140 Franklin Street (One40 Franklin)

The building is six stories and a mezzanine, 86 feet tall, on a corner lot of roughly 11,362 square feet with about 123 feet of Franklin Street frontage. LPC records the primary material as cast iron, with brick, brownstone and terra cotta — an unusual combination that accounts for the elevation's weight at the base and its openness above.

Inside, the conversion kept what mattered: the cast-iron column grid, the original window openings, and floor-to-floor heights that produce the tall ceilings this generation of Tribeca loft is bought for. Several of the residences are described in DOB filings as 1938-code residential units, which is a technical way of saying the conversion legalized existing space rather than rebuilding it, and which has practical consequences for how alterations are filed today.

Apartment lettering in the filings runs B and C on most floors, with combinations across letters — 2BC and 5B/C both appear — and a residence reaching the mezzanine by an internal stair from the sixth floor. Anyone underwriting a specific unit should confirm whether it is a single original lot or a combination, because the two behave differently in a resale and in an alteration filing.

The building has an active capital record: façade restoration in 2005 and again in 2012, roof and bulkhead restoration in 2008, sidewalk sheds for remedial work in 2005, 2009 and 2013, sidewalk-bulkhead alterations in 2018, and a full renovation of the residential lobby and hallways permitted in 2020. That is the ordinary maintenance rhythm of a 1888 masonry building in a historic district — Local Law 11 cycles land hard on a thirteen-unit denominator, and a buyer should ask for the current façade report and the reserve position.

Four addresses attach to one tax lot.

PLUTO and the Department of Finance carry the lot's address as 132 Franklin Street. LPC's designation record calls the same building 1–9 Varick Street (aka 136–142 Franklin Street). The offering-plan folder in The Roebling Research Library is labeled 132–142 Franklin Street. And every one of the fourteen condominium unit lots on the assessment roll — the thirteen residences and the retail unit — is addressed 140 Franklin Street.

The resolution is straightforward once the building identification numbers are checked. Geocoding "132 Franklin Street" in Manhattan returns this tax lot but a null building identification number, meaning there is no addressable building at that point. Geocoding "140 Franklin Street" returns the same tax lot and BIN 1002128, which is the number carried on every Department of Buildings application for the property. 140 Franklin Street is the building. 132 Franklin, 136–142 Franklin and 1–9 Varick Street are aliases for the same corner parcel. A buyer or an appraiser pulling city data on "132 Franklin Street" will get the right lot with the wrong name; anyone searching "1 Varick Street" will get the right building under an address no resident uses.

The current answer is thirteen residences plus one retail unit. Getting there took twenty-five years.

The condominium was mapped in two stages. A declaration covering the ground-floor commercial unit and the residential mass was filed in January 1999, and the residential unit lots — 1502 through 1514 — were mapped in October 2000. An amended declaration in January 2004 added lot 1515, bringing the residential count to fourteen. In 2002 the condominium filed with the Department of Buildings to combine apartments under the city's standard combination procedure. In August 2009 an amended declaration covering lots 1503 and 1504 was recorded, mapped in November 2010; lot 1504 dropped off the assessment roll after the 2011/12 year and has not appeared since, which is what a merger of two unit lots into one residence looks like in the tax record. The two lots have since been released and conveyed together.

Separately, an Alteration Type 1 approved in January 2009 proposed increasing the second floor from two apartments to three, which would have taken the building to fourteen residences. It does not appear to have been built: the count in every subsequent filing, and on every assessment roll since, is thirteen.

The retail condominium unit at the base has had its own history. In 2015 and 2016 its owner filed an Alteration Type 1 that reclassified the cellar and first-floor occupancy and added an internal stair and a limited-use elevator between cellar and first floor. The unit remains a retail condominium, classified RK in tax class 4 on the FY2027 roll, and is separately owned from the residences.

The lot sits inside the Tribeca West Historic District, LP-01713, designated May 7, 1991 — eight years before the residential conversion. LPC's own building database lists this building as a contributing structure in the district, with Albert Wagner as architect and 1887–1888 as the construction date. It is not an individual landmark; the historic-district designation is what governs.

A Certificate of Appropriateness is required for discretionary exterior work, and Department of Buildings applications for this property carry the landmark flag as "Y." In practice, windows, storefronts, awnings, signage, rooftop additions and anything visible from a public thoroughfare require Landmarks review before a DOB permit will issue. The building's own capital record shows this operating normally — the façade restorations of 2005 and 2012 and the 2018 sidewalk-bulkhead work all proceeded — but review adds time, and a buyer planning window replacement or a rooftop change should build that schedule in before contract rather than after.

Because the designation predates the conversion, it also explains what the conversion did not do: there is no vertical enlargement here and no visible rooftop addition. What the building looks like from Franklin Street is substantially what Wagner built.

Three questions come up on every Tribeca loft conversion, and this building answers all three cleanly.

Was there a use variance? No Board of Standards and Appeals variance appears in the record. The lot is zoned C6-2A within the Special Tribeca Mixed Use District, and residential use is permitted. The special district, created in 1976, is the mechanism that made residential conversion feasible across this part of Tribeca without case-by-case relief.

Was this a Loft Law building? No. Every Department of Buildings application reviewed for this property — including both Alteration Type 1 applications, in 2008 and 2015 — carries the Loft Board flag as "N," and no Interim Multiple Dwelling registration appears for the lot. This was a conventional conversion of a commercial building, not a legalization of interim residential occupancy under Article 7-C of the Multiple Dwelling Law. That is a meaningful difference: there is no residual population of protected occupants and no rent-regulated overhang from a legalization proceeding.

Was there a J-51? No J-51 record appears for this lot, or for the pre-condominium lot, in the Department of Finance's J-51 exemption and abatement history, and every unit lot shows a zero exemption in the FY2027 assessment roll. There is no burn-off to model. The taxes on the current bill are the taxes.

Recent sales

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.

Market read. Most recent trades (2026) cleared a median $3,377/sf across 1 sale. Median listing discount 2.9% 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 1-00189-7507) 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.

Verify the tax lot, not the address. City data addresses this lot as 132 Franklin Street and LPC calls it 1–9 Varick Street. The condominium and every unit lot use 140 Franklin Street. Confirm BBL 1-00189-7507 and BIN 1002128 on the contract.

Ask whether your unit is a combination. Several residences here are combinations of originally separate condominium unit lots, and at least one pair of lots was merged in the tax record. Combinations affect alteration filings, financing and resale.

There is no abatement and never was one on record. Underwrite the current bill. This is one of the rare downtown conversions where the tax analysis is genuinely simple.

Budget for Landmarks and for Local Law 11. A contributing building in the Tribeca West Historic District, with a masonry-and-cast-iron elevation and an active façade-repair history, spreads its capital costs across thirteen residences. Read the reserve position and the most recent façade report.

Ask for the policy stack in writing. No offering plan for this building was located in either offering-plan library. Pets, subletting, minimum down payment and any resale transfer fee should come from the managing agent, not from assumption.

The ground floor is separately owned. The retail unit is a separate condominium unit with its own owner, and it has been altered twice in the past decade. Understand what is permitted there.

Lead with the architect and the fabric. Albert Wagner, 1888, Romanesque Revival, cast iron — verified against LPC's own building database, and the same hand that built the Puck Building. That is a provenance claim that survives scrutiny, and very few Tribeca conversions can make one.

Correct the address problem before it costs you. Buyers, appraisers and lenders pulling city data will surface "132 Franklin Street" with no building attached to it. Provide the BBL and BIN and the alias list up front.

Be explicit about what the unit is. Full floor or part floor, original lot or combination, ceiling height, mezzanine access. With thirteen residences there is no building average to price against.

Present the tax posture as an advantage. No abatement to expire, no J-51 burn-off, no step-up schedule. Against competing inventory with an abatement running out, that is a selling point rather than a concession.

If you're considering 140 Franklin Street, also evaluate:

• 155 Franklin Street — loft condominium on the same street inside the same historic district; the closest peer by fabric and address
• 220 West Broadway — loft condominium on the same tax block; the nearest neighbor in the ownership record
• 145 Hudson Street (Sky Lofts) — full-floor Tribeca loft condominium a block west; the classic full-floor comparison
• 161 Hudson Street — Tribeca loft condominium of similar scale and vintage
• 124 Hudson Street — small pre-1900 Tribeca loft conversion; the boutique alternative
• 25 North Moore Street — Tribeca condominium in the historic district; different construction, same buyer pool
• 108 Leonard Street — large landmark conversion nearby; the full-service alternative at much greater scale
• 100 Hudson Street — Tribeca loft condominium; comparable floor plates in a different building type
• 14 Leonard Street — small Tribeca loft condominium; the low-unit-count alternative