- Year built
- 1883
- Type
- Cooperative
- Units
- 17
- Floors
- 9
- Landmark
- Designated
Every recorded sale at this building, 2005–2025
Price-per-square-foot over time, the line- and floor-premium curves, and every recorded sale.
- Median $/sf
- $1,119
- Listing discount
- 3.0%
- Recorded sales
- 25
- On record
- 2005–2025
Ladies' Mile was built to sell things, and almost every survivor on it was built to sell things only. The Gorham Building is the rare one that was built to sell things and to house people. Robert and Ogden Goelet, who controlled most of the Broadway blockfront between 19th and 20th Streets, commissioned Edward Hale Kendall in 1883 to put the Gorham Manufacturing Company's silver showroom into the lower floors of a Queen Anne pile of pink brick, terra cotta and Belleville sandstone, and to fit the floors above as residential flats. LPC's database records the original use in exactly those terms — store and apartments. It is why the co-op here is not a repurposed industrial shell but a return to what the top of the building was drawn to be.
Gorham decamped for its new Fifth Avenue flagship early in the twentieth century and the building followed the district down. A 1912–13 alteration under John H. Duncan turned the upper floors into lofts and offices, and they stayed that way for the better part of sixty years. In 1977 — before the Loft Law, before the M-suffix rezoning, before Ladies' Mile had a residential market to speak of — the upper floors were converted back to apartments and organized as a cooperative, with the street level returned to retail. The conversion architect's published project record describes it as restoring the original layout and says the work required Board of Standards and Appeals and City Planning Commission approvals. That sequence matters: the residences here were legalized through the front door, with a certificate of occupancy, five years before Article 7-C created the interim-multiple-dwelling regime that governs most of the loft buildings this co-op gets compared against.
The city then designated the building twice. It became an individual landmark on June 19, 1984 under the name Gorham Manufacturing Company Building, and it was swept into the Ladies' Mile Historic District when that district was designated on May 2, 1989. Dual designation is not a formality: every application touching the exterior, the roof, the storefronts and much of the interior runs through LPC before DOB sees it, and LPC's permit file for this address runs continuously from 1986 to today.
The counterweight is the facade. The building has stood in an unsafe condition under the city's facade inspection program since February 2023, and the most recent report — filed March 17, 2026 — is still UNSAFE. LPC approved a program of stone repair, repointing and replacement of deteriorated architectural features in November 2025, with a sidewalk permit following in June 2026. Restoring a landmarked Queen Anne facade of terra cotta and sandstone under LPC supervision, across seventeen apartments, is expensive work spread over a very small number of shares. Anyone buying here is buying that program.
Architecture and unit composition
Kendall's building is a corner block of pink brick trimmed in terra cotta and Belleville sandstone under a steep slate roof with iron cresting — the Queen Anne vocabulary near full volume, on a corner that gives it two long elevations. DOB's facade filings describe a steel frame with masonry walls, consistent with the 1893 and 1912–13 campaigns having reworked substantial parts of the structure behind the historic face. The lot runs about 55 feet on Broadway and 108 feet on East 19th Street and the building covers essentially all of it, so the apartments are broad rather than deep, with the corner lines picking up two exposures.
Seventeen apartments sit on nine floors above the retail base. The recorded designations — A and B pairs on most floors, a C line at the base, a penthouse at the top — describe roughly two apartments per floor, which puts these in the half-floor loft range. Ceiling heights, window sizes and column spacing are inherited from an 1880s commercial frame and the 1977 conversion did not chase them out. The penthouse sits above the original cornice line and is the source of the eight-versus-nine-story discrepancy between the architect's published description and the city's record.
The ground floor and mezzanine are retail owned by the cooperative, expanded in 2010 when DOB job 120392173 converted a first-floor apartment into a second store. That is a real economic feature of the corporation rather than a detail: commercial income in a seventeen-unit building carries meaningful weight against maintenance, and a buyer should ask what the leases are and when they expire.
Building operations
This is a small, self-contained house rather than a serviced one — a full-time superintendent, a video intercom, a keyed elevator opening into the apartments, and a landscaped roof deck. No doorman, no gym, no garage. For seventeen units on a corner of Broadway that is the right staffing level, and it keeps maintenance from carrying a payroll the shares cannot support.
The operating story that matters is the capital one, and it is public. The building filed SWARMP in the 2017 facade cycle, moved to UNSAFE in February 2023, and has stayed UNSAFE through filings in December 2024 and March 2026. In parallel LPC signed off in November 2025 on stone repair, repointing and replacement of deteriorated architectural features, and in June 2026 on sidewalk work. That is a substantial exterior restoration in progress on a landmark facade.
We hold no audited financial statements, no board communications and no offering plan for this building in either library, which is unusual for a building of this profile and is stated here rather than papered over. Reserves, any assessment, the status of any underlying mortgage, and the budgeted cost of the facade program are all unknown to us and all knowable to your attorney.
Policy framework
Ownership form: Cooperative. Buyers acquire shares in 889 Realty Inc. and a proprietary lease, and are approved by the board after a package review and an interview. The corporation also owns the ground-floor commercial space.
The policy stack is not published. No offering plan, amended plan, proprietary lease, house rules or financial statement for 889 Broadway was located in either library. The financing ceiling, the post-closing liquidity expectation, the sublet policy and any sublet fee, the flip tax and who pays it, the pied-à-terre posture, and whether the board will approve a purchase in trust or through an entity are undocumented in any source we can stand behind. We will not guess at them. Request them in writing from the managing agent before making an offer, and treat any number quoted verbally as unverified.
Real estate taxes: No exemption or abatement on the lot in the FY2026 or FY2027 rolls; the 1979 and 1980 J-51 benefits expired around 1990–1991.
Local Law 97
- 2024–2029 annual penalty
- $0 (under cap)
- 2030–2034 annual penalty
- $4,985/yr
- Per unit / month range
- $0 – $24
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 Unsafe — conditions requiring corrective action, which under FISP means a protective sidewalk shed and repairs. Review the subsequent filings, the repair status, and the building’s board and financial materials — we pull the repair scope and funding picture 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
889 Broadway trades as a Ladies' Mile loft cooperative, a category with its own economics. Loft co-ops price on per-room and per-share logic rather than the per-square-foot logic that governs the converted condominiums a few blocks west, and they trade at a discount to those condominiums for structural reasons: board approval, financing limits, sublet restriction, and the absence of the resale flexibility a condominium confers. Against the prewar apartment co-ops on the East 19th Street corridor, this building offers loft scale and dual landmark provenance; against the condominium loft conversions on West 17th through West 21st Streets, it offers a lower entry and a harder purchase process.
Two conditions belong in the pricing rather than in the disclosure schedule. The first is the facade: an UNSAFE status standing since 2023 with a landmark-supervised restoration underway, across seventeen apartments, is a capital exposure. The second cuts the other way — the ground-floor retail is genuine support for maintenance in a building this small, and its lease terms are worth knowing. Market statements should be indexed to the last complete year rather than the partial current one, which is thin in a building producing a handful of transfers a year. Unit-level transaction history is maintained in The Roebling Research Library and shared with clients during diligence.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 21, 2025 | PHA | 2 BR · 2 BA | $1,975,000 | -1.0% | |
| Mar 29, 2024 | 4A | 3 BR · 1.5 BA · 1,850 sf | $2,100,000 | $1,135/sf | -12.3% |
| Jun 3, 2021 | 4B | 2 BR · 3 BA | $3,150,000 | -7.1% | |
| May 21, 2021 | 6C | 2 BR · 2 BA | $775,000 | +0.0% | |
| Jul 17, 2018 | 2C | 1 BR · 1 BA · 1,400 sf | $1,897,350 | $1,355/sf | -36.6% |
| Feb 2, 2016 | 3B | 1 BR | $1,440,000 | -9.7% | |
| Sep 9, 2014 | 5B | 2 BR · 2 BA · 1,600 sf | $2,795,000 | $1,747/sf | -6.7% |
| Jul 16, 2012 | 4B | 2 BR · 2.5 BA | $2,800,000 | -1.8% |
Market read. $/sf is measured on the latest sales with reliable square footage (2024): a median $1,119/sf across 1 sale. The building has traded as recently as 2025. Median listing discount 3.0% 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 1-00848-0012) 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
Start with the facade file, not the floor plan. The building has been UNSAFE since February 2023 and remained UNSAFE on the March 2026 filing. Ask the managing agent for the engineer's report, the scope and budget of the LPC-approved restoration, the funding plan, and whether an assessment has been levied or is contemplated. If those answers are not forthcoming in writing, that is itself information.
Assume nothing about the rules. No offering plan, proprietary lease or house rules for this building exists in either library. Financing ceiling, post-closing liquidity, sublet policy and fee, flip tax and payer, pied-à-terre and trust or entity purchase all have to come from the managing agent in writing. Run the Co-op Board Qualification Calculator once you have the real numbers, not before.
Understand what dual designation costs you. Individual landmark plus historic district means windows, storefronts, rooftop mechanicals, terraces and much interior alteration go to LPC first. The permit file shows the Commission grants certificates of no effect routinely — but on its schedule, not yours.
The zoning is manufacturing, and that is normal here. M1-5M is one of only two manufacturing districts in the city in which residences are permitted. The use is legal and legalized; PLUTO's residential FAR of 0.00 for the lot alarms anyone reading city data cold, and should not.
It is not a loft-law building. The 1977 conversion carries a certificate of occupancy. There is no interim multiple dwelling status, no Loft Board jurisdiction, and no artist-certification condition — the apartments are Class A dwelling units in occupancy group J-2. Buyers comparing this to unlegalized loft stock elsewhere in the district are comparing two different legal animals.
Check the unit count against the shares. PLUTO says 17 residential units; the certificate of occupancy on the 2010 change-of-use job still says 18. The schedule of shares settles it.
Small building, small denominator. Seventeen apartments carry the elevator, the superintendent, the roof, the landmark facade and the sidewalk. Run the True Monthly Carrying Cost Calculator with a capital line in it.
What to know if you’re selling
Lead with the building's identity. This is the Gorham Building — an individually designated New York City landmark by Edward Hale Kendall, built for the Goelets in 1883–84, one of the earliest store-and-apartment buildings on Ladies' Mile. That provenance is documented in LPC's own records and no competing loft building on these blocks can claim it.
Get ahead of the facade. A buyer's attorney will pull the FISP record in the first week and find an UNSAFE status running since 2023. Presenting the LPC-approved scope, the engineer's report and the funding plan up front converts a discovery into a disclosed, quantified item.
Assemble the document package before listing. Because nothing about this building's policy stack is published, buyers arrive with no information and price the uncertainty. Handing over the proprietary lease, house rules, current financials and the board's capital plan on day one removes that discount.
Position against the right comparable set. The condominium loft conversions on West 17th through West 21st Streets are a different product. The right frame is Ladies' Mile cooperative inventory, and the argument is landmark provenance, loft scale and commercial income against condominium flexibility.
Condition sells here. Loft plates in a nineteenth-century frame reward renovation and punish deferral. Run the Renovation Cost Calculator against the asking strategy before deciding whether to sell as-is.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering 889 Broadway, also evaluate:
- 32 West 20th Street — an eighteen-unit Ladies' Mile loft cooperative; the closest like-for-like on tenure, scale and district
- 112 East 19th Street (Ruggles House) — a 1913 office-and-loft building converted to cooperative; the nearest peer on the East 19th Street corridor
- 105 East 19th Street — a 1920 prewar cooperative a block east; the conventional apartment-house alternative
- 29 West 21st Street (Iron Lofts) — a six-unit Ladies' Mile loft condominium; the boutique condominium alternative inside the same district
- 31 West 21st Street — an eleven-unit full-floor loft condominium next door to it, also inside the district
- 12 West 18th Street (The Randolph) — an 1885 Ladies' Mile loft converted to condominium; the closest peer by vintage
- 15 West 17th Street — a ten-unit 1907 loft condominium in the district; smaller plates, condominium rules
- 21 West 20th Street — new construction inside the Ladies' Mile Historic District; the modern alternative at a materially higher price
- 15 Union Square West — the 1870 Tiffany building converted to condominium in 2008; the Union Square trophy conversion
- 42 East 20th Street (The Bullmoose) — an 1899 loft converted to condominium just east of the district boundary
The neighborhood
For the full corridor — architecture, schools, transit, and pricing across Flatiron — read The Roebling Team Guide to Flatiron.
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.
Considering a move at The Gorham Building?
Request a private building brief with the relevant comparable sales, current and off-market availability, and an apartment-specific view of value.
Own an apartment here? See what it would sell for.
A Private Pricing Opinion — what your apartment at The Gorham Building 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.