271 Central Park West

Schwartz & Gross were among the most prolific apartment-house architects of early-twentieth-century Manhattan. At 271 CPW they worked in a Neo-Renaissance vocabulary with French Second Empire elements — a brick facade with faux balconies and a stone frieze of garlands and shields that lends the building a strong horizontal emphasis, distinct from the verticality of the Deco towers that would later rise up and down the avenue.

Developer Samuel A. Herzog assembled the lots in August 1912 and completed the building by September 1913. It leased quickly — roughly 60 percent rented by the middle of 1913 and fully leased by the time it opened — at yearly rents of $2,400 to $2,900. The original plan placed two apartments on each floor: the east apartments, facing Central Park, of nine rooms; the west apartments of eight, each with a library, separate dining and living rooms, a wood-burning fireplace, and dedicated staff rooms. The building converted from rental to cooperative ownership in the 1970s and runs today as a full-service house.

271 CPW trades thinly and across a wide range, as a twenty-six-unit prewar cooperative does — from ground-floor and lower units in the seven figures to full-floor and duplex apartments well into eight. The 3/4E duplex is the building's high-water mark, recorded at $16.995M (2015) and again at $17.75M (2018); Penthouse 12W, the building's one apartment with private outdoor space, closed at $13.9M (2010).

Value here turns heavily on line and exposure — the park-facing east nine-room apartments carry a clear premium over the west eight-room layouts. The full recorded-sales history, with monthly carrying costs and asking-price context, is in the Data Room below.

271 CPW is a full-service cooperative. Board-package and house-rule specifics — financing maximum, flip tax, pet policy, and sublet, trust, and LLC posture — are not uniformly published and should be confirmed with the managing agent at offer stage. As with peer Central Park West cooperatives, expect a board interview, substantial post-closing-liquidity expectations, and cooperative-standard closing timelines of roughly six to ten weeks from contract.

Recent sales

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.

Market read. $/sf is measured on the latest sales with reliable square footage (2015): a median $2,833/sf across 1 sale. The building has traded as recently as 2025. Median listing discount 2.1% 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 1-01201-0029) 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.

If you're considering 271 CPW, also evaluate its Central Park West neighbors:

• 262 Central Park West (The White House) — Sugarman & Berger 1929 Italian Renaissance cooperative, the adjoining blockfront to the south
• 275 Central Park West — same-block prewar cooperative neighbor
• 279 Central Park West — Central Park West cooperative to the north
• 241 Central Park West — prewar Central Park West cooperative
• 295 Central Park West — Central Park West cooperative peer

Sources: The Roebling Research Library (offering plans, house rules, financial statements, internal transaction records); NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers; publicly recorded NYC building data.