139 East 23rd Street (The Gramercy North)
139 East 23rd Street, New York, NY 10010
Kips Bay
BBL 1008797504 · BIN 1090807
- Year built
- 2018
- Type
- Condominium
- Units
- 14
- Floors
- 15
- Landmark
- No
- Pets
- Not established in the plan text reviewed — confirm the current house rules with the managing agent
Every recorded sale at this building, 2020–2025
Price-per-square-foot over time, the line- and floor-premium curves, and every recorded sale.
- Median $/sf
- $1,585
- Listing discount
- 3.8%
- Recorded sales
- 19
- On record
- 2020–2025
The building is a 26-foot-wide interior lot developed to fifteen stories with one apartment on each floor. That single decision governs everything else about it. On a lot this narrow, a floor plate large enough to hold two apartments would produce two poor ones; holding the whole floor for a single residence produces fourteen apartments with light and air on three sides, private elevator arrival, and no shared corridor. It is the oldest trick in the boutique-condominium playbook, and here it is executed at the smallest scale that supports it.
The corresponding cost is service. There is no doorman. The offering plan substitutes a virtual doorman intercom in each residence, and it explicitly forecloses a common laundry room. A fourteen-unit building cannot spread the cost of a twenty-four-hour lobby across enough owners to make it inexpensive, and the sponsor chose not to try. Buyers who want a package room and a person at the desk should read that as disqualifying. Buyers who are pricing carrying cost against comparable new-construction inventory in Gramercy and Kips Bay will find the arithmetic works in their favor, and that is the trade the building is built around.
The design came from Stefano Pasqualetti, an Italian designer, with HTO Architect, PLLC as architect of record on the DOB filings. The elevation is black brick with copper detailing and glazing organized into three-story framed bays — a rhythm that reads as three tall openings rather than fifteen stacked ones, and that gives a narrow building on a busy commercial street a scale it would not otherwise have. East 23rd Street between Lexington and Third is a working transit and institutional corridor: the block carries a 1928 apartment house of more than three hundred units, a 1998 rental, an early-twentieth-century office building, and Baruch College's academic footprint a short walk west. The Gramercy North does not attempt to blend into that context.
The sell-out is the part of this building's history a buyer should understand. The new-building application was filed in August 2016 by one entity, the property changed hands in December 2016 for $15,000,000, and the sponsor — 139 East 23rd Street Club LLC — carried the project to completion. PLUTO dates the structure to 2018. The condominium declaration was not recorded until November 2020, and the first residential closing followed in December 2020. Sponsor units continued to close through 2024 and into 2025. A five-year absorption on fourteen apartments is slow, and it means the building's owner base is unusually young: some residences have traded once, several twice, and the condominium's operating history as a self-governing entity is short.
Architecture and unit composition
The residential program is the simplest in Manhattan new construction: fourteen full-floor apartments, numbered by floor. Units run 2 through 12, then 14 and 15, then the penthouse — the thirteenth floor designation is skipped, which is conventional and has no structural meaning. The ground floor and portions of the cellar are the non-residential unit, addressed 139A East 23rd Street and offered for sale separately under the plan; the offering plan makes no representation about its future tenancy, so a buyer should not assume any particular use continues.
Residential area totals 21,486 square feet across the fourteen residences. The lot is 26 feet wide by roughly 99 feet deep, so each floor plate is a long rectangle with the primary exposure south to East 23rd Street, a rear exposure north, and lot-line conditions on the east and west flanks. Lot-line windows on an interior Manhattan lot are not protected: the adjacent buildings are themselves developable, and light on the side elevations can be lost to a neighboring project without recourse. The south and north exposures are permanent; the flanks are not. That distinction is worth pricing.
The plan describes the common elements as a residential lobby, bicycle storage and a common rooftop terrace, with a Con Edison vault at the cellar. Refuse chutes and recycling bins sit on every residential floor. There is no fitness room, no children's playroom and no attended package facility.
Building operations
Common charges at The Gramercy North are structured around a building with no staffed lobby. The plan's first-year budget allocates certain line items between the residential units and the non-residential unit on a special basis reflecting actual benefit and use rather than pure common-interest percentage, which is the correct treatment for a mixed-use building and means the retail unit carries its own share of the items it drives.
The working capital contribution is the operating fact most likely to surprise a buyer. Two months' common charges are payable at closing by every purchaser, sponsor sale or resale alike, and the amount floats with the current budget. On a resale it is a buyer-side cost that does not appear on a standard closing-cost estimate unless someone reads the by-laws, and it should be built into the offer.
Because the condominium has been operating as a self-governed entity only since late 2020, the reserve position and the assessment history are short. A purchaser should ask the managing agent for the most recent audited financial statement, the current budget, the reserve balance, and whether any assessment has been levied or is contemplated. On a fourteen-unit building, a single capital item — a façade cycle, an elevator modernization, a roof membrane — divides across fourteen owners rather than one hundred and forty, and the per-unit exposure to any one project is correspondingly large. That is the structural risk of buying in a very small condominium, and it applies here regardless of how new the building is.
Policy framework
Pied-à-terre, LLC and trust purchases, and subletting are all permitted under the standard condominium framework; the board's remedy on a proposed transfer is a right of first refusal rather than an approval. Every residence has an in-unit washer and dryer, and the plan provides that there will be no common laundry room. A working capital contribution of two months' common charges is due at every closing, including resales. No seller-side flip tax appears in the offering plan. The pet policy is not established in the plan text reviewed; confirm the current house rules with the managing agent before signing.
Taxes carry no abatement. This is a new-construction condominium that has been fully taxed from the first closing. A buyer comparing it against abated inventory elsewhere in Manhattan should model the monthly number rather than the sticker price, and should note that there is no step-up schedule to plan around — the tax starts where it stays.
Local Law 97
This building is below the 25,000 sq ft threshold at which LL97 emissions caps apply. No regulatory capital pressure from this law specifically, current or 2030.
See full Local Law 97 analysis →Recent sales
The Gramercy North trades as boutique full-floor new construction in a district otherwise dominated by prewar cooperatives, larger post-war condominiums, and rental conversions. The comparison set a buyer should build is not other 2018-vintage towers but other small full-floor buildings: the pricing question is what a whole floor with three exposures, an in-unit laundry, and low common charges is worth against a higher-service building with a doorman and a smaller apartment.
Two structural facts frame value here. The first is that there is no abatement, so the tax line is fully loaded and stable. The second is that the working capital contribution repeats on resale, which is a real, if modest, friction on every trade. Sponsor absorption ran from late 2020 into 2025, so the building has a mix of original purchasers and second owners, and the resale record is still thin enough that a single transaction moves the perceived market. Index any market read to the last complete year rather than to the partial current one.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 13, 2025 | 8LOFT | 2 BR · 2 BA · 1,535 sf | $2,500,000 | $1,629/sf | -7.2% |
| Oct 10, 2025 | 8 | 2 BR · 2 BA · 1,535 sf | $2,500,000 | $1,629/sf | -7.2% |
| Jun 20, 2025 | 7 | 2 BR · 2 BA · 1,535 sf | $2,400,000 | $1,564/sf | -3.8% |
| Feb 4, 2025 | 14 | 2 BR · 2 BA · 1,535 sf | $2,432,500 | $1,585/sf | -9.9% |
| Jan 23, 2025 | 12 | 2 BR · 2 BA · 1,535 sf | $2,375,000 | $1,547/sf | -5.0% |
| Dec 2, 2024 | 15 | 2 BR · 2 BA · 1,535 sf | $2,615,000 | $1,704/sf | -5.8% |
| Mar 20, 2024 | 9 | 2 BR · 2 BA · 1,535 sf | $2,250,000 | $1,466/sf | -18.9% |
| Feb 15, 2024 | 2 | 2 BR · 2 BA · 1,535 sf | $2,325,000 | $1,515/sf | -6.8% |
Market read. Most recent trades (2025) cleared a median $1,585/sf across 5 sales. Median listing discount 3.8% 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 1-00879-7504) 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
Read the working capital clause before you make an offer. Two months' common charges are due at closing on a resale, not only on a sponsor sale. It is in the plan; it is rarely in the listing.
Price the flanks, not just the front. The east and west elevations sit on lot lines. The south and north exposures are permanent; side light is not.
Ask what the building costs to run without a doorman. The absence of staff is why the monthlies are what they are. Confirm the service arrangement — porter schedule, package handling, superintendent coverage — with the managing agent, because the plan's virtual doorman provision describes an intercom, not a service level.
Get the full financial picture from a short operating history. Audited statements, current budget, reserve balance, assessment history and any planned capital work. Fourteen owners is a small denominator.
What to know if you’re selling
Lead with the floor plate. A full floor with three exposures, private elevator landing and no corridor is the product, and it is scarce at this price point in the district.
Get ahead of the tax question. Buyers arriving from abated new construction will read the tax line as high. It is not high for the neighborhood; it is simply unabated, and it does not escalate on a schedule. Have the actual number and the comparison ready.
Disclose the working capital contribution early. A buyer who discovers it at contract reads it as a surprise. A buyer who is told at offer stage prices it and moves on.
Comparable buildings
- 119 East 23rd Street — the 2004 condominium at the other end of the same tax block; larger, fuller-service, and a direct carrying-cost comparison
- 148 East 24th Street — 2009 condominium on the same block, north frontage; post-war amenity model against this building's boutique one
- 150 East 23rd Street — across the avenue; a different scale of Gramercy condominium ownership
- 234 East 23rd Street — comparable East 23rd Street corridor address, different vintage
- 121 East 22nd Street — the newer large-format condominium one block south; the amenity-heavy alternative
- 205 East 24th Street — nearby Gramercy condominium inventory at smaller unit sizes
- The Stanford — prewar-scaled ownership in the same submarket, for buyers weighing new construction against conversion
The neighborhood
For the full corridor — architecture, schools, transit, and pricing across Gramercy — read The Roebling Team Guide to Gramercy.
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.
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