![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/9e7f2d217b0451db0c4b4eb34991befcb0-80-Horatio.rhorizontal.w700.png\")
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\n 80 Horatio Street, the brick building with the fire escape, is slated to become a single-family mansion, a bellwether of where real estate is going in the West Village.
\n Photo: Google Maps\n <\/p>\n
In the past few years, it has become increasingly difficult to lay claim to a good chunk of real estate\u00a0in the West Village. On the most desirable blocks, billionaires have been picking up two, sometimes three<\/a>, townhouses at a clip, combining them into Frankenmansions<\/a> that often sprawl 40 feet or more across. Developers, meanwhile, have made off with nearly all the old parking garages<\/a>, odd lots, and historic buildings that haven\u2019t yet been claimed by hedge funders like Steve Cohen<\/a>. Widespread landmarking also limits the options. A buyer has to get creative. Which may explain the conversion of 80 Horatio Street, a pre-law<\/a> five-story brick tenement building in a prime pocket of the neighborhood, into a single-family house<\/a>.<\/p>\n While townhouse conversions are a dime a dozen in the West Village \u2014 it\u2019s now practically unheard of for multifamily houses to become anything but single-family homes when they change hands \u2014 tenement conversions are something of a new frontier. Maybe not for long, though. \u201cIt\u2019s very hard to find a 25-foot-wide building that can be used as a home in the West Village,\u201d says Matthew Lesser, the broker at Leslie J. Garfield who represented the buyer of 80 Horatio (on average, most New York City townhouses are about 18 feet wide<\/a>). The owner in this case plans to live in the place. In addition to its attractive width, the eight-unit building is deeper than most townhouses and its backyard abuts the lovely gardens of the townhouses on Jane Street, several of which are rumored to be in the middle of their own Franken-assemblages.<\/p>\n When the property went on the market last year, there was \u201ctremendous demand,\u201d says Lesser, which set off a bidding war. His client paid $10.25 million<\/a>, according to city records, in a sale that closed last October. The property, a 19th-century building with a handsome, quintessentially Village exterior \u2014 retail space on the first floor, fire escapes zigzagging up the brick front \u2014 was listed vacant, which it seems to have been for some time, with the last rental listing, for a one-bedroom with a garishly sleek kitchen renovation, dating back to 2019. \u201cFa\u00e7ade-wise, it will be very atypical of a townhouse, but the interiors will feel exactly like a luxury townhouse when it\u2019s completed,\u201d Lesser says. Plans<\/a> filed with the Landmarks Preservation Commission show a front fa\u00e7ade that will remain largely intact, minus the retail space and fire escapes. (At an LPC meeting earlier this summer, the loss of the retail space, which had been added sometime after the building\u2019s completion, was the largest point of contention.) The backside would, in the current custom of luxury townhouses everywhere, be blown out for a big window<\/a>. Three big windows, in fact.<\/p>\n \n Plans filed with the LPC show how the front fa\u00e7ade and the rear will look. Brokers say tenement-to-mansion conversions are rare. A little over a decade ago, 9 Minetta Lane<\/a>, an old-law tenement being used as an illegal hotel, was made over into a very modern, weirdly angled single-family home (not very successfully, it seems: The property has bounced around the market<\/a> for a number of years). And a few decades ago in the East Village, Greek shipping heir Alistair Economakis turned a rent-stabilized, 15-unit tenement at 45\u201347 East 3rd Street<\/a> into a single-family mansion<\/a> for himself, his wife, and their two kids, displacing renters via buyouts and a loophole that allows an owner to reclaim stabilized units for his personal use.<\/p>\n Unusual though it may be, every broker I talked to thought 80 Horatio\u2019s transformation was a swell idea. Overdue, even. Dolly and Jenny Lenz of Dolly Lenz Real Estate told me that when they listed 27 Christopher Street<\/a>, a free-standing Catholic school turned home of the social-services nonprofit New York Foundling, in 2014, other brokers found the $47.5 million asking price laughably high. The exterior was attractive, the location on the corner of Waverly Place ideal, but the interiors were a mess, with seven-foot ceilings from an ill-advised former reno, and other brokers thought they would be lucky to get $18 million. But then two hedge funders got into a bidding war and it sold for $45 million. The buyer, biotech hedge-fund billionaire Felix Baker<\/a>, has since turned 27 Christopher into a six-bedroom mansion with a 50-foot lap pool that would sell for upwards of $100 million if it hit the market today. \u201cWhen trophy mansions do not exist, sophisticated buyers create them,\u201d Lenz says. \u201cIt\u2019s very slim pickings in the West Village and Tribeca. People are really looking for anything \u2014 Is there any decrepit building I can do something with?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cConverting 80 Horatio makes perfect sense,\u201d says Christopher Riccio, a Douglas Elliman broker, who sold the townhouse across the street, 83 Horatio, for $20.6 million. George Vanderploeg, a townhouse broker at Douglas Elliman, pointed out that $1,600 or $1,700 per square foot \u2014 what 80 Horatio\u2019s sales price works out to \u2014 isn\u2019t bad, especially for a 25-footer. \u201cIt\u2019s the most expensive part of downtown,\u201d he says. \u201cI can see why something like that might work down there. You could take the fire escape off the front and have something that doesn\u2019t look too strange as a single-family.\u201d<\/p>\n In any event, in a neighborhood where a double-wide townhouse sold for $72.5 million<\/a> a few years ago, no one thought there was any chance that a buyer would have kept 80 Horatio as a rental, even if there are plenty of West Village girls<\/a> who would happily pay $7,500 a month for a one-bedroom there. As overheated as the neighborhood rental market is, the sales market is where the real money is \u2014 it\u2019s a billionaire\u2019s game now. \u201cPeople figure out the highest and best use,\u201d says Lenz. \u201cSomeone was always going to gut it and make it into condos or a single-family house.\u201d<\/p>\n Sign Up for the Curbed Newsletter<\/p>\n A daily mix of stories about cities, city life, and our always evolving neighborhoods and skylines.<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/db8d98b36593ad4e8ded79dc7912c6d33c-80-Horatio-Street-1.w710.jpg\")
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\n Illustration: Landmarks Preservation Commission\n <\/p>\n