Tenant Actually Wants To Keep 190 Bowery Graffiti-Covered

After real estate mogul Aby Rosen bought the legendary former bank building at the corner of Bowery and Spring Street for $55 million, everyone figured it was doomed would inevitably get gentrified. Occupied for decades by photographer Jay Maisel, who paid a mere $102,000 in 1966, the building's massive size seemed ripe for condos. But Rosen's RFR Realty started marketing it as commercial and retail space, geared at trendy companies and stores. Lo and behold, RFR has found a tenant, who wants to lease 29,750 square feet as office space—that's the entirety of floors two through six. (That only leaves the ground floor up for grabs.) And, oddly enough, the as-yet-nameless consortium of companies, which dabble in fields from image licensing to fashion, that has signed up to take the space really wants to keep the graffiti that has characterized the ground floor's facade for as long as anyone can remember. This, despite the fact that its chief executive is actually named Matthew Moneypenny. Guess that spring cleaning was for naught.

Moneypenny told the Journal that "companies like ours tend to thrive in places that have a soul and a history," and that the building, like the collective of companies he is spearheading, "are literally at the intersection of chic and gritty." Rosen called is "serendipity" that creative types will one again inhabit Maisel's once-mysterious lair.

A release from RFR said agencies in the group include Trunk Archive, CLM, Management Artists, Tim Howard Management, Bernstein & Andriulli, MAP Ltd., and Streeters.

Moneypenny's crew plans to "bring the space up to code but leave the rest—including the manually operated, copper-gilded cage elevator—largely the same."

That's sort of a relief, no? The best of a bad situation? As good as we're going to get?
· Bowery Icon Gets Appreciative Tenant [WSJ]
· 190 Bowery's 'Prime Retail Corner' Is Officially For Lease [Curbed]
· An Illicit Wander Inside The Bowery's Mysterious Mansion [Curbed]
· Legendary Graffitied Bowery Mansion Gets Cleaned Up [Curbed]
· Pre-Conversion, Mysterious Bowery Mansion Seeks Retailers [Curbed]
· Inside the Mysterious 190 Bowery Before Its Condo Conversion [Curbed]
· Mysterious Bowery Home Sells, Will Probably Become Condos [Curbed]
· All 190 Bowery coverage [Curbed]