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This 12-story Italian Renaissance-palazzo-style apartment building was built in 1915 and converted to a cooperative in 1980 with 58 apartments. The building features a handsome lobby and is located near Central Park, public transportation, good schools, and sidewalk cafés.
Built in 1914 and converted to a co-op in 1980, 161 West 86th Street is an elegant 12 story Italian Renaissance palazzo style building with 58 apartments. The building sits on a pleasant block between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues, adjacent to the Romanesque Revival West Park Presbyterian Church designed by Henry F. Kilburn in 1890. Located about 1.5 blocks from Central Park with convenient access to subway stations at both Central Park West and Broadway, the building offers excellent crosstown bus service and proximity to Columbus Avenue's popular sidewalk cafés.
The building is notable for its grand scale apartments, with the majority being 8 and 10 room homes spanning over 3,000 square feet. These expansive residences feature impressive prewar details including herringbone floors, soaring 9.5 to 11 foot ceilings, crown and picture frame moldings, original mahogany doors with period hardware, and decorative fireplaces. Many of the larger apartments include staff rooms or maids quarters, semi private elevator landings, and split layouts that provide excellent privacy. The building also contains a small number of one bedroom apartments, some of which were created by subdividing larger units. South facing apartments enjoy tree lined street views and abundant natural light.
161 West 86th Street operates in conjunction with 151 West 86th Street as a single cooperative with two entrances, both staffed with doormen. The building provides doorman service from 7am to 1am, a live-in superintendent, and maintains solid financials. Amenities include private storage bins assigned to each apartment, bicycle storage, and a landscaped roof garden with open city views. The building is pet friendly with board approval, permits up to 65% financing, and charges a flip tax of 15% of capital gains paid by the buyer.
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In November 2025, Manhattan's Community Board 7 rejected an application to demolish the landmarked West Park Presbyterian Church on West 86th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. The church signed a contract to sell the 135-year-old building to developer Alchemy Properties in 2022 with plans to demolish the building and replace it with a 19-story apartment building with worship space. If the planned building went up, it would block the lot-line windows at 161 West 86th Street.
For some co-ops, instead of price per square foot, we use an estimate of the number of rooms for each sold apartment to chart price changes over time. This is because many co-op listings do not include square footage information, and this makes it challenging to calculate accurate square-foot averages.
By displaying the price per estimated room count, we are able to provide a more reliable and consistent metric for comparing sales in the building. While we hope that this gives you a clearer sense of price trends in the building, all data should be independently verified. All data provided are only estimates and should not be used to make any purchase or sale decision.
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