The Lucida (151 East 85th Street)
151 East 85th Street, New York, NY 10028
- Year built
- 2007
- Type
- Condominium
- Units
- 110
- Floors
- 21
- Landmark
- No
- Amenities
- 24-hour doorman and concierge, lobby with fireplace, skylit pool with spa and fitness center, residents' lounge with catering kitchen, children's playroom, bike room, private storage, wine cellar, and garage with valet parking
Every recorded sale at this building, 2008–2026
Price-per-square-foot over time, the line- and floor-premium curves, and every recorded sale.
- Median $/sf
- $2,159
- Listing discount
- 8.0%
- Recorded sales
- 194
- On record
- 2008–2026
The Lucida was the building that announced the modern condominium era on the Lexington Avenue spine. When Extell and the Carlyle Group developed the full blockfront between 85th and 86th in 2007–2009, the Upper East Side's family-scaled luxury inventory was overwhelmingly pre-war co-op stock with demanding boards; the Lucida delivered 110 large condominium residences — two- to six-bedrooms with 10-foot ceilings — wrapped in a Cook + Fox glass facade and marketed as the neighborhood's first LEED-certified green residential building. For buyers who wanted co-op-scaled apartments with condo transfer mechanics, filtered air, and a real amenity floor, it created a category at this crossroads, and it has anchored that category since.
The architecture has aged as one of the more interesting glass buildings uptown. What reads at first as a sleek box is an L-shaped plan with numerous setbacks, some set at slight angles to the street wall, clad in a checkerboard of clear and silver-fritted glass; the Lexington entrance sequence — a long bronze marquee against a two-story perforated-bronze screen with an organic pattern — gives the building a crafted street presence unusual for the type. Cook + Fox carried the One Bryant Park sustainability program down to residential scale: triple-glazed floor-to-ceiling windows, continuously delivered filtered outside air, rainwater irrigation, and low-emission interior materials per architectural records.
The ownership structure rewards attention. The offering plan on file shows the build: 110 tower residences offered at $415.2 million in 2007, with the retail unit and a 24-apartment rental unit held back. Those commercial components — roughly 96,000 square feet of retail once anchored by Barnes & Noble, Bank of America, H&M, and Sephora — sit on a ground lease with the estate of Sol Goldman through 2082, and traded institutionally: Vornado Realty Trust bought them for $165 million in 2010 and brought them to market in 2017 at a reported target near $225 million, per The Real Deal. The residences themselves are conventional condominium units; the practical takeaway for buyers is simply that the building's base economics are institutional and its retail tenancy will continue to evolve — the Barnes & Noble closed in 2020 — without bearing on the tower's governance.
Architecture and unit composition
The 110 residences run two- to six-bedrooms with a consistency of finish unusual for a building this size: 10-foot ceilings, chocolate-stained oak floors, floor-to-ceiling triple-paned glass, marble baths, and kitchens specified at the trophy-condo tier per listing records. The plans are genuinely family-scaled — entrance galleries running 20 to 37 feet, eat-in kitchens with family lounges, libraries and media rooms in the larger lines, laundry rooms and staff areas in the four- and five-bedroom units. The setback massing produces terraces and corner exposures at the upper floors — the 16th-floor lines carry large angled corner terraces over 86th and Lexington — and the building tops out in duplex penthouses across the 20th and 21st floors with substantial private outdoor space. Unit 8G belongs to the condominium as the resident manager's apartment per the offering plan.
Building operations
Full-service at the standard of the corridor: 24-hour doorman and concierge, live-in resident manager, and an amenity program — skylit pool, spa and fitness center, residents' lounge with catering kitchen, children's playroom, wine cellar, bike room, storage, and valet-parked garage — that remains competitive against the newer condos built uptown since. The 110 storage bins and 110 wine-storage licenses sit in the sub-cellar levels within the retail unit, held under licenses whose term tracks the lower-parcel lease per the offering plan — a detail your attorney should map when a storage or wine license conveys with a residence. The offering plan with amendments through the tenth and recent audited financial statements are on file in The Roebling Research Library.
Local Law 97
- 2024–2029 annual penalty
- $0 (under cap)
- 2030–2034 annual penalty
- $109,290/yr
- Per unit / month range
- $0 – $77
Facade safety — Local Law 11
The facade passed its last inspection with no required repairs — nothing to budget for here, and no facade assessment on the horizon for roughly five years.
QEWI = Qualified Exterior Wall Inspector — the licensed engineer the city requires to sign the report (the independent expert, not the managing agent). Source: NYC DOB facade filings (FISP) · The Roebling Research Library.
See the full facade history →Recent sales
Recent closings at this building, curated by The Roebling Team research desk. Apartment-level facts are independently verified before publishing; sale prices reflect the recorded transfer amount at the NYC Department of Finance.
| Date | Unit | Apartment | Price | PPSF | vs. Ask |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 30, 2026 | 11C | 4 BR · 2,350 sf | $4,999,000 | $2,127/sf | +0.1% |
| Nov 7, 2025 | 19H | 2 BR · 2.5 BA · 1,595 sf | $2,800,000 | $1,755/sf | -9.7% |
| Aug 8, 2025 | 14J | 5 BR · 4.5 BA · 3,601 sf | $7,800,000 | $2,166/sf | -5.5% |
| Oct 3, 2024 | 14F | 2 BR · 2.5 BA · 1,600 sf | $2,540,000 | $1,588/sf | -4.2% |
| Jul 9, 2024 | 18J | 5 BR · 5 BA · 2,717 sf | $5,575,000 | $2,052/sf | -12.2% |
| May 10, 2024 | 18H | 2 BR · 2.5 BA · 1,595 sf | $2,820,000 | $1,768/sf | -1.1% |
| Mar 28, 2024 | 14D | 3 BR · 3 BA · 2,056 sf | $3,826,000 | $1,861/sf | -3.1% |
| May 9, 2023 | 8F | 2 BR · 2.5 BA · 1,621 sf | $2,510,000 | $1,548/sf | -20.9% |
Market read. Most recent trades (2026) cleared a median $2,159/sf across 1 sale. Median listing discount 8.0% 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.
Other recent transfers
| Date | Unit | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Dec 10, 2025 | 17A | $6,964,472 |
| Nov 14, 2025 | 8B | $3,225,000 |
| Sep 30, 2025 | 19A | $6,583,837 |
| Sep 2, 2025 | 2A | $2,300,000 |
| Aug 20, 2025 | 18A | $6,589,000 |
| Jul 21, 2025 | 9B | $3,368,475 |
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 1-01514-7502) 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
The format is the scarcity. Family-scaled condominium residences — real four- and five-bedroom plans with galleries and eat-in kitchens — remain structurally rare east of Park Avenue. The Lucida and the contemporaneous Brompton created the category at this intersection; pricing between the two tracks line and light more than brand.
Have counsel map the two-parcel structure. The tower residences are conventional condo units, but the retail and rental components sit on a long ground lease held institutionally, and storage and wine licenses are tied to that lower parcel per the offering plan. This is well-trodden diligence — the documents are on file with us — but it should be done precisely.
86th and Lexington is a transit node, with everything that implies. The express 4/5/6 is at the corner with a subway entrance at the building, the Q is two avenues east, and the crosstown spine runs past the front door — alongside a fire station just east on 85th Street and genuine retail-corridor traffic. The triple-glazed envelope was engineered for exactly this; still, price front-facing lines with eyes open and visit at street-rush hours.
Underwrite the carry, not just the price. Large units carry common charges and taxes consistent with the full-amenity condo tier. Run the True Monthly Carrying Cost Calculator on the specific unit, and the Mansion Tax Calculator at the intended price — every trade in this building crosses multiple thresholds.
Verify the policy stack. Pet, sublet, and financing specifics run through the by-laws and managing agent. The condominium framework is flexible by Upper East Side standards — a structural advantage for trust, LLC, and pied-à-terre buyers — but confirm current requirements at offer stage.
What to know if you’re selling
Market the building's category, then your line. The pitch is family condo scale plus the green-building program — filtered air, triple glazing, the amenity floor — against a co-op corridor that cannot offer condo mechanics. Then anchor to same-line history: the spread between setback-terrace inventory and lower retail-adjacent floors is wide, and building-average $/sf misleads here.
Expect a deliberate, school-calendar buyer pool. The building's core buyer is trading for bedroom count and proximity to the neighborhood's schools and the park. Marketing windows and negotiation rhythm follow the family calendar; we plan launches accordingly.
Use the documents. The offering plan, amendments, and financial statements on file let us answer diligence questions — storage licenses, the lower-parcel structure, amenity governance — before they become contract friction. Sellers who front-load this close faster.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering The Lucida, also evaluate:
- 205 East 85th Street (The Brompton) — the Robert A.M. Stern–designed Related condominium built contemporaneously one block east; the masonry counterpoint to the Lucida's glass
- 1289 Lexington Avenue (The Hayworth) — the newer boutique condominium diagonally across the 86th Street intersection
- 200 East 83rd Street — the Stern-designed Naftali tower; the corridor's newest benchmark at a higher per-foot basis
- 180 East 88th Street — DDG's boutique tower; the design-forward alternative
- 200 East 95th Street (The Kent) — Extell's later Upper East Side condominium; the same developer's program further north at a softer basis
- 360 East 89th Street (Citizen360) — contemporary condo alternative in Yorkville
- 151 East 78th Street — boutique pre-war-styled condo; the smaller-format alternative south of the 86th Street corridor
The Roebling Team at The Lucida
The Roebling Team at Compass works the Upper East Side — Carnegie Hill, Yorkville, and the Lexington corridor between them — as a core practice area, and we have represented buyers in this building. We publish this building profile because Lucida buyers and sellers deserve building-specific intelligence — offering-plan structure, ownership mechanics, and line-level comparables — not generic neighborhood commentary.
If you're considering a transaction at The Lucida, a 30-minute consultation is the right starting point.
Get the full picture on this building.
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