701 Madison Avenue (The Leonori)
701 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10065
Lenox Hill, Upper East Side
BBL 1013777502 · BIN 1040935
- Year built
- 1901
- Type
- Condominium
- Units
- 68
- Floors
- 13
- Landmark
- Designated
Every recorded sale at this building, 2003–2025
Price-per-square-foot over time, the line- and floor-premium curves, and every recorded sale.
- Median $/sf
- $2,148
- Listing discount
- 6.3%
- Recorded sales
- 53
- On record
- 2003–2025
The question a buyer should ask about a 1901 building holding 68 apartments on Madison Avenue at 63rd Street is whether the apartments are original or the product of a later carving-up. Here the answer is that they are original in kind. The Leonori went up in 1901 as an apartment hotel — a purpose-built, elevatored, serviced multi-family building of a type New York was inventing at that moment — and Buchman & Fox designed it that way from the ground. It was, by published account, the tallest building on the Upper East Side when it was finished, and its developer's stated aim was the largest apartment hotel on the avenue. Nothing about the unit count needs explaining away.
What the apartment-hotel origin does explain is the plate mix, and that is the most consequential fact for anyone buying here. An apartment hotel of 1901 was built to hold a wide range of tenancies at once, and the residual plan still does. The building holds studios of roughly 260 to 500 square feet alongside two-bedroom apartments in the 900-to-1,450-square-foot range and, at the top, a duplex penthouse near 2,900 square feet with terraces. That spread — a twelvefold range in size inside one condominium — is unusual on Madison Avenue and it produces a correspondingly wide spread in pricing, monthly charges and buyer profile. It is a building where the per-square-foot number tells you very little until you know which tier of apartment you are looking at.
The second structural fact is the conversion, and the record here is unusually clean because the plan itself is on file. The offering plan is dated May 10, 1982; it was a non-eviction plan; and it was declared effective on March 29, 1983 once purchase agreements had been signed for more than 15 percent of the apartments. The declaration was recorded that August. That makes The Leonori one of the earliest pre-war condominium conversions in Manhattan — most pre-war buildings of this vintage went co-op, and the ones that went condominium in the early 1980s are a small set. Because the plan was non-eviction, rent-regulated tenants who declined to purchase stayed, and a portion of the building remained in rental occupancy for years after 1983. Any buyer should ask the managing agent for the current count of sponsor-held or rent-regulated units, because that number, whatever it is now, affects both the reserve position and the resale pool.
The third fact is the retail. Roughly 12,658 square feet of Madison Avenue frontage sits under the apartments as a separate commercial condominium unit — the space has housed luxury watch and cigar-club tenancies over the years — and the storefronts are inside the Upper East Side Historic District, which means their alterations are reviewed by LPC alongside the residential façade. DOB filings document storefront modifications, awning replacements and mezzanine work through 2009, 2011 and 2014, all under that regime.
Architecture and unit composition
Thirteen stories on a corner lot of about 8,384 square feet, roughly 83 feet on East 63rd Street by 100 feet deep, carrying some 65,689 square feet of building area — about 53,011 residential and 12,658 retail. The lot is built to a floor-area ratio of 7.84 against a permitted residential ratio of 10.0 in the C5-1 district; the unused capacity is theoretical rather than practical, because the building is a designated contributing structure in a historic district and a substantial vertical enlargement is not a realistic outcome.
The elevation is Beaux-Arts, with a three-story rusticated limestone base carrying the shaft above and a canopied entrance under a marquee on East 63rd Street. DOB records a 2008 restoration of that marquee at the lobby entrance. PLUTO records a significant alteration in 1939, and further work in 2000 added a penthouse and combined it with an apartment on the top floor under a new certificate of occupancy — the origin of the duplex penthouse at the crown.
Apartment lines run A through F on most floors. The A and F lines are the larger two-bedroom homes, several with balconies; the C lines sit in the 700-to-750-square-foot one-bedroom range; the D and E lines are the studios, some as small as roughly 260 to 350 square feet, which are the direct residue of the apartment-hotel plan. Renovation and combination filings run continuously from 2000 to the present — apartments 10A and 10B combined in 2006, 12B, 12C and 12D combined in 2005, individual gut renovations on the fourth, fifth, seventh, ninth, tenth and eleventh floors — so condition and layout vary substantially line to line and floor to floor.
Building operations
A full pre-war condominium of moderate scale with an elevator core, a doormanned lobby entrance on East 63rd Street and an outside managing agent. The lobby was renovated in 2015 under filings that included new split-system HVAC at the lobby and first floor and associated structural work; published accounts describe that program alongside elevator replacement. Fire-alarm, smoke-detection and sprinkler systems were modernized in a 2014 campaign, and a first-floor opening was created to connect a stair to the lobby that year.
Façade maintenance is the recurring capital theme, as it is for any thirteen-story masonry building over the Local Law 11 threshold. Sidewalk sheds went up for façade restoration in 2002 and 2004, a full façade restoration was filed in 2004, and masonry and metal railing repairs were filed in 2017. The offering plan on file notes that the city's periodic façade inspection law applied to the building at the time of conversion, so the cycle has been running for more than forty years. Ask where the building sits in the current cycle and what the last report concluded.
Rooftop telecommunications is a live operational item here and worth a buyer's attention. DOB records rooftop antenna installations and modifications in 2001, 2006, 2010 and 2016, with associated equipment rooms in the basement. Habitat Magazine reported in 2012 that the condominium's board had brought suit in connection with a rooftop cellular installation. Rooftop licenses can be a meaningful revenue line for a building of this size and they can also generate disputes; ask the managing agent for the current status of any rooftop agreements and any related litigation.
Policy framework
The condominium by-laws and house rules are not published, and this profile will not guess at them. Condominium tenure means the board holds a right of first refusal rather than an approval right, which is the principal structural advantage of buying here over the co-ops that dominate the surrounding blocks — a purchaser using a trust or an entity, a foreign purchaser, or a buyer wanting a pied-à-terre will generally find this building easier than a Park or Fifth Avenue co-op of the same vintage. But the specific rules on subletting, pets, alterations, move-in deposits and any transfer fee are set by the by-laws and vary. Request the by-laws, the current house rules, the two most recent audited financial statements, the current budget, the reserve position, any assessment schedule, and the count of unsold and rent-regulated units from the managing agent at offer stage.
Local Law 97
- 2024–2029 annual penalty
- $31,124/yr
- 2030–2034 annual penalty
- $88,990/yr
- Per unit / month range
- $38 – $109
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 filing classified the facade as SWARMP — Safe With A Repair and Maintenance Program: the engineer identified conditions requiring monitoring or repair before the next inspection cycle. The scope, timeline, and how the building funds the work are building-specific — we review the filings and board materials for you.
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
The Leonori trades as a pre-war Madison Avenue condominium, priced in dollars per square foot but with the important caveat that the building's plate range is too wide for a single per-square-foot figure to mean much. Small studio lines and large A-line and F-line two-bedrooms clear at materially different per-foot levels, and the penthouse sits in its own tier entirely. The comparable set is the small group of pre-war Upper East Side buildings that hold condominium rather than cooperative tenure — a genuinely short list in this part of Lenox Hill, and the reason the building draws buyers who want pre-war architecture without a co-op board. Buyers should underwrite the common charge and tax line together, since there is no abatement here to offset either, and should read the reserve position against the building's façade and elevator obligations. Unit-level transaction history is maintained in The Roebling Research Library and shared with clients during diligence.
Recent closings 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 30, 2025 | 3A | 1,316 sf | $2,500,000 | $1,900/sf | off-mkt |
| May 2, 2024 | 5C | 1 BR · 1 BA · 714 sf | $1,200,000 | $1,681/sf | +0.0% |
| Apr 3, 2024 | 4D | 1 BA · 400 sf | $580,402 | $1,451/sf | -2.5% |
| Feb 23, 2024 | 7A | 2 BR · 2 BA · 1,400 sf | $3,250,000 | $2,321/sf | -12.8% |
| Feb 20, 2024 | 3E | 1 BA · 500 sf | $379,000 | $758/sf | -5.3% |
| Dec 18, 2023 | 3D | 1 BA · 350 sf | $495,000 | $1,414/sf | +0.0% |
| Dec 18, 2023 | EDDER | 350 sf | $495,000 | $1,414/sf | off-mkt |
| Feb 11, 2022 | 7E | 259 sf | $495,000 | $1,911/sf | off-mkt |
Market read. Most recent trades (2025) cleared a median $2,148/sf across 1 sale. Median listing discount 6.3% 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 1-01377-7502) 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 from recorded condo declarations and offering plans.
What to know if you’re buying
Know which tier of apartment you are buying. Studios of 300 square feet and two-bedrooms of 1,450 square feet are in the same condominium and on the same floors. Comparables must be drawn from the same line, not the same building.
Condominium tenure is the product. Trusts, entities, pied-à-terre use and non-resident purchasers are structurally easier here than in the surrounding pre-war co-ops. Confirm the specifics in the by-laws, but this is the reason to look at the building.
Ask for the count of unsold and regulated units. The 1983 plan was non-eviction. Whatever remains of that legacy affects reserves, voting and the resale pool, and it is not in any public record.
There is no abatement to burn off. No J-51, no 421-a. Model the tax line at full assessment.
Ask about the rooftop. Antenna licenses have been in place since at least 2001 and have generated at least one reported dispute. Get the current agreements and the current litigation posture.
The landmark answer is yes, verified by lot. Windows, façade and storefront work require LPC review. Factor the review timeline into any renovation plan that touches the exterior.
What to know if you’re selling
Lead with the tenure and the corner. A pre-war Beaux-Arts condominium at Madison and 63rd, one block from Central Park, is a narrow and defensible category. Buyers rejected by co-op boards in this corridor come here.
Get the conversion date right. The plan was declared effective March 29, 1983, not 1985. The document is on file and the correction is worth making, because it makes the building one of the earliest pre-war condominium conversions in the city rather than one of many.
Document the capital record. The 2015 lobby and elevator program, the 2014 life-safety modernization and the façade cycle all survive attorney diligence better when presented than when discovered.
Price the line, not the building. Sellers of the larger A and F lines should market against pre-war two-bedrooms, not against the building's own studio pricing.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering 701 Madison Avenue, also evaluate:
- 760 Madison Avenue — Madison Avenue condominium a few blocks north; the closest tenure-and-avenue comparison
- 817 Fifth Avenue — George B. Post & Sons, 1924–25, on the same tax block at the Fifth Avenue end; the pre-war cooperative contrast
- 17 East 63rd Street — East 63rd Street building one block west across Madison; a separate block and a separate tenure
- 4 East 62nd Street — pre-war building one block south on its own block
- 570 Park Avenue — Emery Roth, 1915–16, on the same tax block at the Park Avenue end; the pre-war Park Avenue cooperative alternative
- 43 East 62nd Street — East 62nd Street building on the same block
- 810 Fifth Avenue — J. E. R. Carpenter, 1925–26, on the same block; the Fifth Avenue trophy cooperative tier
- 812 Fifth Avenue — post-war Fifth Avenue building on the same block
- 737 Park Avenue — pre-war Park Avenue building converted to condominium; the closest analogue in tenure conversion at larger scale
- 20 East 68th Street — pre-war Upper East Side building a few blocks north
The neighborhood
For the full corridor — architecture, schools, transit, and pricing across Upper East Side — read The Roebling Team Guide to Upper East Side.
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 The Leonori?
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A Private Pricing Opinion — what your apartment at The Leonori 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.