Drilling into property records with a pick, mouse, and magnifier

Welcome back to Part 2 of the Crown or Cavity? series, as we drill down into the records on properties along East Broadway and Henry Street.

If you’re just joining us, meet Shayna Tover, our client who is considering making an offer on a studio overlooking Seward Park. (Check out Part 1 of Crown or Cavity? for the complete backstory.)

Shayna’s all in for a number of reasons, but she raised a legitimate red flag: The beautiful, unobstructed view that 171 Henry Street #3B has is only made possible because the building it overlooks — a dental office, hence the mouthy puns — is currently one story.

Could somebody build on top of it?

Let’s brush up on some of the facts.

Step 1: Check out ZoLa

First, I visited ZoLa to figure out what we were actually looking at. ZoLa is New York City Planning’s online zoning and land-use map. If you want to understand what can potentially be built on a property in New York City, this is a logical place to start.

I searched 183 East Broadway, the address of the one-story dental office below Shayna’s prospective apartment balcony.

ZoLa identified the property as Manhattan Block 284, Lot 7504, a 5,871-square-foot lot in an R7-2 zoning district with a C1-5 commercial overlay.

Those zoning designations help determine how much can be built, often expressed as Floor Area Ratio (FAR). Put simply, FAR tells us how much floor area zoning allows relative to the size of the lot — an important consideration if we’re trying to determine whether more could someday be built here.

But before getting into the numbers, ZoLa revealed something more important: the lot actually runs all the way from East Broadway through to Henry Street.

That meant we weren't necessarily looking at a little one-story building on an independent parcel with a bunch of unused space above it. Instead, it appeared to be part of a larger property extending to Henry Street.

But how?

Step 2: Check out the Department of Finance

Next, I went to the Department of Finance to understand how the dental office relates to the condominium. After all, it looks like it’s connected to the condo, but is it for sure?

I used the city's Property Information Portal to look for any linkages. In doing this, I learned that the same condominium property includes the addresses:

• 183 East Broadway
• 183A East Broadway (the dental office, aka Kids Dental)
• 171 Henry Street
• 171A Henry Street

The city identifies the property as the 171 Henry Street Condominium.

So Kids Dental and Shayna's prospective apartment aren't sitting on two completely unrelated properties: they are part of the same condominium property.

Phew! Hooray! No cavities! Right?

Urgh, no. We still have to conduct X-rays. Why?

At this point, we also learned that while the condominium’s current billing lot is Lot 7504, the property traces back to Base Lot 19.

That old lot number turned out to be important. Because when we started digging into Lot 19, we discovered that this property has quite a history.

So we have to keep drilling down, which we’ll do in Part 3 of the Crown or Cavity? series. (If you missed Part 1, you can check it out here.)