{"id":269973,"date":"2026-06-17T20:17:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T20:17:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/269973\/"},"modified":"2026-06-17T20:17:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T20:17:13","slug":"nyc-building-that-exposed-anna-delveys-scam-enters-contract","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/269973\/","title":{"rendered":"NYC building that exposed Anna Delvey’s scam enters contract"},"content":{"rendered":"

The gorgeous Gramercy Park building that became the centerpiece, and the downfall, of Anna Delvey\u2019s elaborate scam<\/a> has finally found someone willing to take it off the market \u2014 and this time the deal might actually close.<\/p>\n

The eye-catching 281 Park Avenue South, the 42,500-square-foot Beaux-Arts landmark once known as the Church Missions House, has entered contract, The Post has learned.\u00a0However, its final sale price and the identity of its new owner are not yet known \u2014 and won\u2019t be until the deal closes at a future date.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s for certain: the forthcoming owner certainly isn\u2019t Delvey herself.<\/p>\n

The \u201cfake heiress<\/a>,\u201d who still wears an ankle monitor as she makes the rounds in Manhattan and Westchester, tried to use forged documents to pry a $22 million loan out of City National Bank back in 2016, all so she could lease the space for her so-called Anna Delvey Foundation \u2014 which she marketed as a private social club and arts center.\u00a0<\/p>\n

281 Park Avenue South, the Gramercy Park building infamous for its role in Anna Delvey\u2019s fraud scheme, has finally gone into contract after years of failed attempts to sell. \u00a9 Rob Tringali<\/p>\n

The Beaux-Arts landmark, built in 1894 by Cornelius Vanderbilt and J.P. Morgan, was the site Delvey tried to lease using forged financial documents in her bid to launch the Anna Delvey Foundation, a scheme that helped land her on Rikers Island and made her a household name. Getty Images<\/p>\n

Delvey told bankers she had a $60 million trust fund waiting in Switzerland. She did not. The bank wanted proof of those assets and never got it. The situation led Delvey\u2019s scam to unravel.<\/p>\n

Delvey, whose real name is Anna Sorokin, was born outside of Moscow, but emigrated to Germany as a teenager. She was found guilty in 2019 on eight fraud- and theft-related counts, including grand larceny, attempted grand larceny and theft of services. She received a prison sentence of four to 12 years and was ordered to pay $24,000 in fines as well as nearly $200,000 in restitution. <\/p>\n

Although sentenced in 2019, Delvey was released from prison in February 2021 after serving less than two years, earning early release for good behavior.<\/p>\n

Built in 1894 by Cornelius Vanderbilt and J.P. Morgan, the six-story structure more recently was home to the Swedish photography museum Fotografiska, which bailed less than halfway through its 15-year lease in 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The space also housed the acclaimed restaurant Veronika and hosted the private after-hours bar Chapel Bar<\/a>, known for its 35-foot vaulted ceilings dressed with hydrangeas preserved by design firm Roman and Williams.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Veronika has since closed, as part of Fotografiska not renewing its lease, with the same applying to Chapel Bar, which debuted in late 2021 to great fanfare in the wake of COVID-19 as a way for more creating more meaningful connections in a time of loneliness.<\/p>\n

Owner Aby Rosen\u2019s firm RFR had struggled to offload the 42,500-square-foot property since first listing it for $135 million in 2022, watching the asking price slide to $100 million after Swedish photography museum Fotografiska abandoned its 15-year lease in 2024. \u00a9 Rob Tringali<\/p>\n

Ryan Serhant of the eponymous Serhant brokerage, who holds the listing, declined to comment on the sale price or the identity of the buyer. The building had made an appearance in season 2 of Serhant\u2019s Netflix reality show \u201cOwning Manhattan<\/a>.\u201d It appears the on-screen role helped usher the building towards this contract.<\/p>\n

The building had been asking a jaw-dropping $135 million when it first hit the market in 2022, a number that made even seasoned brokers wince. By the time Fotografiska announced its exit, owner Aby Rosen\u2019s firm RFR was left holding an empty trophy property in a commercial real estate market that had gone cold.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The price got chopped to $100 million in an October 2024 re-listing, then the building went off market again before resurfacing for a third attempt in November 2025. Most recently, according to building insiders, the property had been shopped with a guide price of $120 million.<\/p>\n

The deal appears to include a neighboring chapel, which in 2021 debuted at Chapel Bar \u2014 an exclusive hangout for artsy types. Stephen Yang<\/p>\n

By the time the listing relaunched for a third try this spring, RFR appeared to be taking a more flexible approach.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Alexandra Marolda, director of the capital markets group and investment sales at Avison Young, which has been marketing the property, said RFR remains attached to the building despite the long search for a buyer.<\/p>\n

\u201cRFR is pivoting and refocusing on a different business plan, but they absolutely love this building,\u201d Marolda told the Commercial Observer<\/a>. \u201cThe building holds value because of how special it is, so I wouldn\u2019t say that RFR is just looking to get rid of it. This is a special property to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Marolda described the team\u2019s strategy as casting a wide net.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The building also once held the popular Veronika restaurant which later shut down when Fotografiska museum ended its lease. \u00a9 Rob Tringali<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been targeting a mix of end users and investors that can understand the value of the building and what\u2019s gone into it so far,\u201d she said. She also gave high marks to the restaurant space left behind by chef Stephen Starr\u2019s Veronika, which closed in 2024 but still has its brass chandeliers and full kitchen intact.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the time, it was rated one of the most beautiful restaurants in New York City,\u201d Marolda said. \u201cThe way they built out that space was phenomenal.\u201d<\/p>\n

The building has picked up a strange kind of celebrity status of its own over the years, well beyond the Delvey saga that put it on the map. <\/p>\n

It served as a filming location for Netflix\u2019s \u201cInventing Anna,\u201d the series dramatizing Delvey\u2019s rise and fall, and the Veronika space turned up in an episode of \u201cAnd Just Like That.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The gorgeous Gramercy Park building that became the centerpiece, and the downfall, of Anna Delvey\u2019s elaborate scam has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":269974,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[104135,5462,1489,68,396,9715,2999,1023,75,9,24,56,63,65,64,467,1491,5045,10693,7577],"class_list":["post-269973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-anna-delvey","tag-architecture","tag-commercial-real-estate","tag-exclusive","tag-fraud","tag-gramercy-park","tag-historic-buildings","tag-luxury-real-estate","tag-manhattan","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-park-avenue","tag-real-estate","tag-ryan-serhant","tag-scams","tag-wire-fraud"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269973\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}