389 East 89th Street #4C

The tower on the corner of First Avenue and East 89th Street went up in 2002 as Post Toscana, a rental high-rise by Ismael Leyva, the architect behind the residences at the Time Warner Center, developed by Veronica Hackett’s Clarett Group with Atlanta’s Post Properties. In 2014 Ben Shaoul’s Magnum Real Estate bought it, together with a sister Post rental downtown, for a combined $270 million. It was a conversion bet made while the Second Avenue subway was still a promise; the Q’s 86th Street station opened on the first day of 2017, the same year the building’s first condo closings landed, and values along the new corridor jumped by roughly a third.

The conversion, relaunched in 2016 as 389 E 89, turned 199 rentals into 156 one- to three-bedroom condos with interiors by Paris Forino, the Australian designer whose studio went on to 1 Park Row and 250 East 21st Street: custom Italian kitchens, Dolomite marble baths, grey-oak vanities of her own design. The building picked up a stranger footnote in 2018, when two sponsor units reportedly went into contract in Bitcoin, a New York residential first; the following year the retail condo at its base traded for $15.3 million, paid the same way.

The neighborhood wears its history quietly. Jacob Ruppert’s Knickerbocker brewery ran four fortress-like blocks just north of here until 1965; Elaine’s poured for writers a block and a half away until 2011; Carl Schurz Park and the East River promenade are a short walk east.

Residence 4C is one of four C-line homes, 867 square feet under ceilings of ten and a half feet. A true entry foyer with a full guest bath and storage leads into a 22-foot living and dining room, where oversized south-facing windows hold the treetops and wide-plank white oak runs underfoot. The open kitchen carries custom Italian cabinetry, marble counters and backsplash, and a fully integrated suite of Miele appliances.

The bedroom sits off the living room with a walk-in closet and a marble bath; a washer-dryer stack is tucked by the closets. The building keeps a full-time doorman and concierge, a gym, a residents’ lounge and playroom, a landscaped third-floor terrace with grills, and a roof terrace with a 360-degree view. Asking $1,395,000, the unit’s first time back on the market since its 2017 sponsor sale.

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