Search Results for: Aby Rosen

February 6, 2015

Photographer Jay Maisel Officially Sells 190 Bowery for $55M

It's being considered one of the greatest returns on investment in New York City real estate history, reports the Daily News. Photographer Jay Maisel bought the now-famous graffiti-covered home at 190 Bowery back in 1966 when it was abandoned for only $102,000, and he's now officially sold the Gilded Age bank building to developer Aby Rosen of RFR Realty for $55 million. Developers have been urging Maisel to sell ever since the Bowery changed from a seedy row of drugs and flop houses to a trendy destination for foodie-favorite restaurants and high-end boutiques. Rosen finally convinced the artist, who lived in the six-story, 72-room mansion with his wife and daughter, to sell on the basis that it had no heat and was in disrepair.
More on the epic sale
January 6, 2015

Real Estate Wire: 90-Year-Old LES Matzo Maker to Shutter; 45 Park Place Gets Its Demo Permits

Streit’s Matzo Factory, the last family-owned matzo factory in the U.S., is in contract for purchase by an unnamed developer. The properties, located in the Lower East Side, were listed for $25M. [Bowery Boogie] Soho Properties has received demolition permits for 45 Park Place, the site where a 665-foot tower luxury tower and an Islamic museum will rise. [CO] The […]

December 6, 2014

New Rendering of 190 Bowery Gives Us a Look at the Mysterious Building Graffiti-Free

One of the city's most mysterious buildings has become a whole lot less intriguing with this newly released rendering from Massey Knakal. The image, which was pulled from the marketing materials of the broker by Bowery Boogie, shows a very pristine 190 Bowery totally free of graffiti and all lit up. Formerly the Germania Bank Building—and formerly the home of photographer Jay Maisel—the massive 72-room building was reportedly recently purchased by Aby Rosen of RFR Realty for an undisclosed amount (the sale has yet to hit city records) and, to much surprise, was put back on the market just a couple of weeks ago as a flip.
Find out more here
November 20, 2014

Photographer Jay Maisel’s Mysterious 72-Room Bowery Home Up for Sale Again

After all the hoopla around RFR Realty’s purchase of Jay Maisel’s graffiti-covered home along the Bowery, word has now surfaced that its new owners are already looking to turn a profit on the six-story building—even before they’ve officially closed on it. The Commercial Observer reports that the building at 190 Bowery, which went into contract in September, is being listed by Massey […]

October 27, 2014

Gramercy Park Hotel Hits the Market and Could Fetch $260M

Get ready for another blockbuster sale. Following in the footsteps of Hilton who just sold off the Waldorf Astoria Hotel to Chinese Insurance Company Anbang for $1.95 billion, Aby Rosen and Michael Fuchs have put their prized Gramercy Park Hotel on the market. Crain‘s reports that the 186-room, 18-story hotel located at 2 Lexington Avenue […]

October 20, 2014

Extraordinary Dwellings: These Amazing Homes Are Hidden in Plain Sight

It isn’t unusual to see old warehouses, churches and banks converted into luxury multi-unit condos and apartments. But far more rare, and often shrouded in myth and mystery, are one-of-a-kind buildings that had former lives as banks, schools, a synagogue, a public bath house, a Con Ed substation, even a public restroom and a hillside cave–and have more recently served as home and workspace for a lucky handful of bohemian dreamers (and hard-working homeowners).
Find out who lives behind the gates of those those cavernous, mysterious buildings
October 2, 2014

Kleindeutschland: The History of the East Village’s Little Germany

Before there were sports bars and college dorms, there were bratwurst and shooting clubs. In 1855, New York had the third largest German-speaking population in the world, outside of Vienna and Berlin, and the majority of these immigrants settled in what is today the heart of the East Village. Known as "Little Germany" or Kleindeutschland (or Dutchtown by the Irish), the area comprised roughly 400 blocks, with Tompkins Square Park at the center. Avenue B was called German Broadway and was the main commercial artery of the neighborhood. Every building along the avenue followed a similar pattern--workshop in the basement, retail store on the first floor, and markets along the partly roofed sidewalk. Thousands of beer halls, oyster saloons, and grocery stores lined Avenue A, and the Bowery, the western terminus of Little Germany, was filled with theaters. The bustling neighborhood began to lose its German residents in the late nineteenth century when Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe move in, and a horrific disaster in 1904 sealed the community's fate.
Read our full history of Kleindeutschland
September 30, 2014

Makeshift Mansions: How Today’s Filthy Rich are Creating Homes of Epic Proportions

For Manhattan’s jet-set crowd, the 2010s are starting to look an awful lot like the 1900s. New York’s upper crust are embracing a return to the Gilded Age, moving out of their fancy penthouses, co-ops and lofts and into opulent single-family mansions. From Aby Rosen’s quest to build the largest private mansion on Park Avenue to Jared Kushner’s conversion of three former Brooklyn Law School buildings into single-family townhouses—the most affluent buyers are now on the hunt for New York’s ultimate trophy prize.
More on makeshift mansions
August 19, 2014

From Swamps to Swank: A Brief History of Gramercy Park Hotel and the Garden’s Highly Coveted Keys

With a prime location overlooking Gramercy Park, accessible solely to those with keys, the 183-year-old Renaissance revival Gramercy Park Hotel was built on the site of infamous architect Stanford White’s home (which had replaced the house where novelist Edith Wharton was born) nearly 90 years ago. The neighborhood, the park, and the hotel date as far back as the 1830s, when more than 60 swampy lots were allocated to developers looking to lure downtown city folks to a new “uptown” community. In time, those lots were transformed into what is now 39 dwellings surrounding a leafy park reserved for a select few lucky enough to live in luxurious homes framing the two-acre park between 20th and 21st Streets at Irving Place. But it wasn't until 1925 that the stately hotel opened its doors at 2 Lexington Avenue. By 1930, it was extended westward along the park frontage on 21st street, and today it is one of the city's most coveted quarters.
More on the history of Gramercy Park Hotel here
August 1, 2014

Real Estate Wire: Three Towers to Top the East River Plaza; New Yorkers Vying for Homes on Busy Streets

Meadow Partners has released a rendering of its Long Island City conversion project at 42-15 Crescent Street. The project will see an 11-story condominium with ground floor retail. [CO] The three towers planned to top the East River Plaza mall have been uncovered. The project is being developed by Blumenfeld Development Group and Forest City […]

April 27, 2020

Plan approved to convert Jehovah’s Witnesses hotel in Dumbo into 500-unit affordable complex

The New York City Council last week voted to approve plans to convert a Brooklyn hotel formerly owned by the Jehovah's Witnesses into an affordable housing complex with 508 units. Developed by nonprofit Breaking Ground, the project at 90 Sands Street in Dumbo sets aside 305 apartments for formerly homeless New Yorkers, with the remaining 203 rentals priced below market-rate. Breaking Ground plans to renovate the existing 29-story building and add a public plaza along Jay Street.
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August 11, 2016

The Success Story of Industry City as Told by Its Innovative Manufacturing Tenants

Industry City is a six million-square-foot, 30-acre industrial complex on the Sunset Park waterfront. Its 16 buildings made up the former Bush Terminal, a manufacturing, warehousing and distribution center that opened in 1895. After falling into disrepair over the past few decades, in 2013, a new ownership team led by Belvedere Capital and Jamestown began their $1 billion undertaking to update the complex while cultivating a diverse tenant mix that fuses today’s burgeoning innovation economy with traditional manufacturing and artisanal craft. Today, there are more than 4,500 people and 400 companies working in Industry City, and 6sqft recently paid a visit to four of them (a handbag designer, lighting designer, candle company, and chocolatier) to learn why the complex makes sense for their business and what unique opportunities it's afforded them. We also spoke with Industry City CEO Andrew Kimball about the unprecedented success of the complex and his visions for the future, as well as took a tour of the buildings and their wildly popular public amenity spaces such as the food hall, outdoor courtyards, and tenant lounge.
All this and more ahead