976 Lexington Avenue

The building is a straightforward post-war high-rise: a masonry tower on a corner lot, with the regular, repeating window lines and modest setbacks typical of early-1960s Lexington Avenue construction. The interest is inside. The original plan ran to roughly a hundred apartments across twenty floors — a mix of one-, two-, and three-bedroom homes — and over six decades a number of those have been combined into larger four-bedroom residences, so the building now offers an unusually broad spread, from efficient pieds-à-terre to family-scaled apartments.

Post-war layouts here tend toward what buyers prize in the era: sensible room proportions, good light from the larger windows, and far less wasted hallway than the pre-war stock. Ceiling heights are characteristic of the period rather than soaring, but the trade is square footage that lives efficiently and a building envelope that takes modern kitchens and baths without the structural fuss of a 1920s conversion.

Townsend House runs as a full-service cooperative. There is a 24-hour doorman and concierge at the lobby, a live-in resident manager, central laundry, a bicycle room, and private storage. The amenity that sets it apart from much of the surrounding co-op stock is the on-site parking garage — a genuine convenience on the East Side, where street parking is a daily battle and off-site garages run expensive. A fitness center rounds out the package.

Day-to-day, this is a quiet, well-staffed building of long-tenured shareholders. As an established cooperative it operates a standard board-approval process for purchases, and maintenance covers the staff, the garage operation, and the building's reserves and capital program in the usual co-op fashion.

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 (2026) cleared a median $827/sf across 1 sale. Median listing discount 4.4% 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 1-01406-0017) 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.

This is a board-approved cooperative purchase, so expect a full board package, financial review, and interview. The building's appeal to a buyer is concrete: a staffed, full-service address with an on-site garage and gym, on a prime Lenox Hill corner, at post-war pricing that buys materially more space than the pre-war buildings a few blocks west. Run the financing math early — co-op boards set financing limits and reserve expectations, and your debt-to-income and post-closing liquidity matter as much as the price. We help buyers read the building's financials, benchmark the asking price against in-building and neighborhood comparables, and prepare a board package that clears cleanly.

The selling story here is amenity-and-location, told plainly. Lead with what the building has that its neighbors don't — the garage, the gym, the concierge, the corner — and with the walk-everywhere Lenox Hill position: Central Park, the Madison Avenue retail and gallery corridor, and the Lexington Avenue subway all within a few minutes. Price to the building's own recent closings and the comparable post-war co-ops nearby; the larger and combined homes carry their own, thinner comp set and reward careful positioning. A clean, well-prepared listing in a building this well-located moves to a qualified, board-ready buyer.

If you're weighing Townsend House, these nearby Upper East Side full-service co-ops make a useful comparison set:

• 1004 Lexington Avenue — Lexington Avenue co-op to the north
• 1091 Lexington Avenue — Carnegie Hill–edge Lexington co-op
• 200 East 74th Street — full-service post-war co-op nearby
• 170 East 78th Street — Upper East Side co-op a few blocks north