- Year built
- 1926
- Type
- Cooperative
- Landmark
- Designated
40 University Place is a prewar Greenwich Village cooperative that has long attracted the kind of resident the neighborhood is famous for. Designed in 1926 by Sugarman & Berger — a prolific New York firm of the era — in a distinctive neo-Romanesque register with Byzantine flourishes, the twelve-story building stands at the corner of University Place and East 9th Street, in the heart of the Village's apartment-building belt between Washington Square and Union Square.
The building's roster reflects its Village pedigree. Over the decades its residents have included the Tony Award–winning choreographer Agnes de Mille and the novelist Jay McInerney, author of Bright Lights, Big City — a fitting lineage for a building rooted in the city's creative and literary life. That is the texture of the address: a serious prewar co-op with deep neighborhood character, on a street that has held its scale and feeling against the changes around it.
For buyers, the proposition is a classic Village co-op: prewar architecture with real character, a full-service building, and a location that puts Washington Square Park, the Union Square greenmarket, and the restaurants of University Place and lower Fifth Avenue within a few minutes' walk.
Architecture and unit composition
Sugarman & Berger's design distinguishes the building from its plainer neighbors. The neo-Romanesque facade — with Byzantine-inflected ornament, arched detail, and a richly handled base — gives 40 University Place a presence on the street that reflects the ambitions of mid-1920s Village apartment construction. The building rises twelve stories, a substantial height for the neighborhood, with the upper floors catching light and Village rooftop views.
The building holds 74 cooperative residences, a prewar mix that runs from studios and one-bedrooms to larger classic layouts, several refined or combined over the building's long cooperative life. Prewar construction here means the qualities buyers seek in the Village: solid masonry, real room proportions, hardwood floors, and the architectural detail that distinguishes the era. As is typical of a 1926 building, individual homes vary considerably in layout and condition, which rewards careful evaluation.
Building operations
40 University Place operates as a full-service prewar cooperative, with the elevator service and building staffing standard to a Village co-op of its caliber. As a cooperative, the building runs on monthly maintenance covering staff, operations, and the underlying building, and purchases proceed through a board review and interview. Specific board policies — financing requirements, pet rules, sublet and pied-à-terre posture — vary at prewar Village co-ops, and we walk buyers through the building's current requirements as part of preparing a clean board package.
Local Law 97
- 2024–2029 annual penalty
- $0 (under cap)
- 2030–2034 annual penalty
- $11,019/yr
- Per unit / month range
- $0 – $12
Facade safety — Local Law 11
The facade passed its last inspection with no required repairs — nothing to budget for here, and no facade assessment on the horizon for roughly five years.
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.
See the full facade history →Recent sales
With 74 cooperative units and a stable, long-tenured ownership base typical of a prewar Village building, turnover at 40 University Place is modest — a handful of resales in a typical year. Pricing tracks the Greenwich Village prewar co-op market, with higher floors, better light, and renovated or combined homes at the top of the building's range. The BBL-linked sales record on this site reflects recorded transfers as they post; we benchmark any specific home against its floor, exposure, layout, and renovation level rather than building-wide averages.
What to know if you’re buying
This is a cooperative, so a purchase runs through a board package and interview. Prewar Village co-ops range in their requirements, and we help buyers understand the building's posture on financing, subletting, pied-à-terre ownership, and pets before they commit, then prepare a package that presents cleanly.
The variables that drive value here are floor, light, and condition. In a 1926 building, individual homes differ markedly — a renovated upper-floor home is a very different asset from an original lower-floor line — and the building's architectural character rewards homes that have been thoughtfully updated while keeping their prewar bones. We help buyers read the floor plans, weigh condition against price, and benchmark against the Village prewar co-op inventory.
What to know if you’re selling
Lead with the architecture and the address. The Sugarman & Berger neo-Romanesque facade, the building's literary and artistic pedigree, and the heart-of-the-Village location are durable differentiators that distinguish a resale here from generic Village stock.
Condition and light drive pricing. In a prewar building, renovated upper-floor homes command the premium; a well-presented home should foreground its updates, proportions, and exposure.
Position to the Village buyer. This is a character co-op for buyers who want prewar detail and a true Village setting; pricing and presentation should target that buyer rather than a contemporary-condominium shopper.
Turnover is thin, which helps. With a long-tenured ownership base, available inventory is genuinely limited, and a well-presented listing benefits from that scarcity.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering 40 University Place, also evaluate the surrounding Greenwich Village co-op stock:
- 24 Fifth Avenue — prewar Village cooperative on lower Fifth
- 25 Fifth Avenue — full-service Village co-op nearby
- 2 Fifth Avenue — Washington Square–facing cooperative
- One Fifth Avenue — landmark Art Deco co-op at the foot of Fifth
The Roebling Team at 40 University Place
The Roebling Team at Compass specializes in Greenwich Village, the prewar co-ops around Washington Square, and the broader downtown market. We publish this profile because buyers and sellers evaluating a character Village co-op deserve building-specific intelligence — the architecture, the prewar layouts, the board's posture, and where pricing sits against the surrounding inventory.
If you're considering a purchase or sale at 40 University Place, a 30-minute consultation is the right starting point.
Get the full picture on this building.
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