181 Sullivan Street
181 Sullivan Street, New York, NY 10012
Greenwich Village
BBL 1005257507 · BIN 1008247
- Type
- Condominium
- Units
- 1201
- Floors
- 5
Every recorded sale at this building, 2007–2022
Price-per-square-foot over time, the line- and floor-premium curves, and every recorded sale.
- Median $/sf
- $2,090
- Listing discount
- 1.9%
- Recorded sales
- 9
- On record
- 2007–2022
Five full-floor apartments on a twenty-five-foot South Village lot, on the site of the Sullivan Street Playhouse.
The theater is the reason anyone knows this address. The Fantasticks opened there in 1960 and closed on January 13, 2002 after forty-two years — the longest run of any musical anywhere — and the playhouse stood empty for a few years afterward before the redevelopment took it down. LPC's own building database records the site history in a single sentence, which is unusual: the Commission does not normally annotate a post-2000 building at all. It did here because of what was lost. Buyers should understand that the connection is to the site, not to the fabric: nothing of the playhouse survives in the building, which is a 2005–06 metal-and-glass rebuild.
The second thing to understand is the geometry, because it defines the asset. Five floors, one residence each, roughly 1,600 square feet apiece, no commercial unit, no staff, no amenity. That is a very small condominium — small enough that operations are effectively a five-household arrangement and small enough that a single capital event is an assessment rather than a budget line. It also means that the two units held in common beneficial ownership since 2023 represent a controlling block. Neither fact is disqualifying; both belong in a buyer's underwriting.
The third is the tax position, which changed and is now settled. The residences carried a ten-year 421-a exemption that ran through FY2017/18 and was gone by FY2018/19. Any comparison against a pre-2018 listing history is comparing two different regimes. There is nothing left to burn off, which is a form of certainty.
Building operations
No doorman, no staff, no amenity program, no commercial income. Operations run through a managing agent and common charges are correspondingly small. The counterpart is that the reserve fund carries the entire capital burden across five owners, and that no public record establishes what it holds. Reserves, the assessment history, the elevator's age and condition, and the facade and roof status all have to come from the managing agent and the financials — none of it is in the public file, and no offering plan for this building sits in either library.
Architecture and landmark position
The building is Modern — LPC's own classification — clad principally in metal and glass, five stories on a 25-by-100-foot lot with 8,158 square feet of residential floor area. It reads as a contemporary insertion on a block of nineteenth-century mixed-use and tenement fabric, most of it Renaissance Revival and Italianate, much of it by Bernstein & Bernstein, Michael Bernstein and Ernest Flagg. It was built to that contrast deliberately, seven years before the district existed.
The designation question deserves precision because it is commonly stated wrong. This lot is in the South Village Historic District, designated December 17, 2013. It is not in the Sullivan–Thompson Historic District, designated 2016, which covers a separate area to the south. We verified the assignment by tax lot against LPC's own database rather than relying on PLUTO's district field, which is unreliable in both directions — here the two happen to agree.
The building predates its district by seven years, so it played no part in the case for designation and is not part of the district's historic fabric. What that does not mean is that the building is unregulated. LPC jurisdiction attaches to every property inside a district boundary. Any change to the facade, the windows, the storefront line or a rooftop element requires a Commission permit before DOB will issue one. For a metal-and-glass building whose facade components have a shorter service life than masonry, that is a live operational fact rather than an abstraction, and it belongs in a buyer's reserve analysis.
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 building trades as boutique full-floor South Village product: private-elevator-scale living at roughly 1,600 square feet per home, priced in the Village's upper condominium band on a per-square-foot basis while remaining well below the absolute price of a comparable full-floor loft in the larger converted buildings a few blocks west. Turnover has been genuinely thin — five units, and several of them have changed hands only once or twice since the 2007 sponsor closings, with two now held long-term through entities. A buyer should expect the recorded set to be too small to average and should underwrite the specific floor, the specific light and the specific condition rather than a building-level number. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 26, 2022 | 2 | 2 BR · 2 BA · 1,529 sf | $3,195,000 | $2,090/sf | +6.5% |
| Oct 21, 2021 | 3 | 2 BR · 2 BA · 1,530 sf | $2,950,000 | $1,928/sf | -1.7% |
| May 14, 2021 | 3 | 2 BR · 2 BA · 1,525 sf | $2,100,000 | $1,377/sf | off-mkt |
| Sep 11, 2017 | PH | 2 BR · 2.5 BA · 1,520 sf | $4,200,000 | $2,763/sf | -2.2% |
| Sep 14, 2012 | 4 | 2 BR · 1,524 sf | $2,875,000 | $1,886/sf | off-mkt |
| May 18, 2007 | 3 | 2 BR · 1,530 sf | $2,031,408 | $1,328/sf | -9.7% |
| May 16, 2007 | 2 | 2 BR · 1,530 sf | $2,031,408 | $1,328/sf | -9.7% |
| May 15, 2007 | 4 | 2 BR · 1,530 sf | $2,341,975 | $1,531/sf | +1.8% |
Market read. Most recent trades (2022) cleared a median $2,090/sf across 1 sale. Median listing discount 1.9% 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 1-00525-7507) 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.
What to know if you’re buying
Read the reserve before anything else. Five owners, one facade, one roof, one elevator. Ask for two years of financials, the reserve balance, the assessment history and the Local Law 11 status.
Understand the voting arithmetic. Two of the five units have been under common beneficial ownership since 2023. Ask counsel to review the by-laws' quorum, voting and board-composition provisions in that light.
Do not model a tax abatement. The 421-a ended with FY2017/18. Pull the current bill.
LPC applies. The building is inside the South Village Historic District. Anything exterior — windows, facade panels, rooftop equipment — goes through the Commission first.
Confirm the policy stack in writing. Pets, subletting, pied-à-terre use and entity purchase are not documented publicly for this building. Get the by-laws and house rules from the managing agent before contract.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering 181 Sullivan Street, also evaluate:
- 177 Thompson Street — the immediate neighbor on the same tax block; pre-war South Village ownership
- 184 Thompson Street — the larger post-war alternative on the same block
- 136 Sullivan Street — First Sullivan Condominium; boutique condominium ownership on the same street
- 10 Sullivan Street — the contemporary architect-driven condominium at the corridor's southern end
- 209 Sullivan Street — small-building Village ownership a few blocks north
- 131 Thompson Street — South Village boutique ownership at similar scale
- 113 Prince Street — the SoHo loft alternative for buyers weighing full-floor product
- 520 LaGuardia Place — the nearby Village cooperative alternative
The neighborhood
For the full corridor — architecture, schools, transit, and pricing across Greenwich Village — read The Roebling Team Guide to Greenwich Village.
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 181 Sullivan Street?
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A Private Pricing Opinion — what your apartment at 181 Sullivan Street would likely sell for today, what it costs to sell, and what you’d walk away with — reviewed personally against condition, exposures, renovation quality, and the competition actually on the market.