The Cast Iron Building (67 East 11th Street)

The cast-iron elevations are a defining feature. The shorter Broadway frontage turns into a twenty-nine-bay elevation running west along East 11th Street, arranged in stacked arcades with engaged Corinthian columns at every pier and a run of arched window openings that reach nearly floor to ceiling inside. The 1974 setback stories sit above the original cornice line and read as a distinct, later layer rather than an imitation, which is generally how preservation practice would have wanted it handled.

Inside, the apartment stock is the direct product of a commercial floor plate cut into homes without regularizing it. Ceiling heights are tall enough that a great many apartments carry mezzanines — DOB filings for individual units over three decades are full of mezzanine enlargements and reductions, new spiral and steel convenience stairs between a main floor and a mezzanine, and partition work around double-height living space. Layouts vary line to line and floor to floor. Some apartments have terraces or balconies at the setback floors; some have loft storage above bathrooms; some are combinations, and the DOB record shows several filed — 717 into 718 and later 716, 415 and 416 into 515, 311 into 312 — so the current stock may be somewhat larger and somewhat fewer than the plan's 143; confirm which were completed.

The practical consequence for a buyer is that comparables have to be drawn line by line and mezzanine by mezzanine. Two apartments of similar stated size in this building can be genuinely different products: one a double-height space with a full mezzanine level, the other a conventional flat. Ask what is legally mezzanine and what is legally floor area, and ask whether the internal stair was filed.

The cooperative operates the whole building — apartments, common areas and the ground-floor and cellar commercial space — as a single corporation on a single tax lot. That commercial estate is the defining operating feature. Eight commercial spaces totaling roughly 12,000 square feet produced about $540,000 of rent in 2021, plus a further layer of sublet, storage and other fees. In a 144-unit building, that income is a revenue source whose current net contribution to maintenance should be established from actual accounts and expenses.

The counterweight is the underlying mortgage. The corporation refinanced in November 2020 into $19,500,000 of long-term institutional debt, replacing earlier bank borrowing, and the proceeds allowed the board to discontinue a capital assessment then in progress and refund what shareholders had prepaid. That was a good outcome for shareholders in the moment; the durable question a buyer should ask is what the debt service costs per share and what the loan's maturity and prepayment terms are, because $19.5 million is a substantial position and the building's ability to fund the next capital cycle without an assessment depends partly on whether it can borrow again.

The cited 2020–2021 records describe several capital projects, including Local Law 11 façade work, which on a cast-iron building is a specialist trade — the 2020 DOB filing describes cast-iron repair, cast-iron coating, fiberglass unit replacement and masonry repair — and is correspondingly expensive. Cooling-tower coils, boilers, lobby and club-room renovation and a window-replacement survey appear in those dated capital accounts, with a hallway renovation then anticipated. Reserves at year-end 2021 were in the several-million-dollar range; obtain current balances, engineering reports and project status before assessing adequacy or describing work as current.

Transfer fee: 1.50 percent of the gross sale price. Adopted by by-law amendment and recorded as revenue in the audited statements on file, with certain defined transactions exempt. Confirm who pays it — customarily the seller — and confirm the exemptions with the managing agent.

Subletting is reported permitted with board approval and a surcharge. The audited statements carry a recurring sublet fee line, so sublets have occurred. The current policy, the term limit, the residency requirement before a first sublet, the building-wide cap if any, and the surcharge rate are not published and must come from the managing agent.

Financing ceiling, minimum down payment and post-closing liquidity are not established in the materials reviewed. Confirm their current operative terms and governing authority; no ranking of causes of failed transactions is established here. Get them in writing before you make an offer.

Pied-à-terre use, trust purchases and LLC or corporate purchases are not established in the materials reviewed. The original offering plan contemplated selling up to fifteen percent of shares to entities, but determine its current applicability and any valid amendments from the operative documents rather than assume the original provision has been superseded.

Pets are permitted per management-sourced records; confirm the current house rules.

Alterations require board consent and an alteration agreement. Given how many apartments here have mezzanines and internal stairs, and given that structural filings accompany a large share of renovations in this building, budget for a real DOB filing on anything beyond finishes.

Recent sales

Recent transfers 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 $1,100/sf (recorded) across 1 sale. Median listing discount 1.4% 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 1-00563-0037). 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 on co-ops is not officially recorded, figures shown are approximate.

Get the board package requirements before you write an offer. This is a full-review cooperative: a purchase application, a financial statement, tax returns, reference letters and a board interview. The interview is the gate, and it is scheduled after the package is complete, so the calendar runs longer than a condominium closing.

Ask three numbers first: financing ceiling, minimum down payment, post-closing liquidity. None is published; get them from the board's current application instructions.

Read the mezzanine. Confirm what is legal floor area, what is mezzanine, whether the internal stair was filed, and whether the certificate of occupancy and the DOB record match what you are walking through. Check the specific mezzanine's filings and lawful use without assuming a ranked defect frequency for this building type.

Ask about the façade cycle and the assessment history. A capital assessment was discontinued in December 2020 when the refinancing closed. The Local Law 11 restoration is a cast-iron project, not a brick one. Ask where the current cycle stands, what it has cost, and whether the board expects to assess or borrow for the next one.

Understand the commercial income and the leases. Roughly $540,000 a year of retail rent is doing real work in this budget. Ask when the leases roll, whether any space is vacant, and what the board's leasing posture is — a retail vacancy on Broadway is felt directly in maintenance here.

Lead with the architecture and the ceiling height, and show the mezzanine. Buyers for this building are cross-shopping NoHo and SoHo lofts, and photography that conveys volume does more here than square footage does.

Have the paperwork in order before listing. Alteration approvals, filed plans for any mezzanine or stair work, and a clean certificate of occupancy history shorten a board review that is otherwise slow.

Price against the specific line, not the building average. The variance between a low-floor interior apartment and a setback-floor apartment with outdoor space is wide enough that a building-wide average is actively misleading.

Budget the 1.50 percent transfer fee into your net. It is charged on the gross sale price and it is easy to overlook when working backward from a target number.

If you're considering the Cast Iron Building, also evaluate:

• 815 Broadway — the immediate Broadway neighbor on the same block; the closest possible comparison on location
• 55 East 11th Street — same block of East 11th Street; the other side of the same address problem
• 44 East 12th Street — a block north; converted loft stock in the same submarket
• 60 East 9th Street — large full-service cooperative housing a few blocks south; a very different structure, and a useful contrast on how tenure can be organized
• 77 Bleecker Street — Bleecker Court; a large NoHo loft cooperative assembled from nineteenth-century store-and-loft buildings, with a comparable commercial estate and a very different debt position
• 445 Lafayette Street (Astor Place Tower) — the contemporary alternative in the same walking radius, confirm the actual ownership interest, land tenure and governing rules