparable sample before determining whether a building average is useful; apartment count alone does not establish insufficient turnover. The comparable set is the surrounding Lenox Hill prewar cooperative stock, adjusted honestly for renovation state.

If you're considering 125 East 74th Street, also evaluate:

• 112 East 74th Street — prewar cooperative on the same street; a like-for-like comparison on address and scale
• 120 East 75th Street — 1923 cooperative on the same tax block's north frontage, also in the Upper East Side Historic District
• 103 East 75th Street — small prewar cooperative one block north; comparable share-ownership economics
• 130 East 75th Street — mid-block prewar cooperative in the same corridor
• 117 East 72nd Street — prewar Lenox Hill cooperative two blocks south, similar boutique scale
• 114 East 72nd Street — prewar cooperative with comparable room-count layouts
• 132 East 72nd Street — mid-block prewar cooperative; the same buyer pool
• 109 East 79th Street — alternative farther north; confirm construction date and ownership structure before adjusting the comparison
• 133 East 80th Street — small prewar cooperative in a historic district; comparable landmark constraints