Asking on Museum Tower condo chopped by $5M

From left: interior, exterior of Museum Tower at 15 West 53rd Street
From left: interior, exterior of Museum Tower at 15 West 53rd Street

Originally listed for nearly $15 million, a condominium on the 48th floor of a glassy “white-glove” Midtown tower is now priced at a cool $9.5 million and is also being offered as a rental, according to StreetEasy.

The 3,452-square-foot home in Museum Tower, at 15 West 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues, was listed with Nanako Kitagawa of Furumoto Realty for $14.9 million last November. But the asking price was chopped 27 percent at the end of November, to $10.9 million, and another 13 percent at the beginning of February this year, according to StreetEasy.

Now, the 3-bedroom, 3.5-bath unit is asking a mere $9.5, as of Friday.

The identity of the current seller is not clear.

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The average price of recorded sales in the building over the last 180 days was close to $2.4 million, and even on the upper floors, three-bedrooms usually sell between $4.7 and $5.5 million, according to StreetEasy. But artist-types may be wooed by the building’s Rooftop Terrace overlooking MoMa’s sculpture garden and a Picasso in the museum’s gallery, as well as the unit’s floor-to-ceiling windows that offer views of Central Park and the New York City skyline.

Furumoto is also marketing the condo as a rental for $30,000, StreetEasy shows. A representative of Furumoto was not immediately available for comment.

Museum Tower, built in 1982 with an expansion of the MoMa, was designed by Cesar Pelli, who is best known in New York City for his work in the World Financial Center and Carnegie Tower. The building was once home to fraudster Marc Dreier, whose apartment was auctioned off after he was caught in a $67 million Ponzi scheme involving phony real estate investments in 2009.