48 Great Jones Street
48 Great Jones Street, New York, NY 10012
NoHo
BBL 1005310045 · BIN 1008524
- Year built
- 1896
- Type
- Cooperative
- Units
- 12
- Floors
- 7
- Landmark
- Designated
- Amenities
- Landscaped common roof terrace; drive-in delivery bay off the eastern storefront opening directly to the elevator, per listing records
Every recorded sale at this building, 2004–2023
Price-per-square-foot over time, the line- and floor-premium curves, and every recorded sale.
- Median $/sf
- $1,585
- Listing discount
- 5.9%
- Recorded sales
- 19
- On record
- 2004–2023
Great Jones Street is two blocks long and carries an outsized share of downtown's cultural record, and 48–52 Great Jones is the building the Landmarks Preservation Commission chose to put on the cover of its NoHo Historic District Extension report. That is not decoration. The building is a 68-foot-wide Renaissance Revival store-and-loft, built in 1896–97 by the architect A. V. Porter for Thomas W. Keogh, who was assembling and developing the north side of the street as the area turned commercial. Porter divided a wide front into three vertical bays so it would read like three narrow lofts — a two-story limestone base on cast-iron columns, beribboned cartouches in the spandrels, four-story brick piers with Corinthian capitals, and a galvanized-iron cornice with Greek key and egg-and-dart moldings, scrolled brackets and coffers. The LPC report calls it largely intact to its late-nineteenth-century appearance.
Its commercial history is the neighborhood's in miniature. In 1915 the building was leased to the New York Fur Auction Sales Corp., when NoHo was the center of the fur trade; from the 1920s until 1969 it belonged to the Whitaker Paper Company, a newsprint and business-paper dealer that occupied it as primary tenant for nearly half a century. Then the manufacturing base emptied, artists moved into the floors, and the building became something the city had not quite figured out how to regulate yet.
What happened next is why this building is genuinely unusual, and it is documented in the offering plan on file in The Roebling Research Library. An individual owner bought the property in October 1973 and began converting it; the tenants had already moved in and were performing work on their own lofts. A Board of Standards and Appeals variance was granted on October 8, 1974, zoning the building for joint living/working quarters and offices, subject to conditions — including a minimum loft size of 1,200 square feet, a tenant recreation space to be made available free of charge to residents, and substantial completion within one year. Work stalled in a dispute among the sponsors. On June 16, 1975, 48 Tenants Corp. took title, finished the conversion contemplated by the variance, obtained a new certificate of occupancy, and then filed the offering plan itself, in December 1977, expressly in lieu of a plan from the original sponsors, "who are either not available or who are unable to prepare and submit" one. This is a tenant-completed, self-sponsored cooperative — the shareholders finished their own building and wrote their own plan. Nearly fifty years later the same corporation still owns it.
Architecture and unit composition
The facade is the reason for the designation and the reason for the maintenance bill. Limestone piers with foliate capitals and a dentiled entablature carry the two-story base; the first floor keeps its decorated cast-iron columns, and the eastern bay retains a delivery bay with a diamond-plate ramp and a storefront the LPC report describes as historic and possibly original. Above, four-story brick piers with Corinthian capitals frame grouped windows, paneled cast-iron spandrels with floral decoration separate the floors, and the seventh floor turns to arched windows under radiating brick architraves. Historic wood sash survives at the second floor.
Inside, the offering plan describes a seven-story-and-basement non-fireproof building with a single fully automatic combination passenger/service elevator. The residences are floor-throughs and half-floors — recorded share transfers use front, rear and west designations across the second through seventh floors — sized against the variance's 1,200-square-foot floor. The practical result is twelve apartments in a building 68 feet wide by roughly 88 feet deep, which is a scale of loft that NoHo no longer produces. The delivery bay opening straight to an oversized elevator, described in listing records, is a genuine functional oddity worth seeing; so is the landscaped common roof terrace, which reads as the descendant of the variance's tenant recreation-space condition.
Building operations
Small-cooperative mechanics with an unusual capital cushion. The ground floor and cellar are commercial — roughly 5,200 square feet per city records — and that income participates in the operating budget of a twelve-apartment house. The offering plan documents the origin of that arrangement: at conversion the commercial space was let to a prior owner of the building, which also held a second mortgage against the property. Buyers should ask the managing agent for the current commercial lease term, the expiration, and how the board treats that income when it sets maintenance, because in a building this size it is the swing factor.
The DOB record shows a well-tended envelope rather than a deferred one: Local Law 11 facade repairs in 2009, an emergency facade shed in 2008, a new fire-alarm system and standpipe and fire-pump work in 2014 and 2017, boiler replacement in 2008, above-ground fuel storage decommissioned in 2016, and masonry, limestone and window restoration in 2018. In a landmarked building, envelope work runs through the Landmarks Preservation Commission as well as the Department of Buildings, and that is a real line item and a real timeline for any shareholder alteration touching the exterior.
Policy framework
None of it is published. The financing ceiling, minimum down payment, post-closing liquidity expectation, flip tax structure and rate, sublet policy and surcharge, pied-à-terre posture, and the treatment of trusts and LLCs are all board-set and live only in the managing agent's file and the current proprietary lease.
Two things we can state from the documents on file. The proprietary lease requires the written consent of the corporation for any subletting, on such conditions as the board may prescribe, with consent not to be unreasonably withheld; an amendment on file authorizes a monthly sublet surcharge, capped in that amendment at $500 per month. And any assignment of the lease and transfer of shares requires board consent, with the board obligated to act on a written application within thirty days. Both provisions date to the conversion era and have almost certainly been amended since. Treat them as the shape of the framework, not as current terms, and get the current terms in writing.
Local Law 97
- 2024–2029 annual penalty
- $0 (under cap)
- 2030–2034 annual penalty
- $10,892/yr
- Per unit / month range
- $0 – $76
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 FISP filing classified the facade as Safe — no repairs were required at that inspection. Facade inspections run on a fixed five-year cycle; future inspection, repair, and any assessment decisions remain building-specific.
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
Shares have traded on the open market to unrelated individual and trust purchasers steadily since the mid-2000s, across the full range of lines — front and rear half-floors and full-floor units on the second through seventh floors. Volume is what twelve apartments produce: a closing or two in an active year, sometimes none. That makes pricing here a comparables problem rather than a statistics problem. Value tracks floor level, exposure, ceiling height and condition, and the building prices against NoHo's boutique loft condominium stock at a cooperative basis — with the artists' joint living-work framework and the board process as the offsetting cost. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 27, 2022 | 7F | 3 BR · 2 BA · 2,500 sf | $4,600,000 | $1,840/sf | -7.9% |
| Aug 26, 2022 | 5R | 2 BR · 1 BA · 2,508 sf | $3,175,000 | $1,266/sf | -6.5% |
| Aug 22, 2022 | 3F | 2 BR · 2 BA · 2,500 sf | $4,250,000 | $1,700/sf | +6.4% |
| Apr 2, 2019 | 6R | 3 BR · 2 BA · 2,600 sf | $2,700,000 | $1,038/sf | -32.5% |
| Apr 2, 2019 | 6W | 1 BR · 1 BA · 1,400 sf | $1,635,000 | $1,168/sf | +0.0% |
| Apr 5, 2012 | 3F | 2 BR · 2,500 sf | $3,100,000 | $1,240/sf | -7.5% |
| Apr 22, 2011 | 4F | 3 BR · 2,500 sf | $3,240,000 | $1,296/sf | -7.4% |
| Jan 3, 2008 | 6R | 2 BR · 2,564 sf | $2,960,000 | $1,154/sf | -5.3% |
Market read. $/sf is measured on the latest sales with reliable square footage (2022): a median $1,585/sf across 3 sales. The building has traded as recently as 2023. Median listing discount 5.9% 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 1-00531-0045) 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
Understand the joint living-work framework before you offer. This building's residential use exists because of a 1974 Board of Standards and Appeals variance zoning it for joint living/working quarters and offices. Your attorney should read the variance, the conditions attached to it, and the current certificate of occupancy, and should confirm with the managing agent how the building handles artist certification in practice for a purchaser who is not a certified artist. This is the single most consequential diligence item at this address.
Buy shares, and prepare for a share purchase. A full board package, a board interview, and a board with unreviewable discretion. Assume a financing ceiling below condominium levels, a post-closing liquidity test measured in years of carrying cost, and real scrutiny of liquid reserves. Run the Co-op Board Qualification Calculator before you make an offer.
Get the policy stack in writing. Maximum financing; flip tax structure, rate and who pays; whether subletting is permitted and after what seasoning, and what the current surcharge is; whether pied-à-terre ownership is entertained at all; and whether the board will approve a trust or an LLC. None of this is public. All of it can end a deal at contract.
Twelve apartments means twelve votes — and a landmarked facade. Assessment appetite, reserve depth and the facade cycle all run through a very small shareholder base, and exterior work requires Landmarks approval on top of DOB permits. Have your attorney read the most recent financial statements and ask directly about the capital plan for the envelope and about any live assessment.
The commercial tenancy is a genuine variable. Roughly 5,200 square feet of ground-floor and cellar space carries part of the budget. Ask what happens to maintenance if it goes dark.
The J-51 is long gone. The benefit initiated in 1978 and burned off around 1989–90, and there is no live exemption or abatement on the lot. The tax line you see is the steady state.
What to know if you’re selling
Lead with the building the LPC put on its cover. A. V. Porter, 1896–97, for Thomas W. Keogh; the fur auction house; Whitaker Paper for half a century; the cover photograph of the NoHo Historic District Extension designation report. Marketing that names the architecture precisely outperforms marketing that gestures at "prewar loft."
Tell the conversion story, because it is the differentiator. A 1974 BSA variance, a stalled sponsor, and a tenants' corporation that took title in 1975, finished the building and filed its own offering plan in 1977. Buyers cross-shopping developer conversions have never heard a story like it, and it is documented in the plan on file with us.
Front-load the artist-certification question. It will be asked, and a seller who answers it early with the variance and the certificate of occupancy in hand screens for the right buyer instead of losing the deal in diligence.
Assemble diligence materials at listing. With trades this infrequent, buyers' attorneys work the documents hard. We provide the offering plan, proprietary lease and amendments, and financial statements from The Roebling Research Library to serious buyers' counsel.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering 48 Great Jones Street, also evaluate:
- 43 Great Jones Street — 1892–93 Romanesque Revival loft co-op of full-floor residences directly across the street; the most direct like-for-like comp
- 27 Great Jones Street — ten-residence loft condominium formed in 1998 from two nineteenth-century buildings; the condo alternative on the same street
- 382 Lafayette Street — eight-residence 1896 warehouse loft condominium on the same tax block
- 27 Bleecker Street — 1888 loft building converted in 1985 to a cooperative of artists' joint living-work quarters; the closest peer on conversion framework
- 54 Bleecker Street — 1896 warehouse converted in 1985–86, with a comparable J-51 and joint living-work record
- 10 Bleecker Street — 1890s Renaissance Revival loft converted to a boutique NoHo cooperative
- 1 Bond Street — the landmarked 1880 Robbins & Appleton cast-iron loft condominium a block north
- 40 Bond Street — Herzog & de Meuron's 2007 boutique condominium; the street's design benchmark
- 25 Bond Street — boutique loft-style condominium at NoHo's top-end pricing
The neighborhood
For the full corridor — architecture, schools, transit, and pricing across East Village + NoHo — read The Roebling Team Guide to East Village + NoHo.
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.
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