Sotheby’s Sells Longtime Home to Weill Cornell for $510M

Sotheby’s auction house has sold 1334 York Avenue, its home since 1980, to Weill Cornell medical school for $510 million.

David Giancola, Geoff Goldstein, Steve Klein, David Carlos and Joe Messina at JLL represented Weill Cornell, while Doug Middleton, Lauren Crowley Corrinet and Mary Ann Tighe with CBRE represented Sotheby’s.

Bloomberg was first to report the sale, noting that Sotheby’s refinanced the building in 2020 with a five-year loan of around $484 million, and that Weill Cornell has been leasing space at 1334 York Avenue since 2023.

The building at the corner of York Avenue and East 71st Street will become an extension of Weill Cornell Medicine’s main campus, which is one block south.

A Weill Cornell spokesperson told Bloomberg via email that, “the extended footprint will enable the institution to consider multiple uses, including expanding clinical services to connect more New Yorkers to its network of exceptional physicians.”

Sotheby’s is relocating to the Breuer Building at 945 Madison Avenue, which it purchased from the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2023 for about $100 million, according to The New York Times. Since its 1966 completion, the building in Lenox Hill on the southeast corner of Madison Avenue and East 75th Street — named for Marcel Breuer, the architect that gave it its Brutalist design — has served as the home of the Whitney, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Frick Collection.  

The Breuer Building has undergone a renovation for the past two years,  led by architects Herzog & de Meuron, which also designed the Tate Modern in London, in partnership with PBDW Architects. Sotheby’s will debut its new home, which includes gallery and exhibition space in addition to an auction salesroom, on Nov. 8 with a “blockbuster exhibition of modern and contemporary art,” according to ARTnews. The auction house will retain some presence at its old home, as Bloomberg reports that Sotheby’s will lease space at 1334 York Avenue as part of the deal.

The Breuer Building was given individual and interior  landmark status by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) in May of this year, and Sotheby’s renovation received LPC approval.   

“Those who knew it in earlier incarnations will be moved by how we’ve reimagined 945 Madison Avenue, preserving the spirit of nearly 60 years of acclaimed programming,” Lisa Dennison, Sotheby’s executive vice president and Americas chairman, said in a statement, according to ARTnews. “Breuer’s design, with its remarkable ability to embrace many styles and eras of art, is especially meaningful for an auction house.”

Currently in the midst of a global expansion, Sotheby’s opened flagship showrooms in Hong Kong and Paris in 2024. The auction house also opened Gantry Point, a 240,000-square-foot converted office building it has used as an art handling and storage facility, at 25-11 49th Avenue in Long Island City, Queens, in 2023, after purchasing the property for $82 million in 2022. 

Representatives from Weill Cornell and Sotheby’s did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 

Larry Getlen can be reached at lgetlen@commercialobserver.com.