30 East 21st Street

Townsend's elevation is brick with neo-Renaissance detail, nine stories over a commercial base, on a 50-foot frontage. The building sits inside the Ladies' Mile Historic District, designated by the Landmarks Preservation Commission, and any exterior work — windows, storefront, facade repair, rooftop equipment visible from the street — requires an LPC permit in addition to a DOB one. That is a real constraint on alteration timelines and budgets, and it is also the reason the block's streetwall has survived intact.

Inside, the residences are lofts in the literal sense: large open plates with masonry bearing walls, high ceilings, deep floor plans and light concentrated at the front and rear rather than distributed. The recorded transfer history shows units lettered A and B on the lower floors, single-letter designations on several upper floors, and a penthouse at the top — a mix of half-floor and full-floor homes consistent with the 13-unit count over nine stories with commercial space at the base. Renovation work filed on individual units over the past fifteen years is consistent with conventional residential fit-outs rather than raw-space work.

Two features of the filing record are worth flagging because they bear on what a buyer is actually acquiring. Department of Buildings applications on this building carry inconsistent existing-occupancy codes — some filings show "RES," others show "COM," and dwelling-unit counts on filings range from seven to thirteen depending on the year and the applicant. And in November 2000 an alteration application to convert two commercial lofts in Use Group 6 into two Class A apartments in Use Group 2 was filed and disapproved. Neither of those is evidence of a problem, but together they mean the certificate of occupancy should be pulled and read before contract, and the specific residence's legal status confirmed against it.

On April 15, 1982 the property was conveyed out of the prior ownership to 30 East 21st Street Owners Corporation (residential) and 30 East 21st Street Commercial Corporation (commercial), and a declaration establishing the arrangement was recorded by the outgoing owner. Both corporations appear together on the building's recorded financing: a 2013 mortgage consolidation with a commercial bank in the amount of $1,150,000 named both, and a 2021 consolidation in the amount of $1,300,000 named the commercial corporation.

Two practical consequences follow. First, the "underlying mortgage" question here does not have a single answer — a buyer should ask the managing agent specifically for the residential corporation's own debt, balance and maturity, not for a combined figure. Second, capital work on the shared building envelope is governed by whatever the 1982 declaration says, and in a nine-story landmarked masonry building with a recurring Local Law 11 obligation, that allocation matters. The Department of Buildings record shows facade repair filings in 2016 and sidewalk-shed and pipe-scaffold permits in 2016 — a normal cycle for a building of this age, and normal cost exposure.

The ground-floor commercial space has run as a restaurant use since at least 2003, when a change of occupancy from art gallery and offices to an eating and drinking establishment was filed and signed off. Buyers taking a lower-floor residence should ask about kitchen exhaust, delivery hours and vibration.

This building's residential use was not created by a zoning change. The lot remains M1-5M — a manufacturing district in which residential conversion is contemplated under Article I, Chapter 5 of the Zoning Resolution rather than permitted as of right, and in which joint living-work quarters for artists (JLWQA) are permitted only by special permit of the City Planning Commission under Section 74-782.

On the evidence available in public records:

• No JLWQA certification for this building appears in the Department of Buildings filing record reviewed for this profile. The residences have been sold and financed as conventional cooperative apartments since 1982.
• No Interim Multiple Dwelling registration or Loft Board proceeding for 30–32 East 21st Street was located in the sources reviewed. The city's Loft Board maintains its IMD registry outside the open-data system; a buyer who wants certainty on this point should request written confirmation from the Loft Board directly.
• The affirmative evidence points to a plan-based conversion rather than a Loft Law legalization: the 1982 conveyance to the two corporations, the 1982 and 1983 J-51 conversion benefits taken against documented alteration cost, and the 1984 alteration recorded in PLUTO together describe a sponsor-led conversion completed on the ordinary track.
• No BSA variance for this lot surfaced in the records reviewed.

None of this is a substitute for the certificate of occupancy. The correct diligence sequence here is: pull the current CO, confirm the residential floors and unit count on its face, confirm the specific unit against it, and ask the managing agent in writing whether any unit in the building is subject to Loft Board jurisdiction.

Ownership form: Cooperative. Purchase requires a board package and an interview. Because this is a small building with a separate commercial corporation, expect the package to be reviewed by a board of shareholders rather than by an institutional committee, and expect the timeline to be governed by their availability.

Financing: 20 percent minimum down per listing records — permissive by cooperative standards, and typical of downtown loft buildings.

Post-closing liquidity: Not published. Small loft co-ops vary widely on this; ask the managing agent directly rather than assuming the downtown norm.

Subletting: Not documented in public records. In a 13-unit building the sublet policy is set by a very small board and can change with its composition. Get it in writing before contract if your plan depends on it.

Flip tax: Not documented in public records. Confirm with the managing agent before pricing a sale.

Pied-à-terre, trusts and LLC ownership: Not documented. The recorded transfer history shows both individual and trust ownership among the residential shareholders, which suggests trusts have been accepted at least on occasion, but that is an inference from recorded transfers and not a statement of policy. Ask.

Pets: Not documented in public records.

Real estate taxes: No abatement. All three J-51 benefits have expired, the last of them in tax year 2012. Underwrite the full tax line.

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. Most recent trades (2025) cleared a median $1,164/sf across 1 sale. Median listing discount 2.7% 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 1-00849-0055) 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.

Read the 1982 declaration before you read the financials. Two corporations share this building, and how costs, capital work, the roof, the facade and voting are allocated between them is set out there and nowhere else. Ask separately for the residential corporation's own debt, balance and maturity; the recorded financing names both corporations in one instrument and the commercial corporation alone in another, so a combined figure tells you nothing about your maintenance.

Pull the certificate of occupancy. DOB filings on this building carry inconsistent occupancy codes and dwelling-unit counts, and a 2000 application to convert two commercial lofts to Class A apartments was disapproved. Confirm the specific unit's legal residential status on the face of the CO.

Budget for landmark constraints. As a contributing building in the Ladies' Mile Historic District, windows, storefront and facade work require LPC approval — longer timelines and higher costs on both building-wide and unit-level exterior work.

There is no abatement and no doorman. All three J-51 benefits expired, the last in 2012, so taxes are full. And this is a self-service building — elevator and intercom, no staff at the door. Both belong in the monthly comparison against the doorman condominiums a block away.

Test the ground floor. A restaurant use has occupied the base since at least 2003. Visit a lower-floor residence in the evening.

Lead with the plate and the scarcity. Roughly 1,800 square feet of average residential area in a nine-story 1898 loft building on a landmarked block, in a zoning district where residential FAR is zero, is an argument no new building can make. Name the architect and the district precisely — Ralph S. Townsend, 1897–1898, contributing building in the Ladies' Mile Historic District, all of it verifiable from the Landmarks Preservation Commission's own records.

Get ahead of the two-corporation structure. Buyers' counsel will find it. Presenting the declaration and the residential corporation's own financials up front converts a diligence surprise into a non-issue.

Comparables are thin by design. With thirteen units and infrequent turnover, pricing has to be built from the loft market on the surrounding blocks rather than from the building's own history. Run the Renovation Cost Calculator against condition before setting an asking price.

If you're considering 30 East 21st Street, also evaluate:

• 33 East 22nd Street — loft cooperative one block north; the closest like-for-like in tenure, scale and vintage
• 21 East 22nd Street — 1911 industrial building converted to a cooperative in the 1980s; the nearest peer by conversion pattern
• 36 East 22nd Street (The Story House) — 1901 loft building converted to condominium; the condominium alternative on the next block
• 49 East 21st Street — 1913 prewar loft converted to condominium, on the same street
• 29 East 22nd Street — loft building on the same Broadway–Park Avenue South corridor
• 27 East 22nd Street (L'Elysee) — converted loft one block north
• 42 East 20th Street (The Bullmoose) — converted loft on the block immediately south
• 29 West 21st Street (Iron Lofts) — loft converted to residential and later to condominium; the west-of-Fifth alternative
• 32 West 20th Street — loft cooperative west of Fifth Avenue
• 21 West 20th Street — converted loft condominium in the same Ladies' Mile fabric