mystery loft sale at 39 Crosby Street leads to burning silk hats + pianos

serendipitous unsuccessful search
Tomorrow’s news today! The New York Times Sunday real estate feature, Residential Sales Around the Region, has a mysterious loft sale that caught my eye even though it is a little out of my usual price range (the “1,700 sq ft” loft is at 39 Crosby Street, and seemingly sold at $5.85mm after a bidding war). The mystery deepened when I searched for the listing, as I can’t find any info for this sale anywhere. I will get to the little I learned in a bit, but the good news is that the search led me to a tantalizing tidbit about life in (what was then not known as) Soho after the Civil War.

Here is the fun stuff, from the New York Times archive from January 2, 1874: there was a fire at 39 Crosby Street that spread quickly, destroying the premises there of a silk hat manufacturer, which spread to the premises of a piano manufacturer at 427 Broome Street next door. The Broome Street cellar housed a tailor shop, while the basement of 39 Crosby Street housed a stable, form which 3 horses were rescued.

Talk about mixed use! A silk hat manufacturer in one building, with a stable below, and a piano manufacturer next door, with a tailor below that. The area was not all business, however. I will just quote this part of the Times account 137 years ago:

Adjoining the building is a six-story tenement-house, principally occupied by Italians; but owing to the fact that this house is separated from the building by an alley-way about six feet wide, its safety was not endangered.

While no horses or Italians were injured, 39 Broome Street was gutted and the top of 427 Broome Street was destroyed.

what loft is this?
Meanwhile, back in 2011 … It is weird that I can’t find any information about this loft, this bidding war, or this sale. StreetEasy has no sales or listings of any loft around 1,700 sq ft or asking around $5.8mm; the last activity publicly available from this loft building was a very famous sale for $9mm last year. There is nothing in our data-base for a 2011 listing on the scale reported, but The Google links to a City Connections brokerage page claiming a “recent sale” (scroll down) at 39 Crosby Street on June 6 of a loft of the right size.

But the Curbed Folk come through! In an account that makes me wonder about the “multiple bids” in the NY Times, Curbed’s account last year of the Thierry Henry states that he was in contract a year ago to buy an adjoining loft at 39 Crosby Street for $5.85mm when the tenant in that unit moved out. The Curbed link to a Wall Street Journal article (still with me??) solves the mystery: Henry put $5.85mm in escrow a year ago, pending the tenant moving out. While that was then “expected soon”, for some reason it did nto happen until (it seems) 9 months later.

No idea about the multiple bids. And note that there was no listing that quite corresponds to the NY Times tomorrow. But that’s just real estate industrial complex PR machine in action, I guess.

Thankfully, the mystery is solved. Thankfully, the Italians next door survived the 1874 fire. Thankfully, Monday is a holiday. Enjoy!

© Sandy Mattingly 2011