524 West 19th Street (Metal Shutter Houses)

The site is a 4,600-square-foot interior lot on the south side of West 19th Street. The building rises eleven stories to a proposed height of 120 feet, with 25,528 square feet of building area — roughly 3,200 gross square feet per residence, including building common and service areas; use documented unit measurements for actual living space.

The organizing move is the three-bay operable façade. Each bay carries a motorized perforated-metal shutter, a low glass railing behind it, and a folding window wall. Interiors are detailed to keep the ceiling plane uninterrupted: mechanical ducts and plumbing chases are concentrated behind full-height lacquered storage in the dining and library areas, and sliding-door tracks and downlights are recessed directly into the slab rather than into a dropped ceiling, which is how the rooms hold their height.

Residences are large and several are duplexes. Published descriptions record a sixth-floor duplex with a 46-foot double-height living room, a 24-foot entrance gallery and two bedrooms with balconies, and a three-bedroom duplex with a double-height living room, a 28-foot open kitchen and a library with balcony below and bedrooms above. The penthouse carries roughly 3,300 square feet of interior space and close to 2,000 square feet of terrace, balcony and roof deck. Ban and Maltz returned to the penthouse after an earlier buyer's traditional remodeling to restore the original detailing, a sequence covered by The New York Times in 2011. The ground floor is a separate commercial condominium unit, built as gallery space.

This is a doorman building of eight residences. There is no amenity program in the contemporary sense and none is claimed. The relevant operating question at this scale is not the amenity list but the mechanical one: an operable, motorized façade is a building system, and it should be reviewed alongside the other systems, reserves and capital obligations. Ask for the maintenance history of the shutter and window-wall assemblies, the replacement-part position, the reserve, and whether any of it has been the subject of an assessment. In a condominium this small, the cost of a façade problem is allocated under the declaration among very few owners.

The building's Local Law 11 façade cycle status and current reserve position should be reviewed for any specific transaction; neither is established in the materials reviewed for this profile.

Ownership form: Condominium. Transfers clear through a board right of first refusal rather than a cooperative-style approval.

Pied-à-terre, subletting, LLC, trust and foreign purchasers: Not established by the condominium form alone; confirm them in the current declaration, bylaws and house rules. Minimum lease terms and any rental cap are not documented in public records and should be confirmed with the managing agent.

Pets and house rules: Not documented in public records.

Real estate taxes: No building-wide exemption. The 421-a benefit that began in 2012 no longer appears on the roll. Underwrite full unabated taxes on the specific unit against the current bill, then apply the co-op/condo abatement only if the buyer will occupy the unit as a primary residence.

Recent sales

Recent closings at this building, from The Roebling Research Library. 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 (2026 to date) cleared a median $2,285/sf (recorded) across 2 sales. Median listing discount 6.3% 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 1-00690-7502; each condominium apartment is its own tax lot). Apartment-level facts (line, condition, asking-price context) curated and cross-verified in The Roebling Research Library. Not all transactions cross-verify with ACRIS records — sponsor and LLC purchases sometimes record at stipulated values rather than market price; square footage from recorded condo declarations and offering plans.

Distinguish recorded date milestones. The city file says 2008. The first temporary certificate of occupancy issued in August 2012 and the final in March 2015. These construction and occupancy fields describe different milestones; examine the model's actual date definition, inputs and sales before concluding an estimate is incorrect.

There are eight residences, not nine. The recorded unit-lot schedule carries eight residential units plus a ground-floor commercial unit. Published sources that say nine are counting the gallery.

Underwrite full taxes. The 421-a exemption is gone. This is the single largest gap between the sticker price and the true monthly number for anyone comparing against abated inventory elsewhere.

Diligence the façade as a mechanical system. Motorized shutters and folding window walls are the building's defining feature and maintenance systems to assess against actual condition reports, service costs and other capital obligations. Ask for service history, reserve position and any assessment record before contract.

Small denominator, large building systems. Nine unit lots carry the whole cost of an unusual building. Read the operating budget and the reserve, not the amenity list.

Lead with the architecture, and document it. This is a ground-up Shigeru Ban residential building, and the coverage in The New York Times and Architectural Record is part of the asset. Provenance is the argument no competing West Chelsea building can copy.

Correct the public record up front. Buyers pull the city data and see 2008 and nine units. Present the certificate of occupancy history and the recorded unit schedule in the offering materials rather than letting them surface in diligence.

Be direct about the tax posture. The abatement has burned off. Presenting the current full bill alongside True Monthly Carrying Cost analysis produces better outcomes than a late discovery.

Same-building comparables are thin. With eight residences and low turnover, pricing has to be built from line-specific and floor-specific analysis, not a building average.

If you're considering 524 West 19th Street, also evaluate:

• 520 West 19th Street — the immediate neighbor on the same tax block; the closest peer by scale and location
• 100 Eleventh Avenue — Jean Nouvel's 2010 tower nearby across West 19th Street; the other signature-architect façade on the corner
• 515 West 23rd Street (HL23) — Neil Denari's cantilevered High Line condominium; boutique scale and an equally singular envelope
• 520 West 28th Street — Zaha Hadid's 2017 High Line building; the larger full-service starchitect alternative
• 503 West 24th Street — Peter Marino's boutique West Chelsea condominium; comparable unit scale, different design argument
• 532 West 20th Street — nine-residence West Chelsea condominium one block north; the closest peer by unit count
• 515 West 18th Street — the large full-amenity condominium straddling the High Line on the same block; the opposite trade-off on scale and services
• 200 Eleventh Avenue — sixteen residences with en-suite parking; the other very-low-density West Chelsea condominium
• 245 Tenth Avenue — boutique High Line condominium with a distinctive metal envelope
• 551 West 21st Street — Foster + Partners' West Chelsea condominium; the full-service alternative at a larger unit size