215 West 98th Street (The Gramont)
215 West 98th Street, New York, NY 10025
Upper West Side
BBL 1018707502 · BIN 1082691
- Year built
- 1911
- Type
- Condop
- Units
- 95
- Floors
- 12
- Landmark
- No
Every recorded sale at this building, 2004–2026
Bedroom-by-bedroom medians, the full transfer record, and how units trade against ask.
- 3BR median
- $2M
- Recent range
- $649K – $2.8M
- Listing discount
- 1.0%
- Recorded transfers
- 60
George and Edward Blum were the most idiosyncratic apartment-house architects working in New York in the decade before the First World War, and the Upper West Side holds more of their work than any other neighborhood. The Gramont is a comparatively restrained example — Renaissance Revival massing, beige brick over rusticated limestone — but the Blum signature is all in the detail: the stone-and-iron balconies at the third floor, the frothy carved spandrel panels, and above all the arched stained-glass entrance pavilion, reached one step up from a landscaped court cut into the West 98th Street elevation between two deep light wings. It is one of the few entrances on upper Broadway that still does what it was designed to do, which is make a corner building feel like a side-street one.
The plan is the second reason the building matters. Six apartments per floor across twelve floors, in a footprint a hundred feet wide and two hundred feet deep, produces rooms at a scale that the Broadway corridor mostly stopped building after 1920. Crucially, the building went through the whole of the twentieth century without being subdivided; a published architectural history notes that it was still six apartments to a floor when it converted in the mid-1980s. Ten-foot ceilings, windowed kitchens, and decorative fireplaces survive in the inventory.
The third reason is structural, and it is where most buyers get the building wrong. The Gramont is not a condominium and it is not a plain cooperative. It is a condop: the whole property was declared a condominium in 1987 with six commercial units at the base and a single residential unit above, and that residential unit is owned by Gramont Owners Corp., the cooperative that holds the 95 apartments. City tax data therefore shows a condominium building class at the lot level, and every automated data feed downstream repeats it. What a purchaser actually buys is shares in a cooperative corporation with a proprietary lease, subject to board approval and cooperative financing rules.
The reason the structure exists is the retail. Separating the six storefronts along Broadway into their own condominium units insulates the residential cooperative from the commercial tax class, the commercial assessment, and the commercial risk, and it lets the two sides of the building be financed and sold independently. It is a sound structure and it has held for nearly forty years, but it does mean a buyer has two documents to read rather than one: the cooperative's financials and the condominium's.
The fourth thing to know is the sponsor. The original sponsor entity still holds unsold shares — twenty apartments as of the most recent amendment reviewed, several of them sublet — which is roughly a fifth of the building. The sponsor has not controlled the board since January 1995, and its maintenance obligations are reported current, but a sponsor block of that size affects financing tests at some lenders, affects voting, and represents shadow supply on resale. It is the first question to ask and the number is likely to have moved since the last filing.
Architecture and unit composition
The building is a genuine corner property, with the long elevation on West 98th Street and the short one on Broadway, and the Blums used the depth to cut two light courts into the 98th Street side. The entrance sits between them, in a landscaped court, under an arched stained-glass pavilion — an arrangement that gives the building a residential address on a side street while its base earns retail rent on the avenue. The annex at 207 West 98th Street continues the frontage west and shares the tax lot and the cooperative; its apartment lines are lettered differently and generally smaller, and they trade at a distinctly lower band than the main-house lines.
The apartment stock is prewar in the substantive sense rather than the marketing one. Six apartments per floor on a plate this large yields real room counts and real proportions: entry foyers, separated public and private wings, kitchens with windows rather than vents. Ceiling heights around ten feet are documented in listing records and are visible in the window rhythm from the street. Decorative fireplaces survive in a number of apartments.
The wings are the thing to walk before contract. A deep court gives interior rooms genuine light and air by 1911 standards, which is better than an airshaft and worse than open exposure; the difference between a court-facing bedroom and a Broadway-facing one is real, and it is the largest single driver of value inside the building. Broadway lines carry the light and the avenue noise together.
Building operations
The Gramont is a full-service, doorman-staffed prewar cooperative with union building staff. Operations are funded by maintenance on the cooperative side and by common charges on the condominium side, with the residential unit carrying 92 percent of the condominium's common interest — so in practice the shareholders bear almost all of the building's operating expense, and the six commercial units carry the rest.
The capital story of the past several years is a façade story, and it is largely finished. The condominium ran a cornice and Local Law 11 restoration program across 2020 and 2021, funded by capital assessments in both years totalling roughly $3.2 million, with the work reported completed and paid from the assessment and reserves. A separate operating assessment in 2021 covered an insurance increase. Maintenance rose 5.79 percent effective January 2022 and a further 4.5 percent effective January 2023. A roof replacement was in planning as of the most recent amendment on file, with costs not yet determined.
The balance-sheet position that emerges from those documents is a building that spent heavily, funded it by assessment rather than by borrowing, and came out the other side with its façade done and its debt modest. The underlying mortgage is $9 million at a fixed 3 percent maturing January 1, 2031 — cheap money by any current standard, and a refinancing event that lands squarely inside the ownership horizon of anyone buying today. The 2031 maturity is the single most consequential forward-looking number in the building's finances, because the replacement rate will not be 3 percent. Combined reserve, escrow and operating balances stood above $1.8 million at the most recent statement reviewed, against an annual budget of roughly $3.9 million, and the budget carries a recurring reserve contribution rather than relying on assessments alone.
Two caveats. The condominium has not commissioned a reserve study, and the auditors note the absence of the required supplementary information on future major repairs — common in New York but worth knowing. And the roof project was still unpriced as of the last filing reviewed, which means one more capital event is probably ahead.
Policy framework
Ownership form: Cooperative shares in Gramont Owners Corp., which owns the residential condominium unit. Purchases require board approval and a board package; expect a cooperative timeline rather than a condominium one.
Financing, minimum down payment, subletting, and pied-à-terre use: Governed by the cooperative's house rules and board policy. None of these terms is documented in the amendments reviewed for this page. Confirm each one in writing with the managing agent before making an offer — the condominium wrapper does not make this a condominium, and assuming condominium flexibility here is the most expensive mistake available at this address.
Pets: Permitted per listing and management-sourced records; confirm limits in the house rules.
Air conditioning: Through-the-wall and protruding units are permitted, which is not universal in prewar buildings of this vintage and materially affects the cost of making an apartment comfortable.
Sponsor units: Twenty apartments remained sponsor-held as of the most recent amendment on file, some sublet. Ask the managing agent for the current count, and ask your lender how it treats sponsor concentration.
Local Law 97
- 2024–2029 annual penalty
- $0 (under cap)
- 2030–2034 annual penalty
- $36,786/yr
- Per unit / month range
- $0 – $32
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).
Penalties shown are amounts DOB assessed against filings on record across 2005–10 to 2020–25. The FISP dataset does not record whether they were paid, contested or remain open, so treat the figure as history rather than a current balance and confirm the building’s standing with the managing agent.
Source: NYC DOB facade filings (FISP) · The Roebling Research Library. City record last verified September 2026.
Recent sales
The Gramont occupies a defensible niche: genuine 1911 rooms with a Blum entrance, at Broadway scale, on a corner, in a full-service building, at upper-Broadway pricing rather than West End Avenue or Riverside Drive pricing. On a per-room basis it prices below the designated prewar cooperatives two and three blocks west and above the postwar and contextual-era inventory on Broadway itself.
Four factors move value inside the building. Exposure — Broadway, side street, or court — is the largest. Main house versus annex is the second, and the gap is wide; the annex lines are smaller and trade materially below the 215 lines. Renovation condition is the third, since prewar layouts at this scale reward a good renovation and punish a dated one. And the fourth is the sponsor block, which is shadow supply of roughly a fifth of the building and which some lenders will treat as a concentration issue.
For sellers, the strongest arguments available are that the façade money has already been spent, that the underlying mortgage is cheap and fixed until 2031, and that J-51 is long gone — meaning there is no scheduled tax step-up waiting for a buyer. For buyers, the offsetting questions are the roof, the 2031 refinancing, and the sponsor count.
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 | PPSF | vs. Ask |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 14, 2026 | 1E | 1 BR · 1 BA | $650,000 | +0.0% | |
| Sep 18, 2025 | 10D | 3 BR · 2.5 BA · 2,400 sf | $2,750,000 | $1,146/sf | +0.0% |
| Aug 18, 2025 | 8F | 2 BR · 2 BA | $1,495,000 | -2.6% | |
| Jan 27, 2025 | 3D | 3 BR · 2.5 BA · 2,000 sf | $2,045,000 | $1,023/sf | -2.4% |
| Oct 10, 2024 | 1F | 1 BR · 1 BA · 665 sf | $649,000 | $976/sf | +0.0% |
| May 30, 2024 | 8A | 3 BR · 2.5 BA · 2,180 sf | $2,225,000 | $1,021/sf | -14.3% |
| May 16, 2024 | 5C | 3 BR · 2 BA · 1,650 sf | $1,495,000 | $906/sf | +0.0% |
| Jun 30, 2023 | 4F | 3 BR · 2.5 BA | $1,495,000 | -2.0% |
Market read. $/sf is measured on the latest sales with reliable square footage (2025): a median $1,044/sf across 2 sales. The building has traded as recently as 2026. Median listing discount 2.3% 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 1-01870-7502) 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 on co-ops is not officially recorded, figures shown are approximate.
What to know if you’re buying
This is a condop, and you are buying co-op shares. Board package, board approval, board financing rules. Every automated data source will tell you it is a condominium. It is not.
Confirm financing, sublet and pied-à-terre policy in writing. They are not in the public filings and they are the terms most likely to be misrepresented by third-party data.
The façade is done; the roof is not. Ask for the roof scope, the bids, and whether an assessment has been declared.
The underlying mortgage matures January 1, 2031. Model a refinance at a market rate and see what it does to maintenance.
Ask for the current sponsor unit count. Twenty as of the last amendment reviewed; the number moves, and it matters to your lender.
Search all four addresses. 215 West 98th Street, 207 West 98th Street, 2600 Broadway and 2610 Broadway are one tax lot. Older recordings appear under all of them.
Do not confuse this with the buildings on the next block. Ariel West (245 West 99th Street) and Ariel East (2628 Broadway) sit on block 1871 and are 2007 new-construction condominiums with nothing in common with this building but a subway stop.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering The Gramont, also evaluate:
- 240 West 98th Street (The Sabrina) — the closest peer: large prewar building on the same street, converted to ownership, with a substantial sponsor block
- 255 West 98th Street — 1912–13 Gaetan Ajello cooperative half a block west, inside the historic district
- 305 West 98th Street — prewar cooperative alternative toward Riverside Drive
- 311 West 97th Street — prewar cooperative one block south, comparable room scale
- The Terra Cotta (780 West End Avenue) — prewar West End Avenue condominium; the ownership-form alternative in the same catchment
- 275 West 96th Street (The Columbia) — large full-service Broadway condominium two blocks south, for buyers weighing prewar rooms against modern systems
- 2681 Broadway (The Broadmoor) — large Broadway-corridor prewar cooperative to the north
- 251 West 89th Street (The Admaston) — prewar condominium in the same architectural generation, further south
- 100 West 93rd Street (Leader House) — postwar full-service condominium alternative between the two markets
The neighborhood
For the full corridor — architecture, schools, transit, and pricing across Upper West Side — read The Roebling Team Guide to Upper West 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 The Gramont; the adjoining building is known as the Gramont Annex?
Request a private building brief with the relevant comparable sales, current and off-market availability, and an apartment-specific view of value.
Own an apartment here? See what it would sell for.
A Private Pricing Opinion — what your apartment at The Gramont; the adjoining building is known as the Gramont Annex 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.