155 East 72nd Street
155 East 72nd Street, New York, NY 10021
Lenox Hill, Upper East Side
BBL 1014070026 · BIN 1042849
- Year built
- 1927
- Type
- Cooperative
- Units
- 37
- Floors
- 16
- Landmark
- No
- Pets
- Permitted per management-sourced records; confirm weight and breed rules in the house rules
- Financing
- 50 percent maximum financing (50 percent minimum down) per management-sourced records — a tighter ceiling than the 75–80 percent common in condominiums and tighter than many Upper East Side co-ops
Every recorded sale at this building, 2003–2026
Bedroom-by-bedroom medians, the full transfer record, and how units trade against ask.
- 2BR median
- $1.8M
- Recent range
- $950K – $4.6M
- Listing discount
- 4.5%
- Recorded transfers
- 41
East 72nd Street between Lexington and Third is the quiet back half of a street that begins in high ceremony at Fifth Avenue. The trophy addresses cluster west of Park; by the time the street reaches Lexington it has become a working residential block of prewar cooperatives, a few postwar infills, and the retail spine of Third Avenue a hundred feet east. 155 East 72nd Street is the best building on that stretch, and it is there because in 1927 Laneson Realty Corporation could assemble a 9,195-square-foot lot east of Park at a price that supported ninety feet of frontage and a Cross & Cross commission.
Cross & Cross is the reason to take the building seriously. John and Eliot Cross designed for a specific client — the family that wanted prewar scale without Fifth Avenue theatrics — and they were unusually good at the interior planning that scale requires. What they built here is a duplex house. Department of Buildings alteration filings across twenty-five years reference apartments 3/4A, 5/6A, 9/10A, 9C/10C, 11/12A, 11/12B and 13/14B: the plan is duplex-heavy from the lower floors to the top, which is why a sixteen-story building holds only thirty-seven apartments and why the per-apartment room counts run well above what the address suggests. Buyers who arrive expecting a simplex co-op of the Third Avenue vintage are usually surprised by the staircases.
The exterior is Renaissance Revival in the LPC's classification: red brick above a two-story rusticated limestone base, an arched and canopied entrance, terra-cotta cornice, and an interior courtyard that gives the rear-facing lines an outlook instead of a lot line. The building was folded into landmark protection late — the Upper East Side Historic District Extension was designated on March 23, 2010, nearly thirty years after the original Upper East Side Historic District. That distinction matters operationally rather than historically: since 2010 the cooperative has had to take every façade repair, every window replacement, and every new through-wall air-conditioning sleeve through the Landmarks Preservation Commission, and the Department of Buildings filing record shows exactly that shift, with jobs coded "not landmarked" before 2010 and "landmarked" after.
The other structural fact is share ownership, and it is the one that decides most transactions here. Apartments at 155 East 72nd Street do not transfer as real property. ACRIS records them as SP — single residential cooperative unit share transfers, which is the recorded proof that a buyer is acquiring shares in 155 East 72nd Street Corp. and a proprietary lease, not a deed. Everything downstream of that — the board package, the interview, the financing ceiling, the post-closing liquidity expectation — is a private contract between the corporation and its shareholders, published nowhere, and available only from the managing agent.
Architecture and unit composition
The building rises sixteen floors on a 90-by-102-foot lot with roughly 96,000 square feet of residential area — an average well north of 2,500 square feet per apartment before common space, which is the arithmetic behind the duplex plan. The base is two stories of rusticated limestone carrying an arched entrance under a canopy; above it the elevation is red brick with limestone trim, running to a terra-cotta cornice that the cooperative has repaired and partially replaced in successive façade cycles.
The interior courtyard is a real asset in a mid-block building. Rear-facing rooms look into open air rather than at a neighbor's wall, and the courtyard also carries mechanical work — the cooperative filed replacement of a section of the courtyard roof over the basement, including two new skylights, in 2023, and rebuilt the courtyard stairs and wall in 2017.
Apartment stock runs from simplex lines through the large duplexes that define the building. Renovation filings across two decades describe the recurring prewar program: maid's rooms absorbed into kitchens, through-wall air conditioning cut into masonry, and combinations of adjacent apartments. Two points follow for buyers. First, because the building is inside a historic district, any new masonry opening on the street elevation requires Landmarks approval before the Department of Buildings will permit it — several filings in the record do exactly that, and one apartment renovation was disapproved at plan examination before being refiled. Second, the apartment count in market records lags the certificate: combinations have taken the building from a stated 39 to a recorded 37, and a listing citing 39 or 34 is citing a different year, not a different building.
The base carries roughly 2,200 square feet of professional office space, filed and refiled through 2026 as a doctor's office. It is a separate commercial component of the building rather than a shareholder apartment, and it is part of the corporation's income.
Building operations
Management-sourced records describe an attended lobby, a live-in resident manager, a renovated lobby, and a fitness room. The fitness room is worth dating precisely: the cooperative filed a cellar-level tenant fitness room with the Department of Buildings in June 2022 and refiled it in August 2023, so it is a recent addition to an otherwise traditional prewar amenity set rather than a long-standing feature. Confirm doorman coverage hours directly — a thirty-seven-apartment building supports a different staffing model than a two-hundred-unit house, and hours vary.
The façade is the operating story. The building has filed under the city's periodic façade inspection program in every cycle on record, and the results have been consistent: Safe With a Repair and Maintenance Program in Cycle 6 (2007), Cycle 7 (2011, later brought to Safe on a 2013 subsequent filing), Cycle 8 (2016), and Cycle 9 (filed December 2022). The Department of Buildings job record shows the corresponding work — general façade repairs and brick replacement in 2008, brickwork, lintels, pointing and partial terra-cotta cornice replacement in 2012, pointing, masonry, lintel and sill replacement plus the courtyard stairs in 2017, and a further round of brickwork, pointing, sills, lintels and stone patching filed in 2024 with a sidewalk shed. A ninety-eight-year-old brick-and-terra-cotta elevation inside a historic district is a permanent line item, not an episode. Buyers should read this as a building that maintains rather than a building that defers, but should also expect the maintenance to continue and should ask what the current cycle is costing.
Policy framework
Ownership form: Cooperative. Purchase means acquiring shares in 155 East 72nd Street Corp. and a proprietary lease, subject to board approval after a full financial package and an in-person interview. ACRIS confirms the mechanism: recorded transfers here are coded SP, single residential cooperative unit share transfers.
Financing: 50 percent maximum per management-sourced records, meaning at least half the purchase price in cash at closing. Verify in writing — the ceiling is a board policy and boards change it.
Post-closing liquidity: Not published. Upper East Side prewar boards typically expect meaningful liquid assets remaining after closing, often expressed as a multiple of annual maintenance and debt service, but the figure applied here is not in any public document. Ask the managing agent before you write an offer.
Pets: Permitted per management-sourced records; weight and breed limits, if any, are in the house rules.
Pied-à-terre: Permitted case by case with board approval per management-sourced records. Case-by-case is not the same as permitted, and a non-primary-residence purchaser should get the board's posture confirmed before spending on diligence.
Subletting: Not documented in public records. Assume a seasoning period and a cap until the managing agent tells you otherwise.
Trusts, LLCs, co-purchase, guarantors and gifts: Not documented in public records. Cooperative boards treat all of these as discretionary. If your purchase structure requires any of them, resolve it with the managing agent before the package goes in.
Flip tax: Not documented in public records. Most Upper East Side cooperatives of this vintage carry one; the rate, the base, and whether it falls on the seller or is split are all building-specific and all material to a net-proceeds calculation.
Real estate taxes: The cooperative pays a single building-level tax bill and allocates it through maintenance. No 421-a, 485-x, or J-51 benefit appears on the lot in any assessment roll on record.
Local Law 97
- 2024–2029 annual penalty
- $0 (under cap)
- 2030–2034 annual penalty
- $5,694/yr
- Per unit / month range
- $0 – $13
Source: NYC LL84 benchmarking and PLUTO · The Roebling Research Library. City record last verified September 2026.
See full Local Law 97 analysis — emissions history, scenarios, methodology →Facade safety — Local Law 11
The latest available filing classified the facade as SWARMP — Safe With A Repair and Maintenance Program: the engineer identified conditions requiring monitoring or repair before the next inspection cycle. The scope, timeline, and how the building funds the work are building-specific — we review the filings and board materials for you.
How to read this, and where it comes from
QEWI = Qualified Exterior Wall Inspector — the licensed engineer the city requires to sign the report (the independent expert, not the managing agent).
Source: NYC DOB facade filings (FISP) · The Roebling Research Library. City record last verified September 2026.
Recent sales
The building trades as a large-apartment prewar cooperative rather than a per-foot product. Value is set by room count, floor, exposure — street versus courtyard — and by whether an apartment retains its original duplex plan or has been opened up. The duplex lines are the building's scarce inventory and they are what draws buyers off Park Avenue; the simplex lines compete with the better co-ops on Lexington and East 73rd. Condition spread is wide, because estate apartments here carry the additional renovation cost of Landmarks review on any exterior work.
Two things distinguish the underwriting from a Park Avenue equivalent. The 50 percent financing ceiling narrows the buyer pool meaningfully and slows deals that would clear in a condominium. And the recurring façade program means maintenance and periodic assessment should be modeled forward, not backward. Unit-level transaction history is maintained in The Roebling Research Library and shared with clients during diligence.
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 | vs. Ask |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jun 29, 2026 | 7C | 4 BR · 5.5 BA | $3,650,000 | -14.1% |
| Oct 23, 2025 | 11 | 4 BR · 4 BA | $4,600,000 | -7.9% |
| Aug 5, 2025 | 13D | 2 BR · 2 BA | $1,940,000 | +2.1% |
| Dec 3, 2024 | 15C | 1 BR · 2 BA | $950,000 | -4.5% |
| Mar 1, 2023 | 12D | 2 BR · 1.5 BA | $1,750,000 | +0.0% |
| Oct 11, 2022 | 7 | 4 BR · 4 BA | $5,785,500 | -17.3% |
| Oct 20, 2021 | 9 | 5 BR · 5.5 BA | $8,300,000 | -12.6% |
| Oct 13, 2021 | 3D | 2 BR · 1.5 BA | $1,520,000 | -3.2% |
Market read. $/sf is measured on the latest sales with reliable square footage (2016): a median $1,357/sf across 1 sale. The building has traded as recently as 2026. Median listing discount 1.8% 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 1-01407-0026) 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.
What to know if you’re buying
Search the BBL, not the address. City records file this lot as 153 East 72 Street. If your attorney, appraiser, or automated valuation tool searched "155 East 72nd Street" and returned nothing, that is why. The BBL is 1014070026 and the BIN is 1042849.
Assume 37 apartments, not 39. The recorded count is 37 residential apartments plus one commercial unit. Combinations account for the difference, and per-share arithmetic built on the older number will be wrong.
Half in cash. The 50 percent financing ceiling is the single most common reason a deal here does not happen. Confirm it in writing early, and run the Co-op Board Qualification Calculator against the specific apartment before offering.
Get the whole policy stack from the managing agent in one request. Flip tax, sublet rules, post-closing liquidity, pied-à-terre posture, trust and LLC treatment, and the current assessment status are all unpublished. Ask for them together, in writing, before diligence spending starts.
Landmarks governs your renovation. Since 2010 this lot has been inside the Upper East Side Historic District Extension. New windows, a new through-wall air-conditioning sleeve, or anything else visible from the street requires a Certificate of Appropriateness ahead of the Department of Buildings permit. Budget the time as well as the cost, and run the Renovation Cost Calculator with that sequence in mind.
Read the façade file. Cycle 9 was filed as Safe With a Repair and Maintenance Program in December 2022, and repair work was filed in 2024. Ask for the engineer's report, the scope, the cost, and how it is being funded.
What to know if you’re selling
Sell the plan, not the address. The duplexes are the reason a buyer chooses this building over a simplex co-op two blocks away. Floor plans and room counts do more work here than square-foot claims.
Pre-clear the policy questions. Buyers on this block are comparing against buildings that publish more. Having the financing ceiling, flip tax, sublet terms, and current assessment status in hand at first showing removes the friction that otherwise surfaces at contract.
Qualify on cash, early. With half the price required in equity, a buyer's liquidity picture matters more than their pre-approval letter. Screening for it before accepting an offer prevents a board rejection later.
Be straight about Landmarks. An estate apartment in a historic district costs more and takes longer to renovate than the same apartment outside one. Pricing that in beats having a buyer discover it during their architect's review.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering 155 East 72nd Street, also evaluate:
- 117 East 72nd Street — prewar cooperative on the same block front, closer to Park; the step-up in address at a comparable scale
- 132 East 72nd Street — prewar cooperative directly across the street; the nearest like-for-like
- 158 East 72nd Street — cooperative on the same block toward Third Avenue
- 164 East 72nd Street — cooperative at the Third Avenue end of the block; the value entry on the street
- 114 East 72nd Street — 1963 building converted to cooperative in 1972; the postwar alternative with different financing and policy norms
- 1003 Lexington Avenue — boutique Lexington Avenue cooperative around the corner
- 1004 Lexington Avenue — cooperative on the same block of Lexington; the smaller-building alternative
- 1250 Third Avenue — full-service elevator cooperative on the avenue; more staff, less prewar detail
- 30 East 72nd Street — cooperative converted in 1967, west of Park; the trophy-corridor comparison
- 45 East 72nd Street — 1979 rental-to-cooperative conversion; a different vintage of the same tenure
The neighborhood
For the full corridor — architecture, schools, transit, and pricing across Upper East Side — read The Roebling Team Guide to Upper East 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.
Considering a move at 155 East 72nd Street?
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