108 Leonard: Tribeca's Clock Tower Condominium

108 Leonard is the former home office of the New York Life Insurance Company, a white marble palazzo completed in 1898 and now converted into condominium residences.

Buying there means owning inside a designated New York City landmark, exterior and interior alike, and that status shapes ownership as much as the address does. Here is what buying there involves.

1. What the Building Is

108 Leonard fills an entire trapezoidal block in Tribeca, bounded by Broadway, Leonard Street, Lafayette Street and Catherine Lane. It was built between 1894 and 1898 as the home office of the New York Life Insurance Company, a freestanding skyscraper of its day in white Tuckahoe marble and the neo-Italian Renaissance style.

The design came in two campaigns. Stephen Decatur Hatch drew the original eastern section and died after construction began, so McKim, Mead & White completed it and added the Broadway pavilion. That pavilion is crowned by a clock tower whose four faces each measure 12 feet, and the building is also known as the Clock Tower Building.

Today the building is a condominium, entered through a landmarked lobby on Leonard Street, with commercial space, including an art gallery, on the lower floors. The city's tax roll lists 169 residential condominium units, and the clock tower itself contains a penthouse residence.

The location is on Google Maps.

2. From Insurance Headquarters to Condominium

New York Life left 346 Broadway for a new Cass Gilbert headquarters on Madison Square, completed in 1928, and the building was later acquired by the City of New York. From 1967 it housed courts and government agencies, and in 1987 the Landmarks Preservation Commission designated both its exterior and key interiors as city landmarks.

In 2013 the city sold the building to The Peebles Corporation and Elad Group for conversion to housing. The work, managed by Elad Group, kept the historic envelope and restored the marble facade with Howard L. Zimmerman Architects, while Jeffrey Beers International designed the interiors and penthouse floors rose above the old roofline.

Sales opened in March 2018 and residents began moving in during 2019. The conversion also went through a multi-year legal dispute over the historic clock and its mechanism, a reminder that landmark questions here are practical, not theoretical, and that they can shape timelines well after a building opens.

Ask which building systems were replaced in the conversion and which were retained from the original structure.

3. Amenities and the Landmark Rules Owners Live With

The conversion added more than 20,000 square feet of resident amenities, including a 75-foot indoor pool with a steam room, a fitness centre, a wine cellar with a private dining room, a children's playroom, roof gardens and on-site parking. All of it sits inside a nineteenth-century structure, which is both the draw and the constraint.

The interior designation covers the Leonard Street entrance lobby, the former banking hall, the clocktower gallery and its machinery room, among other spaces. The banking hall at the Lafayette Street end is now home to the Jack Shainman Gallery, entered at 46 Lafayette Street, which keeps a public use inside the landmark.

For owners, the practical point is renovation. The Landmarks Preservation Commission requires its own permit for interior work that needs a Buildings Department permit or that affects the exterior, so build landmark review into any renovation timeline, alongside the condominium's own alteration rules and insurance requirements.

Before buying with renovation in mind, have an architect confirm which approvals the planned work would need.

4. Buying Here as an Overseas Purchaser

Because 108 Leonard is a condominium, there is no co-op board approval, and foreign buyers can purchase without the financial disclosure a co-op board would demand. Financing for foreign nationals is available from some lenders, but expect larger deposits and fuller documentation than a US borrower would face, so start early.

At closing the buyer pays New York's mansion tax on residential purchases of $1 million or more, charged on the whole price at graduated rates from 1% between $1 million and $2 million up to 3.9% at $25 million and above. On a later sale, a foreign owner is subject to FIRPTA withholding of 15% of the gross price unless an IRS withholding certificate reduces it.

Estate tax is the larger long-term question. A non-resident who is not a US citizen has only a $60,000 US estate tax exemption on US-situs assets, so decide the ownership structure with tax counsel before signing a contract, because it is harder and costlier to change once title is recorded. Whether to hold personally or through an entity is the first decision, not the last.

Settle structure and financing first, then make the offer.

Recorded Sales: What the Public Record Shows

NYC's Department of Finance records every sale with its address and price. Between January 2023 and September 2026 it recorded 61 sales of apartments at 108 Leonard, at a median price of $4.08 million. Half of them closed between $3.38 million and $4.66 million; the highest was $18.2 million.

A median across a whole building mixes small and large apartments, low floors and high ones, so it describes the building rather than any one residence. Use it to see how often apartments here change hands and where the building's prices sit. Price a specific apartment from recorded sales on the same line and floor range, which can be pulled from the deed records before you make an offer.

These are recorded deed prices, not asking prices, and none of them is a Reinvent NY transaction. A sale appears in the record weeks after closing, and a deed price can include a parking space or storage unit bought at the same time.

Final Thoughts: Living Inside a Landmark

108 Leonard offers something new construction cannot: a full-block McKim, Mead & White landmark with modern amenities built into it. The trade-off is that the building's history governs what owners can change, from windows to the scope of a renovation, and that cost is paid in time as much as in money.

Read the offering plan, the latest financial statements and the board minutes, and ask how costs are shared with the commercial units in the building. Those documents, not the facade, determine what it costs to hold an apartment in a structure more than a century old, and how the building funds its upkeep.

Price a specific apartment from recorded sales on the same line and floor range rather than from a building-wide average, because layouts and exposures vary widely within one building. Then decide whether landmark ownership suits how long you intend to hold, and how much freedom to renovate you need.

Request the offering plan and recent financials before you schedule a viewing.

Figures here describe the building, not any one apartment. Asking prices, monthly carrying costs, tax abatement status and sublet rules are established unit by unit from the offering plan, the most recent financial statement and the managing agent. Real estate services are provided through R New York.

Reinvent NY provides business consulting, operational support, and coordination services. Legal advice and immigration filings are handled by independent licensed attorneys. Real estate services are provided through licensed professionals and applicable brokerage relationships. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal or investment advice.

More buildings worth knowing: 100 Eleventh Avenue, 111 West 57th Street, 130 William. The full set is indexed under New York building profiles.