455 Central Park West (Former New York Cancer Hospital)
455 Central Park West, New York, NY 10025
- Year built
- 1884
- Type
- Condominium
- Units
- 100
- Floors
- 25
- Landmark
- Designated
- Amenities
- 24-hour doorman and concierge, live-in resident manager, on-site garage (a separate condominium unit per the offering plan), storage, children's playroom, business center, and the "Landmark Club" amenity suite — listing records document a fitness center and indoor pool; verify current facilities
- Pets
- One dog, one cat, or one bird permitted without prior board consent per the house rules on file; additional pets require written approval, and pet registration is required at purchase
Every recorded sale at this building, 2021–2025
Price-per-square-foot over time, the line- and floor-premium curves, and every recorded sale.
- Recorded sales
- 14
- On record
- 2021–2025
There is no other building like this on Central Park West. The landmark at 455 is the former New York Cancer Hospital — the first hospital in the United States built specifically for cancer treatment — designed by Charles Coolidge Haight and erected in stages between 1884 and 1890 with funding from John Jacob Astor's family, in a wave of public interest that followed President Ulysses S. Grant's death from cancer in 1885. Haight's design is the building's enduring asset: a Loire Valley chateau in ashlar sandstone and red brick, organized around broad circular towers with conical slate roofs. The circular form was medical theory made architecture — round wards, roughly forty feet in diameter, were believed to prevent dirt and stagnant air from collecting in corners. Architectural historians have ranked it, alongside the Dakota, among the grandest buildings erected facing Central Park in the 1880s.
The path from hospital to condominium is one of the more dramatic survival stories in Manhattan real estate. The institution outgrew the site and moved east in the 1950s, evolving into what is now Memorial Sloan Kettering. The building became the Towers Nursing Home, whose operator Bernard Bergman became the central figure of the press-covered nursing-home scandals of the mid-1970s; the home closed in 1974, and the Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the empty building an individual landmark in 1976. It then sat vacant for roughly a quarter century — cycling through failed schemes — until MCL Companies of Chicago acquired the property in October 2000 and executed the restoration and tower addition that opened in 2004–2005, a project recognized with a Lucy G. Moses Preservation Award.
The result is structurally unusual: a single condominium offering two entirely different products. The landmark holds 17 one-of-a-kind residences — circular living rooms up to 37 feet in diameter, a four-level "Chapel" residence with a double-height great room, wood-burning fireplaces, and terraces — while the 25-story tower offers conventional, light-filled apartments, many with corner bay windows and open Central Park views above the low-rise blocks to the south and east. A gated circular drive, a courtyard garden, and a full-service staff complete a campus-like setting that has no peer at this latitude on the park.
One more structural fact matters: Columbia University purchased a block of tower units for faculty housing during the sellout and holds a right of first refusal on every resale in the building. In practice the right is routinely waived, but it adds a defined procedural step — and timeline — to every transaction here.
Architecture and unit composition
The landmark presents its ashlar sandstone base and red-brick upper stories to the park, with stone belt courses, round medallions between paired windows, Gothic dormers, and a five-arch loggia on the principal wing; the 1889–1890 campaign added the western towers, and early-20th-century laboratory and X-ray wings filled out the parcel. The 2000–2004 project restored the envelope and inserted residences whose floor plans are unlike anything else on the market: apartment 9LM, for example, carries a 36-foot-diameter circular living room opening to a 26-foot terrace, and the Chapel residence spans four levels under the original vaulted volume.
The tower, by RKTB, rises in red brick deliberately keyed to the landmark's masonry at the northwest corner of the site. Its roughly 83 apartments run from one-bedrooms through three-bedroom lines of about 2,000–2,450 square feet on the upper floors, topped by penthouses — the largest about 3,540 square feet with terrace per listing records. Park views begin low on the eastern exposures, because the building faces the park across the avenue with no tall structure in front of it; northern and western lines look over Manhattan Valley toward the river.
Building operations
This is a full-service condominium: 24-hour doorman and concierge, live-in resident manager, porter staff, on-site garage, private storage, children's playroom, business center, and the Landmark Club amenity suite (fitness center and indoor pool per listing records). The garage is a separate condominium unit under the offering plan. Alterations run through a formal alteration agreement — on file with us — with board and engineer review; construction is limited to weekday working hours under the house rules. The offering plan with by-laws, house rules, and audited financial statements are on file in The Roebling Research Library and available to clients during diligence.
Local Law 97
- 2024–2029 annual penalty
- $0 (under cap)
- 2030–2034 annual penalty
- $89,543/yr
- Per unit / month range
- $0 – $75
Recent sales
Recent closings at this building, sourced from NYC Department of Finance records. Apartment-level detail (line, condition, asking-price context) verified upon consultation request.
| Date | Unit | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Sep 30, 2025 | 5A | $775,000 |
| Jun 5, 2025 | 9 | $7,780,000 |
| Jan 6, 2025 | 4B | $669,125 |
| Jul 16, 2024 | — | $4,750,000 |
| Jul 2, 2024 | — | $4,500,000 |
| Dec 11, 2023 | 23A | $2,875,000 |
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 1-01841-7503) 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.
What to know if you’re buying
Decide which building you're buying. The tower and the landmark are different products at different price points: conventional, view-driven apartments in the tower; museum-grade circular volumes, fireplaces, and irregular plans in the landmark. Furniture placement in a 36-foot round room is a real design question — see the actual unit, not the floor plan, before forming a view on value.
Understand the Columbia right of first refusal. Every resale notice goes to both the board and Columbia University; Columbia has 15 business days to waive, then the board has 10, per the by-laws and purchase application on file. Build that timeline into your contract and financing schedule. The university's presence in the tower also means a stable institutional ownership block — worth understanding, not fearing.
Park exposure is structural here. The building fronts the park directly, so east-facing tower lines get protected views from relatively low floors — a different value proposition from mid-block "park view" claims elsewhere. Price the line and floor specifically.
Landmark mechanics apply to the envelope. The 1976 individual designation protects the chateau; exterior work runs through the LPC. Interior alterations run through the building's alteration agreement with engineer review — budget timeline accordingly.
Calibrate the location honestly. West 105th Street is the quiet, brownstone-lined end of the corridor: the park's North Woods and pool at your corner, the B/C at 103rd Street, and a meaningfully lower price per foot than the avenue's blocks below 96th. Buyers trading uptown for space should spend time on the block at different hours.
What to know if you’re selling
Sell the story — it is verifiable. Haight, the Astor funding, the circular wards, the 1976 designation, the award-winning restoration: this building has one of the best documented narratives on the avenue, and the buyer pool for distinctive product responds to it. We market from the records, not adjectives.
Manage the right-of-first-refusal timeline proactively. The Columbia and board waiver periods are sequential; a well-assembled notice package keeps a deal on schedule. We prepare it with the managing agent at contract signing, not after.
Landmark units need bespoke pricing. There are no true comparables for a circular great room or the Chapel residence — same-building tower comps will mislead in both directions. Pricing here is a valuation argument built from the unit's singularity, the corridor's trajectory, and the thin history of landmark-unit trades, which we maintain in the Research Library.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering 455 Central Park West, also evaluate:
- 415 Central Park West — pre-war park-front neighbor two blocks south
- 400 Central Park West — full-service park-front alternative at 100th Street
- 420 Central Park West — park-block neighbor at 102nd Street
- 392 Central Park West — post-war condo alternative on the park at 100th Street
- 382 Central Park West — park-front condo at 97th–98th Streets
- 478 Central Park West — the corridor's northern neighbor above 107th Street
- The Eldorado (300 Central Park West) — the twin-towered pre-war co-op benchmark for park-front drama further south
- One Museum Mile (1280 Fifth Avenue) — the cross-park comparison: amenity-rich condo product at the park's northeast corner
The Roebling Team at 455 Central Park West (Former New York Cancer Hospital)
The Roebling Team at Compass works the Central Park West corridor end to end — from the twin-tower co-ops of the 70s and 80s to the park-front condos of the northern blocks. We publish this building profile because 455 Central Park West buyers and sellers deserve building-specific intelligence — landmark mechanics, the Columbia right-of-first-refusal framework, and unit-type-specific comparables — not generic neighborhood commentary.
If you're considering a transaction at 455 Central Park West, a 30-minute consultation is the right starting point.