"The photographer and artist Jay Maisel bought the Gilded Age relic for $102,000 and turned it into a 72-room, 35,000-square-foot single-family home, art studio, and storage space - one used, at least for a while, by a number of famous artist friends like Roy Lichtenstein and Adolph Gottlieb."
"The rundown-looking, spray-painted exterior convinced most passersby that the building, landmarked in 2005, was vacant, but Maisel kept the interior and the structure in good condition, if not quite up to blue-chip real-estate standards: The air-conditioning system he installed was a building-wide plastic tubing system used to ventilate greenhouses."
"After Maisel sold the building to Aby Rosen's RFR for $55 million in 2015, downsizing to a (still-quite-large) Brooklyn carriage house, Rosen also struggled to find a good use for the space. The first floor became retail, hosting several pop-ups and other stores; it's currently occupied by Supreme. But the rest of the building remained more or less vacant."
The Germania Bank, a Gilded Age building on the corner of Bowery and Spring, remained largely vacant for decades after the bank relocated in the mid-1960s. Photographer Jay Maisel purchased it for $102,000 and transformed it into a 72-room, 35,000-square-foot residence, art studio, and storage facility that hosted renowned artists. The building's sprawling interior proved difficult to fully utilize, featuring hidden rooms and unconventional systems like greenhouse ventilation tubing. After Maisel sold the landmarked structure to Aby Rosen's RFR for $55 million in 2015, it remained mostly empty despite retail occupancy on the first floor. Industrious, a co-working company, recently leased the building and opened private offices on upper floors, with plans to introduce flexible meeting spaces called "parlors" available for hourly rental.
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