Bruce Eichner’s Continuum Company is moving full steam ahead with plans for an 18-story condominium tower at 26-40 East 35th Street in Murray Hill. The 170,000 square foot project will bring 137 new condos, a community space, and parking to a mid-block site between Park and Madison Avenue, just a block south of the Morgan Library & Museum and in the shadow of the Empire State Building.
The development replaces several historically significant buildings, including the former home of the Community Church of New York, one of the city’s oldest congregations, dating back to 1825. The body has long served as a hub for civil rights and progressive causes and its legacy includes hosting folk singer Pete Seeger (“This Land is Was Made for You and Me”), Nelson Mandela, and a legendary debate between Malcolm X and Bayard Rustin. After 9/11, the church became a sanctuary for grieving New Yorkers and has been active in social justice efforts both locally and abroad.
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The pre-existing townhouses and church prior to demolition
Cleared site (June 2025)
According to the Murray Hill Neighborhood Association, the site has been a subject of conversation in the community since the early 1980s when the church attempted to build a 70-story building on space and was defeated by preservationists who succeeded in obtaining a downzoning of the block.
In a contentious 2022 vote, the 80-person congregation voted to sell the church and the four adjacent brownstones to the Continuum Company for close to $66 million. The State Attorney General cleared the sale of the not-for-profit to a profit seeking developer back in 2022, and the deal closed in 2024.
In a contentious 2022 vote, the 80-person congregation voted to sell the church and the four adjacent brownstones to the Continuum Company for close to $66 million. The State Attorney General cleared the sale of the not-for-profit to a profit seeking developer back in 2022, and the deal closed in 2024.
While Continuum fully assembled the site in 2021, progress was delayed by a soft Midtown condo market and tragic on-site accident last year in which a construction worker lost his life. Since the completion of demolition work, the project appears to be in full swing, preparing the foundation to support a hefty tower to rise above.
SLCE Architects is listed as the architect of record on permits, though it is unconfirmed if they are the design architects as well. The new building will be modest by Midtown Manhattan standards, just 191 feet tall. There will be a rear yard and 16 enclosed parking spaces. The new building will have an approximately 2,000 square foot community facility that may or may not be related to the pre-existing congregation.
Released renderings and drawings show the building will have an understated and slightly monotonous presence. Strong vertical piers, seemingly clad in limestone and burgundy-colored metal accents pay homage to the Empire State Building nearby. The two handsome townhouses directly west of the project site will thankfully remain, and a portion of the new tower will cantilever over the eastern-most row house. The building will be rather bulky due to height limits but provide several shallow setbacks as it rises giving some residents terrace opportunities.
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Views from the new mid-rise will be limited as a 12-story rental 35 East 35th Street sits directly across the street and several taller buildings lie to the south as well. Instead of views, the prize for residents will be living on a rather sedate, tree-lined block of Midtown within a few moments of Penn Station, Grand Central, and Bryant Park. Furthermore, Yeshiva University's Midtown campus, NYU Downtown Hospital, the United Nations and all its auxiliary offices, and millions of square feet of Midtown South and Garment District are in walking distance.
Encompassing the full block directly west of the project is the imposing marble structure once home to B. Altman & Co. Department Store. When it opened in 1906 it helped pull upper-class retail to this stretch of Fith and Madison Avenue. The store went bankrupt in 1989 and the building has become an academic powerhouse of sorts, with CUNY's Graduate School and University Center, the NYPL's Science, Industry and Business Library, and Oxford University Press as tenants in the building.
As development sites have become exceedingly rare in Manhattan, developers have found opportunities tearing down underbuilt pre-war structures. One block north of Eichner's site, at 218 Madison Avenue, RYBAK Development has razed a former Civil War-era mansion that once served as the residence of Archbishop John Hughes, the city’s first archbishop. Blogger Dayton in Manhattan noted that the mansion had become “a much-abused structure that successfully hides the amazing history that played out inside.”
According to blogger Dayton in Manhattan, "For much of the 20th century a variety of small business, offices and stores came and went." Prior to its demolition, the mansion of the Archbishop of New York was unrecognizable; "A much abused structure that successfully hides the amazing history that played out inside." The future 10-story residential building will accommodate 26 residences and is being designed by IMC Architecture. The project sides up to the co-op John Murray House and will overlook The Morgan Library & Museum, once home of John Pierpont Morgan Sr. the American financier and investment banker who dominated corporate finance on Wall Street throughout the Gilded Age
Further east, Lalezarian Properties is preparing to break ground on a new 200-unit, 600-foot-tall residential tower at 567 Third Avenue, between East 37th and 38th Streets. If completed as planned, it would become one of the tallest residential buildings in Murray Hill, only behind 425 Fifth Avenue. Approved permits, filed by SLCE Architects, call for no more than five units per floor, along with cellar-level amenities and ground-floor retail. Site preparation is currently underway.
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