80 Wooster Street

The lot is a generous 50 by 100 feet, and the building fills it at 50 by 96 — wide by SoHo standards, and the width is what produces the plan. The recorded unit designations in ACRIS describe front-and-rear residences through the middle of the building (2F and 2R, 3F and 3R, 4F, 5F and 5R) and full floors at the top (6, and 7 recorded as the penthouse). PLUTO carries 31,350 square feet of residential area across ten homes, which puts the average around 3,100 square feet — genuine full-plate and half-plate loft space rather than converted apartment product.

Light is a two-sided proposition. The building is mid-block with party walls on both flanks, so every residence draws from the Wooster Street front, the rear elevation, or both; the full-floor homes at the top of the stack get both, and that is the building's differentiated inventory. The 1894 structure delivers the ceiling heights, column spacing and window scale that the loft market prices, and the landmarked masonry front means the window line itself is regulated.

There is no development upside here. Built FAR is 6.33 against a residential FAR of 5.00 — the building is already larger than the current residential envelope would permit — and the historic district designation would constrain any attempt regardless. Read the building as fixed.

This is a ten-family self-contained cooperative, and the operating question is the one that governs every small landmarked loft building: ten shareholders carry a seven-story masonry façade on a Local Law 11 cycle.

The Department of Buildings record shows that cycle running continuously. Masonry restoration, parapet reconstruction, pointing and terra-cotta restoration were filed in 2002; sidewalk sheds and pipe scaffolding went up in 2002, 2010, 2012, 2015 and 2017; façade repair covering the first through seventh floors was filed in 2015; further façade repair to the roof parapet was filed in December 2020. The gas boiler was replaced in 2010, a standpipe system was installed in 2013, the elevator was upgraded around 2007, and the sidewalk and vault were replaced in 2015. This is a building that has been spending on its envelope steadily for a quarter century — a good sign in itself, and a spending pattern a buyer should expect to continue.

No offering plan or audited financial statement for this cooperative was located in The Roebling Research Library. That means the reserve position, the underlying mortgage and its maturity, any assessment history and the maintenance trend all have to be obtained directly from the managing agent and read by counsel. In a ten-share building, they are the most important numbers in the transaction.

The residential legalization in 1979 happened under SoHo's M1-5A zoning, in which lawful residential occupancy was permitted only as Joint Living-Work Quarters for Artists (JLWQA) — an occupancy classification that, where it appears on a certificate of occupancy, restricts lawful residential occupancy of the unit to a household containing at least one member certified as an artist by the Department of Cultural Affairs.

The Department of Buildings' digital certificate-of-occupancy record begins in 2000 and contains nothing for this building, so the use line on the operative certificate is not readable from public data. That is an open question, not a resolved one, and it must be closed before contract.

Two things follow. First, the December 2021 SoHo/NoHo rezoning — which mapped M1-5/R7X and the Special SoHo-NoHo Mixed Use District over these blocks — did not amend anybody's certificate of occupancy. It is prospective. An existing JLWQA restriction continues until someone files to remove it and the Department of Buildings issues a new certificate. Second, the removal route now exists and has a price: conversion of JLWQA space to unrestricted residential use requires a City Planning certification and a contribution to the SoHo/NoHo arts fund, set at $100 per square foot and adjusted annually, with the fee upheld on appeal. On a 3,000-square-foot loft that is a six-figure number.

Ask the managing agent directly whether the certificate of occupancy carries a JLWQA restriction, whether the cooperative has filed to remove it, and what the board's position is. Get the certificate itself, in full, and have counsel read the use line. Do not accept a summary.

Ownership form: Cooperative. You buy shares in Fluxhouse Corp. #2 and a proprietary lease, not real property. Purchases close through board approval — a full financial package and an interview — rather than a condominium right of first refusal, and the board's discretion is effectively unreviewable.

None of the following is published for this building, and none should be assumed: the maximum financing percentage and minimum down payment; post-closing liquidity requirements; the debt-to-income ceiling; the sublet policy, its seasoning period, its term cap and any sublet fee; the flip tax and whether it is levied on price, on profit or per share; the position on pied-à-terre purchases; and the position on purchases held in a trust or an LLC, which small artist-founded cooperatives frequently prohibit outright or permit only with personal guarantees.

Ten-share cooperatives are the strictest financing environment in Manhattan for structural reasons — one shareholder in arrears is ten percent of the budget — and it is common for buildings of this size to cap financing well below the fifty percent that a larger prewar co-op might allow, or to require all cash. Obtain the current board package requirements, the house rules and the last two years of financial statements from the managing agent before you make an offer. Every line above comes from that source or from nowhere.

Real estate taxes: No abatement of any kind runs on this lot. The building is assessed and taxed at full value, and the shareholder's proportionate share flows through maintenance. The co-op/condo abatement is a personal benefit for primary-residence owners, not a building benefit.

Landmarks: The lot is inside the SoHo–Cast Iron Historic District. Exterior work requires an LPC permit — a Certificate of Appropriateness for anything visible and substantive, a Certificate of No Effect for lesser work — and interior alterations requiring a DOB permit trigger an LPC filing as well.

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 (2025) cleared a median $1,551/sf across 1 sale. Median listing discount 5.0% 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 1-00486-0009) 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.

Resolve the certificate of occupancy first. Everything else is secondary. Get the full certificate, read the use line, and if it carries JLWQA, price the arts-fund contribution and the filing timetable into your offer.

Ten shareholders carry a landmarked masonry façade. Read the reserve position, the Local Law 11 status and the assessment history before you read the floor plan. The DOB record shows envelope spending in most years since 2002.

Assume nothing about financing. The financing ceiling, post-closing liquidity requirement and debt-to-income standard are unpublished. In a building this size they are frequently much tighter than the market default. Run the Co-op Board Qualification Calculator once you have the actual numbers, not before.

Trusts, LLCs and pied-à-terre use are open questions. Small artist-founded cooperatives often restrict or forbid all three. If your purchase structure depends on any of them, confirm in writing before you spend money on diligence.

No abatement, no J-51. Underwrite full unabated taxes flowing through maintenance. There is no burn-off to schedule and no step-up to fear.

It is not a cast-iron building. It is brick, terra cotta and cast iron, Beaux-Arts, 1894. The façade maintenance profile and the comparable set both follow from that, and both differ from the cast-iron fronts a block away.

Lead with provenance, then with plate. This address is documented in a published book, in The New York Times archive and in the institutional history of American experimental film. Very few SoHo lofts can say that, and the buyer who cares about it is the buyer who pays for it.

Have the certificate of occupancy and the financials ready on day one. In a ten-share building with no published policy stack, the offers that survive are the ones where the buyer's counsel got clean answers early. Ambiguity here costs price, not just time.

Photograph the depth. Fifty feet of width and ninety-six feet of depth is the product. Shoot the rooms to read front to back and let the window line and the ceiling do the work.

Position against the district, not against new construction. The comparable set is converted loft space inside the Cast Iron district. Pricing against ground-up condominiums on Wooster or Greene invites a rebuttal you cannot win.

If you're considering 80 Wooster Street, also evaluate:

• 470 Broome Street — Griffith Thomas, 1867; a separate condominium on this same tax block, and the closest physical neighbor with a profile
• 14 Wooster Street — SoHo loft cooperative at the southern end of the street; the closest tenure match on Wooster
• 42 Wooster Street — loft condominium on the same street, a different block
• 43 Wooster Street — ten half-floor residences in an 1885 store-and-loft building; the closest peer by unit count and plate logic
• 102 Wooster Street — 1891 store building converted to eight lofts, with a documented JLWQA question of its own
• 105 Wooster Street — full-floor residences in a cast-iron-era loft building
• 33 Greene Street — SoHo loft cooperative; share-ownership comparable in a cast-iron front
• 93 Mercer Street — small SoHo loft cooperative; similar scale and similar governance
• 45 Crosby Street — boutique SoHo cooperative east of Broadway
• 477 Broome Street — loft cooperative one block south; comparable size and vintage