LOWER EAST SIDE — The longtime owner of a graffiti-covered building on the corner of Spring Street and Bowery has turned in a massive profit, records show.
Photographer Jay Maisel, who acquired the former Germania Bank for $102,000 in 1966, recently sold the building for $55 million, according to city records and the New York Daily News, which first reported on the building’s price.
Maisel and his family lived there for decades until he decided to sell it to developer RFR Holding LLC, according to reports.
“The building is in terrible shape. There’s no heat, Jay lives in just a small area of the building, another winter is coming, and it was time,” RFR co-founder and principal Aby Rosen told The New York Times last fall.
At the time, Rosen also said the space could be converted into offices, an art gallery or a retail space at the base with condominiums on top.
The developer plans to do restoration work on the landmarked building to “bring the building back to life,” said an RFR employee, who declined to give his name. Many of the building’s original features are still intact, he said, but little work has been done over the years.
“It has a stature to it that still remains, it just has to be freshened up,” he said.
Maisel did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
According to the developer’s website, the six-story limestone building has a basement and roof terrace, with floors measuring about 6,260 square feet each. The ground and second floors have 18-foot ceilings that would be ideal for retail use, the site said.
