150 Wooster Street

The elevation reads as a contemporary loft building rather than a pastiche of its cast-iron neighbours: a masonry frame with steel-and-glass infill across the full width of the Wooster Street frontage, eight storeys to a height of 98 feet. The approach — a modern building that borrows the proportion and rhythm of the district without imitating its ornament — is what the Certificate of Appropriateness process tends to produce, and it is legible from across the street.

The residential plates are the point. Five full floors of roughly 4,270 to 4,390 square feet run the depth of the lot with eastern and western exposures, giving each residence light on two sides — unusual in SoHo, where most loft buildings are hemmed in on their flanks. Ceiling heights are loft-scale, entry is through a private gallery, and the window openings are large enough to give the interiors the character the district is bought for. The penthouse is a duplex at the top of the stack.

The building's new-building application records 35,722 square feet of zoning floor area and 44,151 square feet of total construction floor area on a 7,184-square-foot lot. PLUTO reports a built floor area ratio of 5.36, which appears to exceed the 5.0 residential FAR now mapped at the lot; it does not. PLUTO's figure is derived from gross building area including space that is not counted as zoning floor area. On the DOB-approved zoning floor area the building sits at roughly 4.97 FAR — inside the mapped envelope, with no meaningful unused residential development right at the lot.

The service model is lean and appropriate to a six-residence building. The offering plan budget provides for concierge coverage twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, supplied under a contract with an outside security services firm rather than by employed building staff — a structure worth understanding, because it behaves differently from a unionised staff payroll in both cost and continuity. The residential common elements are the ground-floor lobby, the elevator, and a private storage bin appurtenant to each residence.

The two commercial units are separately metered, do not receive cooking gas from the residential system, and are excluded from the residential concierge service. Common expenses are allocated between the Residential Section and the Commercial Units under Schedule B of the plan, with a budget expert's certification of the adequacy of the commercial share. That allocation is the single most useful thing to check in the current financials: in a small mixed-use condominium, a commercial share that has drifted out of line with actual consumption falls entirely on six residential owners.

The ground-floor retail has been used episodically for short-term retail and brand activations — the Department of Buildings record shows temporary-structure permits for pop-up installations in 2018 and 2019. It is a Wooster Street retail frontage and it behaves like one.

On the façade: the building missed the Cycle 9A technical report deadline in February 2022 and drew a violation that was subsequently dismissed. Its Cycle 10 initial report was filed on August 7, 2026 with a status of SWARMP — safe, but with a repair and maintenance programme to execute. Ask for the qualified inspector's report, the scope, and the board's funding plan.

Three separate regulatory layers govern this building, and buyers routinely conflate them.

Landmarks. The lot is inside the SoHo–Cast Iron Historic District. This is confirmed at the tax-lot level in LPC's own designated-building database — not merely inferred from PLUTO's district field, which is unreliable in both directions. Every exterior alteration, storefront change, signage installation and window replacement requires an LPC permit. The building's own permit history shows the process working normally: a Certificate of Appropriateness for the new building, a subsequent amendment, a Notice of Compliance at completion, and routine Certificates of No Effect for interior work since.

Use. Under the M1-5A district that governed at the time of construction, residential use in SoHo was severely constrained, and the historical route to residential occupancy was Joint Live-Work Quarters for Artists — a use category that limited lawful occupancy to certified artists and produced decades of enforcement ambiguity for owners across the neighbourhood. 150 Wooster did not take that route. The offering plan states that the property received a Section 74-712 special permit from the City Planning Commission in February 2016 permitting legal residential use and Use Group 6 retail. The residences are conventional residential units. No artist certification requirement attaches to them, and none ever has.

The 2021 rezoning. The SoHo/NoHo Neighborhood Plan, adopted December 15, 2021, replaced the old manufacturing districts across SoHo and NoHo with mixed-use districts inside a new Special SoHo–NoHo Mixed Use District. PLUTO now maps this lot as M1-5/R7X within SNX, with a residential FAR of 5.0 (6.0 under the Mandatory Inclusionary Housing option). For most SoHo buildings the rezoning's headline effect was to regularise residential use and retire the JLWQA problem. At 150 Wooster it changed nothing about the legality of the residences, because the 2016 special permit had already established conventional residential use. Its practical relevance here is to the surrounding blocks and to any future development rights question at this lot — not to the status of the apartments.

One consequence of the special permit does bind: the ground-floor retail is limited to Use Group 6 excluding eating and drinking establishments. A buyer weighing the risk of a restaurant or bar opening beneath their loft can set that concern aside; a buyer hoping the retail will one day become a restaurant should understand that it cannot without a further approval.

The site was enrolled in the New York City Office of Environmental Remediation's Voluntary Cleanup Program. Petroleum contamination associated with a gasoline station that formerly adjoined the property was identified on the site and assigned a state spill number. Remediation included the removal of underground storage tanks and the excavation and removal of more than 5,300 tons of soil, followed by the installation of engineering controls and the recording of institutional controls.

The engineering controls consist of a vapour barrier membrane beneath the foundation slab and outside the foundation walls, an active sub-slab depressurisation system that vents soil vapour at the roof, and a composite cover system. The institutional controls, per the offering plan, include registration of the E-designation at the Department of Buildings (PLUTO carries E-369 at this lot), compliance with a Site Management Plan, a prohibition on discontinuing the engineering controls without OER approval, a right of entry for OER, a prohibition on gardening in residual soil, soils-management requirements for any excavation, and a prohibition on changing the approved residential-and-retail use without OER approval. Annual certification reports prepared by a qualified environmental professional are due to OER by July 30 of each following year for as long as the Site Management Plan remains in effect.

None of this is unusual for a remediated Manhattan development site, and the disclosure is thorough. But it is a live operating obligation with an annual filing, a mechanical system the condominium must keep running, and a constraint on any future change of use. Any buyer should ask for the current Site Management Plan status, the most recent annual certification, and confirmation of whether OER has issued a Notice of Satisfaction and Clean Property Certificate — the offering plan records the Remedial Action Report as still under review at the time of filing.

Right of first refusal. The Board of Managers holds a right of first refusal on both the sale and the lease of a residential unit, exercisable at the same price and terms the owner has been offered. If the Board exercises the right to lease, the tenant remains subject to the owner's reasonable approval. Sponsor-held unsold units were exempt, as are the commercial units.

Leasing. Residential leases must run for a minimum term of twelve months, subject to the Board's right of first refusal.

Purchaser approval. None. This is a condominium; there is no board package, no interview, and no approval of the purchaser.

Ownership vehicles. The plan contemplates purchase by natural persons and by entities; LLC and trust ownership is used in the recorded deeds at this building.

Pet rules, house rules and any resale capital contribution should be confirmed with the managing agent — they are not established by the plan sections reviewed for this page.

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 (2022) cleared a median $3,904/sf across 1 sale. Median listing discount 3.4% 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 1-00514-7506) 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.

Read the environmental package first. The Site Management Plan, the annual OER certification, the status of the Remedial Action Report and the condition of the sub-slab depressurisation system are the items most likely to be missing from a standard diligence file and the items most likely to matter later.

Model the carry without an abatement. There is no 421-a here and there never was. Taxes have run at full assessment since 2018. A buyer coming from abated new-development inventory elsewhere in Manhattan will find the monthly number higher than the price implies — and it does not step up later, because it never stepped down.

Understand the commercial units. Two ground-floor retail condominiums, separately owned by a sponsor affiliate, separately financed, and outside the residential owners' control. Check the Schedule B expense allocation between the residential and commercial sections in the current financials.

Check the façade programme. The Cycle 10 filing carries a SWARMP status. Ask what the repair scope is, what it costs, and whether it is funded from reserves or an assessment.

The board holds a right of first refusal on leases as well as sales. If the plan is to buy and let, price that in.

Mansion tax applies. Run pricing through the Mansion Tax Calculator and the full monthly number through the True Monthly Carrying Cost Calculator.

Lead with the fact that this building could not be built today, or then. Ground-up construction inside the SoHo–Cast Iron Historic District required a Certificate of Appropriateness and a City Planning special permit. That is the scarcity argument, and it is documentary rather than promotional.

Get ahead of the environmental disclosure. A buyer who encounters the Site Management Plan for the first time in the middle of contract negotiation reacts badly to it. A buyer who is handed the current certification and a clean explanation up front does not.

Correct the city record early. The Department of Finance carries the lot as 146 Wooster Street. Expect that to surface in a title or tax search and be ready to explain it.

With six residences, comparables are scarce and precedent is powerful. Every sale at this building sets the reference point for the next one. Price and position accordingly.

If you're considering 150 Wooster Street, also evaluate:

• 160 Wooster Street — 2003 boutique condominium of 15 residences a block north; the nearest comparable in tenure and street
• 92 Greene Street — the other ground-up condominium built inside the Cast Iron District on a post-designation site; a direct structural analogue
• 139 Wooster Street — Beyer Blinder Belle condominium of 16 residences across the street
• 101 Wooster Street — cast-iron cooperative on the same street; the tenure and vintage contrast
• 195 Prince Street — SoHo masonry loft condominium around the corner
• 30 Crosby Street — 13-residence loft conversion; the converted-building alternative at similar scale
• 25 Bond Street — BKSK Architects 2008; ten residences in NoHo, the closest peer for boutique new construction downtown
• 40 Mercer Street — Nouvel-designed new-construction condominium in SoHo; the contemporary alternative
• 10 Bond Street — Selldorf's 11-residence NoHo building; boutique scale, materially different ownership structure