Sotheby’s Seals $100M Deal for the Breuer Building for New Headquarters

Sotheby’s has officially closed the deal on the Upper East Side’s landmarked Breuer Building.

The auction house bought the museum building at 945 Madison Avenue from the Whitney Museum in June 2023 for $100 million, as Commercial Observer previously reported.

The Whitney occupied the building until 2015, when it moved to the Meatpacking District’s 99 Gansevoort Street, CO reported. The property was then leased to the Frick Collection and the Metropolitan Museum of Art for exhibition space to house their modern and contemporary art collections, according to broker CBRE (CBRE).

Now, Sotheby’s will relocate its headquarters from its current home at 1334 York Avenue to the 50,560-square-foot Breuer Building, where it will store its New York galleries, exhibitions and auction rooms, CBRE said.

“The sale of a museum building is a rare occurrence,” CBRE’s Mary Ann Tighe, who brokered the deal for Sotheby’s, said in a statement. “Sotheby’s will bring new vitality to the Upper East Side and its thriving art community. We are proud to have been part of this historic transaction.”

Tighe represented Sotheby’s along with CBRE’s Lauren Crowley Corrinet, Doug Middleton and Elliot Bok. There were no brokers for the seller.

Spokespeople for Sotheby’s and the Whitney did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The five-story Breuer Building on the corner of Madison Avenue and East 75th Street was completed in 1966 by designer and Bauhaus-trained architect Marcel Breuer. Renovations are set to be finished at the property by fall of 2025, according to CBRE.

This isn’t Sotheby’s first major deal in New York City. In February 2022, the auction house bought the 240,000-square-foot 25-11 49th Avenue in Long Island City, Queens, for its warehouse operations, The Real Deal reported at the time.

Isabelle Durso can be reached at idurso@commercialobserver.com.