Big Ticket: $15.5 Million, a Record for Brooklyn Real Estate

An enormous brick townhouse in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, suitable as both home and studio with its voluminous rooms, soaring ceilings and built-in four-car garage, sold to the photographer Jay Maisel for $15.5 million, according to city records, breaking the record for the highest price ever paid for a single residence in the borough.

This past winter, Mr. Maisel sold his previous home and studio — the gritty six-story, 38,000-square-foot former Germania Bank building at 190 Bowery in Manhattan — to Aby J. Rosen’s RFR Holding for $55 million. The 1898 landmark structure, which has sometimes been mistaken for a derelict building because of its plentiful graffiti, had been home to Mr. Maisel since 1966.

His new residence, a nearly 27-foot-wide townhouse at 177 Pacific Street in a Brooklyn historic district, is three stories high with a full, finished basement; it has six bedrooms, six full baths and two half baths and an elevator, over about 10,000 square feet of space. The annual taxes on the house, which had a $16 million asking price, are $22,548.68.

In Manhattan, 14 East 63rd Street sold for $22.25 million, the highest price paid this week in the city overall. CreditChang W. Lee/The New York Times

Alexander F. Maroni of Douglas Elliman Real Estate, who represented the seller, identified as 177 Realty Corp., and also handled the sale for the buyer, said the interior was completely renovated and included a 20-person movie theater, a gym, children’s playroom, bar and wine cellar, as well as “smart home” technology. There is also a 2,600-square-foot roof garden with an outdoor kitchen, and all the floors, including those in the 1,000-square-foot garage, have radiant heat, he added.

“Relative to its Manhattan counterpart this is a good value,” Mr. Maroni said. “It’s a cavernous space. The sense of scale is difficult to get in New York. A home like this would sell for at least $40 million in Manhattan.”

By Brooklyn standards, though, this sale represents a record price for a single residence, according to research from CityRealty. The previous record-holder in the borough was a Brooklyn Heights mansion where Truman Capote once lived, at 70 Willow Street, which sold for $12.5 million in March 2012.

The record-holder in Manhattan — and the city over all — is a 10,923-square-foot duplex penthouse at One57, which sold in January for $100.47 million.

This past week in Manhattan, the most expensive sale was a five-story 1870s townhouse on a prime historic block on the Upper East Side, a quick stroll away from Central Park, that sold for $22.25 million, according to city records, to European buyers who planned to convert the building, which now houses two tenants, into their Manhattan residence.

The annual taxes on the 25-foot-wide house, at 14 East 63rd Street, between Fifth and Madison Avenues, are $121,641, according to the Corcoran Group, which had the listing; the asking price was $25 million. Carrie Chiang and Richard Phan represented the seller, identified as the “14 East 63 Street Manhattan Corporation,” while their Corcoran colleague Scott Stewart brought the buyer, whose identity was shielded by the limited liability company Solid Core but whom he described as a family from Western Europe.

The house was erected in 1873 by the brothers Robert B. and James G. Lynd, architects and developers responsible for a spate of townhouses in the neighborhood in the late 19th century, and it has retained many original architectural features, including the front stoop, grand staircase, detailed high ceilings and wood-burning fireplaces. It has 18 rooms over 8,519 square feet of space, including seven bedrooms and five baths, along with an elevator and a south-facing garden in the back.

The Sandra Gering art gallery is currently ensconced in the ground-floor space, while a residential tenant resides in the remaining four floors. Mr. Stewart said the new owners, with whom he conducted business mostly via email, were “perfectly happy to have the tenants in place while making plans for the building,” and unlikely to actually move in before 2017.

Copyright © 2015 The New York Times Company. Reprinted with Permission. Michelle V. Agins & Chang W. Lee/The New York Times. 

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