New Condos and Old Townhouses Lead the Pack in February Sales

Mickey Drexler, the veteran retail executive who ran J. Crew and the Gap for many years, finally sold his TriBeCa townhouse, a former coffee-roasting plant built in the 1890s that he transformed into a fashionable single-family home.

The sale price was $23.5 million, which was a sizable discount from the nearly $30 million he had sought when the house, at 464 Greenwich Street, first hit the market almost seven years ago. The transaction was among the biggest closings in New York City in February.

The largest townhouse sale was another conversion. A former firehouse at 113 East 90th Street, near Park Avenue, closed at $25.5 million. The 1877 brick building with limestone embellishments, 25 feet wide and three stories high, has four bedrooms, four full bathrooms and two powder rooms. Plus, there’s a two-story carriage house on the property. The buyer was listed as 113 E 90TH L.L.C.

And the month’s priciest closing, at $33.8 million, was a three-bedroom, three-and-a-half-bathroom apartment on the 37th floor of 220 Central Park South. The seller, Ofer Yardeni, who runs the real estate company Stonehenge NYC, made a tidy profit, having purchased the unit in 2019 for $22.2 million.The buyer’s identity was shielded by the limited liability company JWZ Nature.

Other notable sales during the month were in the West Village. Ruth and Tom Chapman, the founders of the London-based luxury fashion retailer MatchesFashion.com, sold their historic townhouse. Dirk and Susan Standen, also in the fashion industry, and Daniel Abrams, a TV host and media entrepreneur, sold their apartments.

And on the far, far, far east side — as in Montauk, N.Y. — it’s worth mentioning that a nearly 800-square-foot oceanfront, high-end trailer, with two bedrooms and two bathrooms, at the Montauk Shores Condominium, went under contract to an unknown buyer for $3.75 million. (And you thought Manhattan real estate was expensive!) Nancy Raia, a Douglas Elliman spokeswoman specializing in Long Island, said the off-market sale was a record at the upscale trailer community.

The TriBeCa townhouse that sold for $23.5 million had been owned by Mr. Drexler for almost 15 years. He bought the property in 2008 for $5.5 million, then hired the French architect and interior designer Thierry Despont for extensive renovations that lasted several years.

The new owner used the limited liability company TerryJohnston.The Corcoran Group, which represented both sides in the transaction, would not comment on whether this was the actual name of the buyer or a made-up L.L.C. name.

The five-story, 24-foot-wide structure at 464 Greenwich Street, near Watts Street, was built in 1892, and first occupied by the coffee-roasting firm Samuel Crooks and Company, whose operations were also spread across three adjacent buildings (Nos. 460, 462 and 466). Over the years, other coffee companies set up shop at No. 464, including the Turkish & Arabian Coffee Company, whose signage still remains on the building. In fact, if you didn’t know better, you might mistake the ground level for a cafe.

While the brick facade of the Renaissance Revival-style building remains largely intact, the interior was fully modernized, with a contemporary industrial aesthetic. The sprawling, 9,000-square-foot home has five bedrooms, six full bathrooms and two half-baths. The top-floor great room alone is larger than many city apartments, measuring 1,500 square feet, with 12-foot-high ceilings.

In the basement is a home gym with a sauna, along with staff quarters and a laundry. And there’s a rooftop terrace with scenic views of the Hudson River.

To get to all these spaces is (thankfully) a commercial-size elevator.

Mr. Drexler has worked with several retail companies, including Ann Taylor, the Gap and J. Crew. He is currently the chief executive of Alex Mill, an apparel company started by his son, Alex Drexler.

The Chapman townhouse, at 252 West 12th Street, between Greenwich Avenue and West Fourth Street in the West Village, sold for $23.1 million, also to an anonymous buyer. It had been on the market for $25 million. The couple paid $19 million for it in 2019.

The brick, Italianate-style house, with a classic front stoop, stands three stories high and 20 feet wide and contains five bedrooms and four and a half bathrooms. Built in 1857, it received landmark status in 1969.

The primary bedroom suite encompasses the third floor and includes a walk-in closet, wood-burning fireplace, one of two in the home, and a marble bathroom.

The new owner, identified only as Scalawag L.L.C., will also get a lot of outdoor space, including a rear garden and rooftop terrace.

The Chapmans founded MatchesFashion, a high-end fashion retailer, as a single brick-and-mortar store in London in 1987, and today it operates largely online. The business was acquired by the private equity firm Apax Partners in 2017.

The other West Village closings include a five-bedroom, three-bathroom co-op sold by the Standens at 2 Horatio Street, a 17-story co-op building built in the early 1930s and overlooking Jackson Square Park. It was purchased for $5.25 million by Christine Mattsson of Austin, Texas, going into contract last fall but only recently filed in public records.

Mr. Standen, a veteran fashion journalist, was the editor of the now-defunct Style.com and founding editor of Condé Nast’s creative agency 23 Stories; he is now dean of the Savannah College of Art and Design. Ms. Standen is a fashion designer who runs Standen New York, which sells home décor.

Mr. Abrams got $8.4 million for a triplex at 148-150 Waverly Place, between Bank and Morton Streets. The 3,340-square-foot home is on the first three floors of two adjacent Greek Revival-style townhouses.

The buyer made the purchase using the limited liability company Some.

Mr. Abrams, a prolific author, has had a long career in broadcasting that includes working as a reporter for Court TV, where he covered the O.J. Simpson murder trial, and for NBC News and for ABC News, where he had served as an anchor of “Nightline” and as a legal analyst. He currently is a host of a nightly show on NewsNation and “On Patrol: Live” on Reelz.