The gorgeous Gramercy Park building that became the centerpiece, and the downfall, of Anna Delvey’s elaborate scam has finally found someone willing to take it off the market — and this time the deal might actually close.
The eye-catching 281 Park Avenue South, the 42,500-square-foot Beaux-Arts landmark once known as the Church Missions House, has entered contract, The Post has learned. However, its final sale price and the identity of its new owner are not yet known — and won’t be until the deal closes at a future date.
What’s for certain: the forthcoming owner certainly isn’t Delvey herself.
The “fake heiress,” who still wears an ankle monitor as she makes the rounds in Manhattan and Westchester, tried to use forged documents to pry a $22 million loan out of City National Bank back in 2016, all so she could lease the space for her so-called Anna Delvey Foundation — which she marketed as a private social club and arts center.
Delvey told bankers she had a $60 million trust fund waiting in Switzerland. She did not. The bank wanted proof of those assets and never got it. The situation led Delvey’s scam to unravel.
Delvey, whose real name is Anna Sorokin, was born outside of Moscow, but emigrated to Germany as a teenager. She was found guilty in 2019 on eight fraud- and theft-related counts, including grand larceny, attempted grand larceny and theft of services. She received a prison sentence of four to 12 years and was ordered to pay $24,000 in fines as well as nearly $200,000 in restitution.
Although sentenced in 2019, Delvey was released from prison in February 2021 after serving less than two years, earning early release for good behavior.
Built in 1894 by Cornelius Vanderbilt and J.P. Morgan, the six-story structure more recently was home to the Swedish photography museum Fotografiska, which bailed less than halfway through its 15-year lease in 2024.
The space also housed the acclaimed restaurant Veronika and hosted the private after-hours bar Chapel Bar, known for its 35-foot vaulted ceilings dressed with hydrangeas preserved by design firm Roman and Williams.
Veronika has since closed, as part of Fotografiska not renewing its lease, with the same applying to Chapel Bar, which debuted in late 2021 to great fanfare in the wake of COVID-19 as a way for more creating more meaningful connections in a time of loneliness.
Ryan Serhant of the eponymous Serhant brokerage, who holds the listing, declined to comment on the sale price or the identity of the buyer. The building had made an appearance in season 2 of Serhant’s Netflix reality show “Owning Manhattan.” It appears the on-screen role helped usher the building towards this contract.
The building had been asking a jaw-dropping $135 million when it first hit the market in 2022, a number that made even seasoned brokers wince. By the time Fotografiska announced its exit, owner Aby Rosen’s firm RFR was left holding an empty trophy property in a commercial real estate market that had gone cold.
The price got chopped to $100 million in an October 2024 re-listing, then the building went off market again before resurfacing for a third attempt in November 2025. Most recently, according to building insiders, the property had been shopped with a guide price of $120 million.
By the time the listing relaunched for a third try this spring, RFR appeared to be taking a more flexible approach.
Alexandra Marolda, director of the capital markets group and investment sales at Avison Young, which has been marketing the property, said RFR remains attached to the building despite the long search for a buyer.
“RFR is pivoting and refocusing on a different business plan, but they absolutely love this building,” Marolda told the Commercial Observer. “The building holds value because of how special it is, so I wouldn’t say that RFR is just looking to get rid of it. This is a special property to them.”
Marolda described the team’s strategy as casting a wide net.
“We’ve been targeting a mix of end users and investors that can understand the value of the building and what’s gone into it so far,” she said. She also gave high marks to the restaurant space left behind by chef Stephen Starr’s Veronika, which closed in 2024 but still has its brass chandeliers and full kitchen intact.
“At the time, it was rated one of the most beautiful restaurants in New York City,” Marolda said. “The way they built out that space was phenomenal.”
The building has picked up a strange kind of celebrity status of its own over the years, well beyond the Delvey saga that put it on the map.
It served as a filming location for Netflix’s “Inventing Anna,” the series dramatizing Delvey’s rise and fall, and the Veronika space turned up in an episode of “And Just Like That.”