Weill Cornell Medicine Buys Sotheby's Former HQ For $510M

Weill Cornell Medicine bought Sotheby’s former headquarters for $510M, committing to expanding its Upper East Side campus.

Sotheby’s has occupied 1334 York Ave. since 1980 and has hosted scores of exhibits and auctions in the building.

The auction house will continue to lease space in the building as part of the deal, though it also plans to relocate to the Breuer Building at 945 Madison Ave., according to Bloomberg.

Sotheby's bought that property, the former site of the Whitney Museum of American Art, for $100M in 2023.

“We will use the proceeds to further reduce debt and invest even more fully in our core business, including renovating our leased office space at York,” Sotheby’s said in the statement to Bloomberg.

Sotheby’s refinanced the debt tied to the 506K SF property in 2020 with a $484M, five-year loan.

Weill Cornell Medicine’s campus sits just one block south of the property. The school already occupies 200K SF of the 10-story building, having signed a 30-year triple-net lease there in 2023. It has plans to develop a research facility at the property despite federal funding cuts, Artnews reported in July.

“The expanded footprint will enable the institution to consider multiple uses, including expanding clinical services to connect more New Yorkers to its network of exceptional physicians,” a spokesperson for the school told Bloomberg in a statement.

JLL’s David Giancola, Geoff Goldstein and Steve Klein represented Weill Cornell Medicine, while Doug Middleton, Mary Ann Tighe and Lauren Crowley Corrinet of CBRE represented Sotheby’s, according to Bloomberg.

A representative for the school told Bloomberg that it bought the asset for “materially the same net cost as leasing.”