73 East 79th Street
73 East 79th Street, New York, NY 10075
Upper East Side
BBL 1014910030 · BIN 1046442
- Year built
- 1928
- Type
- Cooperative
- Landmark
- Designated
Every recorded sale at this building, 2006–2024
Bedroom-by-bedroom medians, the full transfer record, and how units trade against ask.
- 4BR+ median
- $8.1M
- Recent range
- $5.5M – $10.6M
- Listing discount
- 4.1%
- Recorded transfers
- 9
Own an apartment here? See what it would sell for.
A Private Pricing Opinion — what your apartment at 73 East 79th 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.
73 East 79th Street is the kind of building that defines the upper reaches of the Upper East Side co-op market without ever advertising it: a 14-story limestone cooperative of just thirteen apartments, one to a floor, on a prime block between Park and Madison. Designed by Electus D. Litchfield and completed in 1928, it belongs to the last great wave of pre-war apartment construction — the years when New York's most ambitious architects were translating the proportions of the Italian Renaissance palazzo into vertical luxury housing for a clientele leaving private townhouses behind.
What makes the building rare is its scale relative to its address. A single apartment per floor means no shared landings, no cross-corridor neighbors, and the privacy of a private house with the service of a full-staff building. That arrangement — thirteen full-floor simplex homes — is the architecture of exclusivity, and it is exactly what the most discerning Upper East Side buyers seek and almost never find on the open market.
The block itself is among the quietest and most coveted in the neighborhood: a low-traffic side street one short walk from Central Park, the Madison Avenue gallery-and-boutique corridor, and the cultural spine of Museum Mile. For a building of this caliber, location and discretion are the entire proposition, and 73 East 79th delivers both.
Architecture and unit composition
Litchfield clad the building in limestone and restrained Neo-Renaissance detail — the disciplined, masonry-forward vocabulary that reads as permanent rather than fashionable. The fourteen-story massing rises with the kind of quiet symmetry that has aged well precisely because it never reached for novelty; nearly a century on, the facade sits comfortably among the avenue's finest pre-war stock.
Inside, the defining feature is the floor plan. With thirteen residences across fourteen stories, the building was conceived as a stack of full-floor simplex homes — generous entry galleries, formal entertaining rooms scaled to pre-war proportions, separate service areas, and the high ceilings and through-light that ground-up 1920s construction made possible. These are large, gracious apartments built for households that wanted the space of a townhouse without its maintenance burden. Layouts of this kind rarely change hands, and when they do, they are the apartments long-term Upper East Side buyers wait years to acquire.
Building operations
The building runs as a traditional white-glove cooperative: a full-time doorman and attended lobby, a live-in resident manager, and the steady, low-turnover staffing that defines the East Side's best small co-ops. Private basement storage serves the residences, and the building's distinctive amenity is its Sports Court — a private half-court gymnasium that is a genuine rarity in a pre-war building of this size.
As a long-established cooperative, the board maintains the deliberate, financially conservative admissions posture customary at full-floor East Side buildings of this tier. Financing has been permitted up to approximately $2 million per residence — a meaningful cap given the size and value of the homes, and one that reinforces the building's preference for well-capitalized, low-leverage buyers. Prospective purchasers should expect a thorough board package and interview as the price of entry to a building this small and this private.
Local Law 97
- 2024–2029 annual penalty
- $0 (under cap)
- 2030–2034 annual penalty
- $17,544/yr
- Per unit / month range
- $0 – $104
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
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nov 26, 2024 | 2 | 5 BR · 5 BA · 4,100 sf | $5,500,000 | $1,341/sf | -8.3% |
| Jul 18, 2024 | 10 | 4 BR · 4 BA | $10,600,000 | -9.8% | |
| Mar 1, 2018 | 7 | 4 BR · 4,000 sf | $11,500,000 | $2,875/sf | +0.0% |
| Jun 4, 2012 | 7 | 4 BR | $7,250,000 | +7.4% |
Market read. Most recent trades (2024) cleared a median $1,341/sf across 1 sale. Median listing discount 4.1% 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.
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 1-01491-0030) 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
Buying here is buying scarcity. The opportunity to acquire a full-floor pre-war apartment on a quiet East 79th Street block, in a building of thirteen homes with full white-glove service, surfaces only occasionally — and competition for it is correspondingly serious. Buyers should be prepared for a traditional cooperative process: a comprehensive board package, financial disclosure, and an interview, with the financing latitude limited to roughly $2 million per residence. This favors buyers with substantial liquidity and the appetite for low leverage.
The reward is a category of home that is structurally hard to replicate — full-floor privacy, townhouse-scale proportions, and a prime Park-to-Madison address — at a service level that small new condominiums rarely match. For the right buyer, the combination is worth the wait and the diligence.
What to know if you’re selling
A sale here markets on its rarest attributes: one apartment per floor, full white-glove staffing, a private gymnasium, and a coveted East 79th Street location. There is no comparable inventory in volume, which is the seller's advantage — the pool of full-floor Park-to-Madison co-ops is tiny, and a well-prepared listing competes against very little.
The buyer for this building is specific: financially substantial, comfortable with a co-op board, and seeking exactly the scale and privacy these homes provide. Pricing should be benchmarked against the upper tier of full-floor Upper East Side co-ops rather than against smaller subdivided apartments. With thin comparable supply and a discerning, motivated buyer pool, a thoughtfully positioned residence here can command a premium for its scarcity.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering 73 East 79th Street, also evaluate these nearby pre-war cooperatives:
- 1000 Park Avenue — pre-war Park Avenue cooperative
- 1020 Park Avenue — full-service pre-war Park Avenue co-op
- 1016 Fifth Avenue — Fifth Avenue cooperative near the Met
- 1033 Madison Avenue — Madison Avenue cooperative nearby
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. Where this page compares one building or neighborhood to another, that is our analysis of the recorded record — it names the measure, the period and the sample it rests on, and it is an observation about medians rather than a prediction about any particular apartment.
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