- Year built
- 1859
- Type
- Condominium
- Units
- 1401
- Floors
- 6
- Landmark
- Designated
- Pets
- Not documented in public records — confirm with the managing agent
Worth Street between Broadway and Church holds one of the best surviving rows of marble-fronted dry-goods stores in New York. They were built in the late 1850s and 1860s for individual merchants, one at a time, in white marble and cast iron, at a moment when this stretch was the center of the American textile trade. 83–85 Worth Street went up in 1859–60 for David W. Catlin and Henry S. Leavit. It is one of the reasons the Tribeca East Historic District exists.
The building spent most of the twentieth century and the first two decades of the twenty-first as offices. A single realty corporation held it from 1987; the Department of Finance carried it in office classes through the FY2019 roll; the most notable filing in that period was a 2013 application to convert the ground floor and cellar to a gym. In July 2017 it changed hands to an entity of Beekman Real Estate Investment Management, and in May 2018 a Type 1 alteration was filed to convert it to residential use and add a floor.
What came out the other side is unusually concentrated: five homes in a six-story building. One residence per floor on floors two through five, each roughly 4,000 square feet, floor-through, with the full Worth Street window wall to the south — and a penthouse in the new sixth-floor addition with two terraces. There is no corridor logic and no shared landing. The elevator opens into the apartment.
That is the argument. Tribeca has a great many loft conversions; it has very few where the loft is the entire floor and the building holds five families. The trade-off is equally clear and should be understood before contract: five residences carrying a doorman, a house manager and a below-grade amenity club is a very small denominator for a real operating budget.
The conversion also kept the things that make a Tribeca loft worth buying. Cast-iron columns and timber beams were retained and left exposed; ceilings run to roughly twelve feet; the marble façade and the cast-iron storefront were restored under Landmarks jurisdiction, with a physical mock-up erected on the roof in 2018 so the Commission could assess the sightlines of the new sixth floor from the street. The rooftop addition on a designated marble store-and-loft building is precisely the kind of work that gets refused when it is done carelessly, and the LPC docket in the file is the evidence that it was not.
Architecture and unit composition
The Landmarks record describes the building as Italianate, with a masonry primary material, cast iron at the ground story, brick, limestone ashlar and a marble cornice. The Worth Street elevation is the significant one; the building sits on a 47-by-100-foot lot with a 48-foot building front, which is what allows a genuine full-floor plate rather than the narrow twenty-five-foot slot common elsewhere in Tribeca.
The stack is simple. The ground floor and cellar are the commercial unit — recorded as the NRU at roughly 3,704 square feet, which matches PLUTO's retail-area figure exactly. Floors two through five are the four loft residences, one per floor, at roughly 3,984 gross square feet each in the Department of Finance record. The sixth floor is the penthouse, added in the conversion, at roughly 2,500 square feet with terraces. Below grade sits the residents' club.
Exposures are the thing to walk. Full-floor plates in a mid-block Tribeca building of this footprint take their light from the front and rear rather than from four sides, and the deep southern light off Worth Street is the building's principal asset. Buyers should look specifically at how the rear of each plate is lit and at what stands behind the building.
Building operations
The building is new as a condominium — the tax lots were cut in 2024 and the first closings were recorded in December 2025 — so there is no meaningful operating history yet, no audited financial statement covering a stabilized year, and no reserve base built from resales.
The structural fact to underwrite is the denominator. Five residences fund a full-time doorman, a house manager, and a below-grade fitness, sauna, steam, lounge and games program. That produces a very high service-to-resident ratio and a correspondingly high fixed cost per home. The commercial unit at the base carries a share of common expenses and is currently sponsor-held; its eventual disposition and its common-charge contribution are worth asking about, because in a six-lot condominium a single commercial unit is a material part of the budget.
Because no offering plan for this condominium was located in either offering-plan library, a buyer should obtain the plan and all amendments directly and read the budget, the common-interest allocation between the residential and commercial units, and any sponsor obligations before contract.
Policy framework
Ownership form: Condominium. Transfers proceed under a right of first refusal rather than a cooperative approval — typically a 30-to-45-day closing.
Pied-à-terre, subletting, LLC, trust and foreign ownership: All permitted under the standard condominium framework. Every residence conveyed to date is held in a single-purpose entity.
Pets and flip tax: Not documented in public records. Confirm both with the managing agent; a resale capital contribution, if one exists, materially affects seller net proceeds in a building at this price point.
Landmarks: The lot sits in the Tribeca East Historic District. Window replacement, terrace structures, rooftop mechanical equipment and any façade work require a Certificate of Appropriateness.
Real estate taxes: No abatement. Underwrite full unabated taxes on the specific unit and run True Monthly Carrying Cost analysis against the current bill.
Local Law 97
This building is below the 25,000 sq ft threshold at which LL97 emissions caps apply. No regulatory capital pressure from this law specifically, current or 2030.
See full Local Law 97 analysis →Recent sales
Three of the five residences were conveyed in December 2025, on three separate dates, at recorded consideration clustered around ten to eleven million dollars each. The sponsor retained the remaining two residences and the commercial unit at the time of writing.
At roughly 4,000 square feet a home, the building prices in the upper band of Tribeca loft-conversion product on a per-foot basis, and the correct comparable set is the small group of Tribeca buildings offering genuine full-floor plates with attended service — not the larger multi-line loft conversions on the surrounding blocks, whose economics and unit sizes are different. With five residences and a sellout still in progress, there is no building average worth quoting; valuation here is a floor-by-floor exercise, and the penthouse in particular has no in-building comparable. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 29, 2025 | 5 | 3 BR · 4 BA · 3,984 sf | $9,991,288 | $2,508/sf | -3.5% |
| Dec 18, 2025 | 4 | 3 BR · 4 BA · 3,984 sf | $10,976,312 | $2,755/sf | +2.1% |
| Dec 16, 2025 | 2 | 3 BR · 4 BA · 3,984 sf | $10,823,200 | $2,717/sf | +0.7% |
Market read. Most recent trades (2025) cleared a median $2,717/sf across 3 sales.
Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 1-00173-7505) 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
Ignore the PLUTO record entirely. City data reports a 1920 building with 25 residential units. The building dates to 1859–60 and holds five residences. Any automated valuation or tax analysis built on those figures will be wrong on both inputs.
There is no Loft Law overlay. The building came out of office use, not residential loft occupancy. There is no Interim Multiple Dwelling registration, no Article 7-C history, and none of the rent-regulation questions that attach to Loft Law conversions elsewhere in Tribeca.
Underwrite full taxes. No J-51, no 421-a, no exemption of any kind on these unit lots.
Ask about the commercial unit. In a six-lot condominium, the ground-floor unit's common-charge share and eventual use are a real variable. It was sponsor-held at the time of writing.
Read the budget before the amenity list. Five homes funding a doorman, a house manager and a full below-grade club is a thin cost base.
The penthouse is a different asset. It sits in the 2018 rooftop addition rather than in the 1859 building, it is smaller than the loft floors, and it carries the terraces. Price it separately.
What to know if you’re selling
Lead with the plate, not the finishes. A genuine full-floor 4,000-square-foot loft with south light across the whole front is rare on this stretch, and it is the argument that survives a soft market.
Put the building's real age in front of the buyer. An 1859 marble store-and-loft in the Tribeca East Historic District is a stronger story than the 1920 date the public record will show, and correcting it early prevents an appraisal problem later.
Be direct about the tax posture and the small denominator. Both will surface in diligence. Presenting them with the current budget produces better outcomes than letting a buyer discover them.
Comparables come from full-floor Tribeca, not from Tribeca generally.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering 85 Worth Street, also evaluate:
- 65 Worth Street — the marble-fronted Worth Building conversion a few doors west; the closest peer by street, district and building type
- 79 Worth Street — loft-conversion condominium on the same block; larger unit count and a different economic profile
- 108 Leonard Street — the large-scale landmark conversion one block north; full-service at the opposite end of the density spectrum
- 14 Leonard Street — boutique Tribeca loft building; comparable scale, different vintage
- 10 Leonard Street — small-building Tribeca condominium with full-floor character
- 134 Duane Street — full-floor Tribeca loft conversion; a direct plate-for-plate comparison
- 137 Duane Street — boutique Duane Street loft condominium
- 166 Duane Street — small Tribeca loft building; the low-unit-count alternative
- 155 Franklin Street — Tribeca loft conversion with comparable ceiling heights and original structure retained
- 100 Reade Street — nearby conversion at larger scale, useful for testing the amenity-cost trade
The neighborhood
For the full corridor — architecture, schools, transit, and pricing across Tribeca — read The Roebling Team Guide to Tribeca.
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.
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