8 West 13th Street

Thirty apartments across roughly 34,200 residential square feet works out to an average of about 1,140 square feet, but averages are close to useless here. The building was converted from manufacturing space and has been reconfigured continuously by owners since: DOB filings on file record kitchen and bath reconfigurations from 2000 onward, an apartment combination in 2008, a window opening enlarged in 2015, and the combination of apartments 8FW and 8FR in 2016 that involved enlarging lot-line windows, reducing fire-escape windows and mounting a condenser on the roof.

Lines are designated by floor and by orientation — front west, front east, rear west, rear east — and the front and rear halves differ in depth, light and outlook. Front apartments face West 13th Street; rear apartments face the block interior and depend in part on lot-line windows, which on a Manhattan interior lot can be lost if a neighbor builds. Anyone buying a rear line should have counsel look at the adjacent lots' development rights before pricing the light.

The building runs on a live-in superintendent, fob entry and a keyed elevator, with no doorman and no amenity program. For a thirty-unit cooperative with no retail income accruing to the residential owners — the commercial unit is a separate condominium unit in third-party hands — that is the right structure, and it is the direct reason monthlies here compare favorably to full-service Fifth Avenue alternatives.

Capital history visible in DOB filings is what you would expect of a 1910 masonry building: sidewalk sheds and façade work in 2000, 2003, 2012 and 2014, a boiler burner replacement in 2014, and façade repairs filed in 2014. Ask the managing agent for the current Local Law 11 cycle status, the underlying mortgage balance and maturity, the reserve position at the most recent year-end, and whether any assessment is live. None of those figures is public for this building.

The cooperative has owned the building outright since 1972. In September 1994 the tenants corporation recorded a condominium declaration that divided the property into exactly two condominium units: a commercial unit at the base — tax lot 1701, Department of Finance class RK — and the residential mass above it, tax lot 1702, which the Department of Finance classifies as R9, "co-op within a condominium." The cooperative retained the residential unit and continues to issue shares to its residents.

The practical effect is that a purchaser here buys cooperative shares and a proprietary lease, not a deeded apartment. Transactions record in ACRIS as real property transfer tax filings against the co-op's single tax lot; there are no individual apartment tax lots. Board approval applies, financing is share-loan financing, and the transfer timetable is a co-op timetable. PLUTO's building class for the parent lot reads RM, which describes the mixed-use condominium wrapper rather than what a buyer acquires; market records that call the building a condominium on that basis are describing the wrong layer.

The advantage of the cond-op format shows up in the rules, and here it is visible. The published policy stack permits pied-à-terre use case by case, permits secondary residences, allows subletting after two years with board approval on each term, and imposes no post-closing liquidity requirement — three positions that are materially more permissive than a typical Village cooperative. The offsetting restrictions are firm: no corporate purchases, no diplomatic purchases, no short-term rentals, and financing capped at 80 percent.

The facade is a straightforward early-loft composition executed with more care than the type usually got: a limestone base, buff brick above, and projecting terra-cotta or cast-stone trim. The event is at the bottom, where the lower two floors are enclosed in a double-height stone enframement incised with foliated ornament and capped by a scrolled cartouche at the center. The material palette deliberately answers 70 Fifth Avenue next door, which was built two years later and is a designated individual landmark.

The building's cultural history is better documented than its architectural one. Published preservation research drawing on the Whitney Biennial catalogue archives has identified at least eight significant American artists who kept studios at 8 West 13th Street in the mid-twentieth century. Vaclav Vytlacil (1892–1984), a founder of the American Abstract Artists group and a long-serving Art Students League faculty member whose students included Willem de Kooning and Robert Rauschenberg, appears to have been the first to move in, in 1938. Abraham Rattner (1895–1978), the painter and lithographer known for saturated color and religious subject matter, held studio space in the building from 1943 to 1960. The open floor plates and tall north-facing openings that made the building attractive to manufacturers made it attractive to painters for the same reasons, and they are the same reasons the apartments work now.

The policy stack above comes from management-sourced records and should be confirmed in writing at offer stage. Two lines deserve emphasis. There is no post-closing liquidity requirement, which is rare and materially widens the buyer pool. And corporate and diplomatic purchases are prohibited, which narrows it in a different direction — buyers intending to take title through an entity should resolve that question before making an offer rather than after.

No flip tax or transfer fee is documented in the records reviewed. That is an absence of evidence rather than evidence of absence; confirm it with the managing agent, because on a Village loft trading in seven figures the difference between no flip tax and a two percent flip tax is a large number.

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.

Market read. Most recent trades (2024) cleared a median $1,560/sf across 1 sale. Median listing discount 0.4% 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 1-00576-7503) 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.

You are buying shares, not a deed. The condominium wrapper is a 1994 tax and governance device; the apartment itself is cooperative.

The building is not landmarked — verify this yourself and use it. Lot 7503 carries no LPC record. Window and façade work here does not need a Certificate of Appropriateness. Do not let a neighbor's Greenwich Village Historic District status be assumed onto this building.

The J-51 on this block is not yours. A J-51 exemption and abatement runs from 2009 to 2028 on the 60 West 13th Street unit lots. It has nothing to do with 8 West 13th Street. Underwrite full taxes with only the standard co-op/condo abatement.

Ask about the flip tax in writing. It is not documented publicly, and it is the single largest unknown in a seller's net here.

Check the lot-line windows on rear lines. They are not protected, and the block interior is developable.

Lead with the policy stack. No post-closing liquidity, 80 percent financing, pied-à-terre case by case and subletting after two years is an unusually accommodating package for a Village co-op. It expands the buyer pool and it belongs in the first paragraph.

Document the renovation. In a building where every apartment has been reconfigured, permitted work with the DOB record behind it commands a premium over undocumented work.

Price by line and by floor, not by building. Front and rear halves differ in depth and light; the range of recorded transactions in this building is wide enough that internal comparable selection matters more than any external average.

Use the artist history carefully and accurately. The mid-century studio tenancy is documented preservation research, not marketing. Stated plainly, it is a genuine differentiator on this block.

If you're considering 8 West 13th Street, also evaluate:

• 60 West 13th Street — same tax block, different building and different tenure; the condominium alternative, and the lot that actually carries the block's J-51
• 30 West 13th Street — same tax block and the same buyer at a comparable service level
• 31 West 12th Street — The Ardea, same tax block but on the West 12th Street frontage and inside the Greenwich Village Historic District; the direct landmarked-versus-unlandmarked comparison
• 65 West 13th Street — across Sixth Avenue; comparable prewar Village co-op economics
• 118 West 13th Street — west of Sixth Avenue; similar scale, different price per foot
• 141-145 West 13th Street — the far end of the same street; useful for bracketing the block premium
• 175 West 13th Street — full-service Village alternative; the staffing trade-off
• 100 West 12th Street — prewar Village co-op one block south
• 12 East 13th Street — loft conversion east of Fifth Avenue; the same product on the Union Square side