49 East 96th Street
49 East 96th Street, New York, NY 10128
Upper Carnegie Hill, Upper East Side
BBL 1016020020 · BIN 1051443
- Year built
- 1939
- Type
- Cooperative
- Units
- 75
- Floors
- 19
- Landmark
- No
- Pets
- Not documented in management-sourced records — confirm with the managing agent
- Financing
- 60 percent maximum financing — 40 percent minimum down. This is a tighter ceiling than the Carnegie Hill norm and it disqualifies buyers who have underwritten to 25 or 30 percent
Every recorded sale at this building, 2003–2026
Bedroom-by-bedroom medians, the full transfer record, and how units trade against ask.
- 2BR median
- $1.5M
- Recent range
- $450K – $2.5M
- Listing discount
- 0.0%
- Recorded transfers
- 69
East 96th Street is the northern boundary of Carnegie Hill and the seam where the Upper East Side's regulated prewar fabric gives out. Everything from Fifth Avenue east to about 17 East 96th sits inside the Expanded Carnegie Hill Historic District. This building, a few doors further east, does not. That single fact governs more than it looks like it should: the facade can be altered without a Landmarks approval, the roof could take a deck without a certificate of appropriateness — and it did, in 2020 — and the building's capital planning runs on ordinary construction timelines rather than on the Commission's calendar. For a nineteen-story Art Deco tower of this quality, being outside the district is an operating advantage rather than a status deficit.
The building itself is a serious piece of late-1920s design. Nineteen stories of beige brick rise from a two-story limestone entrance surround with a circular window above a canopied doorway, and the fenestration holds a consistent rhythm from base to bulkhead. Architectural and press records attribute the design to Thomas W. Lamb, whose principal body of work is theaters rather than apartment houses — a distinctive attribution, and one we carry as attributed because the original filing predates the digital DOB record and we have not seen the paper. The date is likewise contested: city data says 1939, the architectural record says 1930, and the neighboring buildings on the same blockfront were built in 1929. We think the earlier date is more likely and we say so rather than resolving it silently. Alfred H. Barr Jr., the founding director of the Museum of Modern Art from 1929 to 1943, made his home here during his directorship — a genuine institutional pedigree for a mid-block co-op, and rarer on East 96th Street than on Fifth or Park.
The reason a buyer needs to read this page carefully, though, is the policy stack. Two terms here sit well outside the Carnegie Hill default. Financing is capped at 60 percent, so 40 percent down is the floor rather than a strong offer. And the flip tax — 2 percent of the gross sale price — is recorded in management-sourced records as payable by the buyer. In most Manhattan cooperatives the seller pays it. If that allocation holds at your closing, it is real cash that does not appear anywhere in a standard closing-cost estimate. Confirm it with the managing agent before you sign, not after.
Architecture and unit composition
The lot is 100 feet wide and about 102 feet deep, mid-block, with roughly 141,000 square feet of building on it — a substantial mass for an interior site. The Art Deco vocabulary is restrained rather than ornamental: the money is spent at the base, in the limestone surround and the circular window above the entrance, and the shaft above is plain brick with disciplined window openings. Some apartments carry terraces. Through-wall air conditioning was retrofitted across the building in the 2000s under a series of alteration filings, which is why the elevation reads with protruding units rather than with the original clean face.
Apartment composition runs from studios and one-bedrooms through large prewar classic layouts, and the building's most interesting inventory is the combinations. DOB filings on file document a 12th-floor combination, a duplex joining apartments on the 17th and 18th floors, a second-floor combination, and a 15th-to-16th-floor combination — high-floor lines here have been assembled into homes considerably larger than the original plan contemplated. High-floor apartments carry northern, southern, and eastern exposures with open views down toward Midtown and east toward the Triborough Bridge. Because the building is mid-block, west-facing rooms look across low neighbors rather than into an avenue wall.
Ceiling heights, plaster detail, and layout logic are what buyers come to a 1930 building for, and they are present. What is absent is central air, a garage, and the amenity package a comparable postwar building would carry — which is the trade the price reflects.
Building operations
The building runs as a full-service prewar cooperative: 24-hour doorman, a live-in superintendent, a fitness center, a central laundry room, bike storage, and private basement storage available for a fee. A roof deck was added around 2020 under a filing that also replaced the roof and renovated the bulkhead, which is a meaningful upgrade to a building that had none of that a decade earlier. There is no garage.
The capital record is legible from public filings and it is the record of a building that has been maintained rather than deferred. Facade and Local Law 11 cycles show up in 2003, 2006, 2011 (with a full parapet replacement), and 2013. In 2018 the cooperative filed a package covering sill and lintel replacement, sectional roof replacement, and cutting and pointing — a substantial envelope program rather than a patch. In 2013 the boiler was converted to gas service with a new meter and booster, which removed the building from heavy oil ahead of the deadline that forced the issue for many of its neighbors. The 2020 roof and roof-deck job closed out the envelope work.
On the financing side, ACRIS shows the cooperative's underlying mortgage consolidated in November 2013 to roughly $4.5 million with an institutional lender, and no subsequent underlying financing has been recorded against the lot. A twelve-year-old underlying mortgage is either a very conservatively run balance sheet or a maturity that has been handled off the record, and a buyer's attorney should establish which before contract. The building also carries commercial rent from a ground-floor restaurant and roughly 4,000 square feet of commercial space, which offsets maintenance — and which is worth understanding, because commercial income is not permanent.
Because no offering plan and no audited financial statements for this building are on file in The Roebling Research Library, the reserve position, assessment history, and current underlying debt should all be established through the managing agent and the co-op questionnaire rather than assumed.
Policy framework
Ownership form: Cooperative. You are buying shares in 49 E. 96 Realty Corp. and a proprietary lease, not real property. Purchases require board approval, and a board package and interview are part of every transaction here.
Financing: 60 percent maximum, 40 percent minimum down, per management-sourced records. Treat this as a hard gate rather than a guideline.
Flip tax: 2 percent of the gross sale price, recorded as buyer-paid. Verify the allocation in writing before contract.
Pied-à-terre: Not permitted per management-sourced records. This building is for primary occupancy.
Short-term rental: Prohibited.
Guarantors: Permitted per management-sourced records. Co-purchase, trust, and LLC ownership are not addressed in management-sourced records and must be confirmed with the managing agent — assume nothing.
Subletting: Not documented in management-sourced records. Establish the seasoning period, the maximum sublet term, and the sublet fee before you buy, particularly if your holding period is uncertain.
Post-closing liquidity: Not documented. The board's expectation should be established through your attorney or the managing agent before the package is assembled, not discovered at the interview.
Transaction fees documented in management-sourced records: $400 application processing fee, $75 per applicant for credit checks, a $1,000 non-refundable move-in fee plus a $1,000 refundable move-in deposit, and a $1,000 refundable move-out deposit.
Local Law 97
- 2024–2029 annual penalty
- $0 (under cap)
- 2030–2034 annual penalty
- $6,621/yr
- Per unit / month range
- $0 – $7
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).
Source: NYC DOB facade filings (FISP) · The Roebling Research Library. City record last verified September 2026.
Recent sales
The building trades as Carnegie Hill prewar co-op product at a mid-block address rather than an avenue one, which is the discount and the point. Pricing here is best read per room and per line rather than per square foot, as it is in every prewar cooperative: high-floor combinations with three exposures sit in an entirely different tier from low-floor one-bedrooms in the same stack, and the building's history of combinations means the inventory is genuinely heterogeneous. Condition dispersion is wide — some apartments have never been renovated, and estate sales appear here regularly.
The two policy facts above compress the buyer pool in ways the price should reflect. A 40 percent down-payment floor removes a substantial share of the market, and a buyer-paid flip tax is a real cost that a well-advised purchaser will price into the bid. Sellers who understand both, and who disclose both early, transact more cleanly. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 15, 2026 | 14C | 4 BR · 4 BA | $2,200,000 | -4.1% | |
| Jun 15, 2026 | 4D | 3 BR · 3 BA | $2,500,000 | -12.3% | |
| Mar 31, 2026 | 9B | 2 BR · 2 BA | $1,495,000 | +0.0% | |
| Mar 31, 2026 | 16C | 2 BR · 2 BA · 1,350 sf | $1,550,000 | $1,148/sf | +19.2% |
| Nov 18, 2025 | 2C | 3 BR · 2 BA | $1,960,000 | -2.0% | |
| May 21, 2025 | 8 | 3 BR · 3.5 BA | $2,200,000 | -4.3% | |
| Mar 21, 2025 | 19A | 2 BR · 3 BA | $1,999,999 | +18.0% | |
| Mar 29, 2024 | 11D | 3 BR · 3 BA | $2,010,000 | +0.5% |
Market read. Most recent trades (2026) cleared a median $836/sf across 1 sale. Median listing discount 2.1% 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.
Other recent transfers
| Date | Unit | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Nov 22, 2004 | 5C | $1,095,000 |
| Oct 1, 2003 | 14D | $824,000 |
| Jun 26, 2003 | 10B | $749,000 |
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 1-01602-0020) 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.
Notable residents
Alfred H. Barr Jr., the founding director of the Museum of Modern Art, lived at 49 East 96th Street during his tenure as director from 1929 to 1943 — the years in which he mounted Cubism and Abstract Art and acquired the Picasso holdings that defined the museum's collection. His association with the building was documented again in 2026, when the family apartment came to market for the first time and was covered in the New York real-estate press.
What to know if you’re buying
Solve the flip tax before anything else. A 2 percent buyer-paid transfer fee is the most consequential term on this page and the one most likely to be mis-stated in a listing. Get the allocation in writing from the managing agent, and run the Buyer Closing Cost Calculator with it included.
Bring 40 percent. The 60 percent financing ceiling is not negotiable in the way a board's liquidity preference sometimes is. Run the Co-op Board Qualification Calculator at the correct loan-to-value before you write an offer.
This is a primary-residence building. Pied-à-terre use is not permitted per management-sourced records. If your plan is a second home, no amount of board packaging will change that.
Ask for the documents the public record does not hold. No offering plan and no financial statements for this building are in our library. Your attorney should obtain the current audited financials, the reserve balance, the assessment history, the commercial lease schedule, and — the specific item to chase — the terms and maturity of the 2013 underlying mortgage.
Verify the unit count that applies to you, not the building. City records say 75 and the market says 64. The gap is combinations, several of which are documented in DOB filings. Any automated valuation built on the wrong denominator will be wrong.
What to know if you’re selling
Lead with the architecture and the provenance. A Thomas W. Lamb Art Deco tower with a MoMA founding-director association is a story that survives scrutiny, and not one the postwar buildings nearby can tell.
Disclose the financing ceiling in the listing, not at the board package. Buyers who discover a 60 percent cap after an accepted offer walk, and the re-list costs more than the disclosure would have. The same is true of the buyer-paid flip tax: a sophisticated buyer will find it and bid net of it, so adjust the ask deliberately rather than absorbing it as a late concession.
Document the capital work. The envelope program through 2018, the gas conversion in 2013, and the 2020 roof and roof deck are all matters of public filing and all argue that this is a well-run house. Assemble the paper before you list.
Condition drives dispersion here. Renovated high-floor combinations clear at a very different level from estate-condition lower-floor lines. Run the Renovation Cost Calculator against your pricing strategy before deciding whether to sell as-is.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering 49 East 96th Street, also evaluate:
- 58 East 96th Street — the closest like-for-like on the same blockfront; the first call for a direct comparison
- 70 East 96th Street — the larger cooperative at the Park Avenue end of the block
- 16 East 96th Street — prewar cooperative inside the Expanded Carnegie Hill Historic District; the regulated alternative two doors west
- 14 East 96th Street — prewar co-op on the landmarked stretch of the same street
- 8 East 96th Street — the Fifth Avenue end of the block; a different price tier and a different buyer
- 1150 Fifth Avenue — the corner cooperative on the same tax block, park-facing and landmarked
- 1158 Fifth Avenue — the other Fifth Avenue anchor of this block
- 1220 Park Avenue and 1230 Park Avenue — Carnegie Hill Park Avenue prewar co-ops; the avenue step-up
- 17 East 89th Street — prewar Carnegie Hill cooperative further south, closer to the museums
The neighborhood
For the full corridor — architecture, schools, transit, and pricing across Upper East Side — read The Roebling Team Guide to Upper East Side.
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.
Considering a move at 49 East 96th Street?
Request a private building brief with the relevant comparable sales, current and off-market availability, and an apartment-specific view of value.
Own an apartment here? See what it would sell for.
A Private Pricing Opinion — what your apartment at 49 East 96th Street would likely sell for today, what it costs to sell, and what you’d walk away with — reviewed personally against condition, exposures, renovation quality, and the competition actually on the market.