After a betting scandal that touched the world of professional sports and organized crime was uncovered this week, a 186-year-old Greenwich Village townhouse suddenly shot up the rankings of New York's vintage homes with great stories.
“This house has a good house,” Tom Miller, an author who has chronicled the history of thousands of buildings in Manhattan, said of the townhouse at 80 Washington Place. “There's Kylie Jenner and Sousa. And now we have a mafia guy?”
That guy is Thomas “Juice” Gelardo, a suspected associate of the Bonanno and Genovese crime families who was arrested Thursday along with more than 30 other people. Prosecutors allege the house was used to host illegal poker games controlled by the Gambino crime family. In 2023, according to indictments unsealed in federal court, Mr. Gelardo burst into the house with a group of armed men and attacked the operator of a rival poker game.
And that's just one link in a chain of boldface names and notable incidents recorded at this address, which has at various points been a single-family home, a guesthouse, shared apartments, vacant and dilapidated, and most recently a renovated townhouse and event space with a mix of ancient stone and sunlight for more than $30 million.
It's a “super rare” location, said Nicole Palermo of real estate firm Serhant, which helped the previous owner sell the home in 2024 after more than a dozen years on the market.
“We always said, 'It's a penthouse with the privacy of a townhouse,'” she said.
The house may look like one of the brick-fronted rowhouses that line the streets of Greenwich Village, but the walls are teeming with stories.
1839
William Berwick is building two townhouses at 80 Washington Place and 78 Washington Place in the Greek Revival style that characterizes Greenwich Village. Mr. Berwick, who owned both houses until 1852, was likely one of many “speculators” who built houses to sell to Lower Manhattan residents migrating north, Mr. Miller said.
1908
According to Mr. Miller's research, 80 Washington Place is now a luxury boarding house and is home to Columbia College students, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Willa Cather and a numerologist named Clifford W. Cheasley.
1919
The composer and military bandmaster John Philip Sousa purchases the building. “He never lived there,” Mr. Miller said. “I think he bought it as an apartment for his daughter and gave it to her because he only charged them $100.”
Sousa's daughter, Helen Sousa Abert, and her husband hired an architect to renovate the building into an apartment complex. They added an elevator and a fourth floor and removed the stairs, lowering the original entrance so visitors now enter through the basement – essentially the same facade you see today.
1921
According to Mr. Miller's research, a minister named John Wade, a tenant at 80 Washington Place, is reported in The Evening World newspaper for encountering a bird that flew into his window, leading him to believe it was a robbery. (Not yet.)
1969
The Greenwich Village Historic District, which includes 80 Washington Place and Washington Square Park to the east, was designated by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission under Mayor John V. Lindsay.
1970
The building is now owned by a company called John Philip Sousa, Inc. and will be sold to Cin-Cin Realty Corporation, according to city records.
1972
Gildo and Marie Rainero are buying 80 Washington Place, according to city records. The family would own the building for the next 52 years. The couple previously lived nearby at 4 Washington Square Village, now New York University's student residence.
1996
A neighborhood report in the New York Times tracks marijuana sales in nearby Washington Square Park. “In recent decades,” it says, “villagers and tourists seeking the peace and quiet of the park were just as likely to be greeted with a steady chorus of 'smoke, smoke' and 'sense, sense' from drug dealers peddling marijuana and sensimilla, a potent strain of the drug.”
2011
A gut renovation by Manhattan design firm Clodagh is underway. “It was a terrible mess,” said Clodagh, the eponymous company founder, who gutted the interior before transforming the “very, very special” space into an 8,700-square-foot, six-bedroom home. Features include: a 700-bottle wine room, a glass-enclosed sauna, 11 skylights and a waterfall in an old coal boiler.
“It’s one of the most exciting things I’ve ever done,” Clodagh said.
2012
A New York Daily News article describes the listing of 80 Washington Place by the firm Douglas Elliman. The house is owned by William Rainero, who says he grew up in one of the building's nine apartments and that his family has been in the neighborhood “since before Ellis Island.”
“The list price is $31.5 million, and that’s where I’m going to sell it,” Mr. Rainero told the newspaper. “There's no reason to sell this for less than I'm asking. I'd think about maybe renting it for about $115,000.”
2013
Jonathan Miller, appraiser at Miller Samuel, notes on his blog that the building's price has been reduced by $1 million and that a new agent is now in charge of the sale. “After a year of watching their townhouse sit on the market without selling, the owners of 80 Washington Place have decided to take a cue from the previous owner, composer and conductor John Philip Sousa: They’re moving on,” he writes.
2016
An Instagram account is created for the home, outlining a new purpose: “Ultra-luxury townhouse in Greenwich Village developed by William Rainero – available for exclusive events and shoots.”
2021
The New York Post reports that 80 Washington Place — still owned by Mr. Rainero but “not currently on the market” — is being rented by rapper Travis Scott and his girlfriend, reality TV star Kylie Jenner. The house later appears in an episode of “The Kardashians.”
2023
Bankruptcy: 80 West Washington Place Real Estate Holdings, LLC is filing for Chapter 11 protection a day before a planned foreclosure auction, according to Bloomberg News, which describes the home as a “posh townhouse.”
In October, Mr. Gelardo broke into the house armed with a baton to disrupt an illegal poker game taking place on the same night as a rival game, prosecutors said.
2024
After a dozen years on the market, Mr. Ranier finally sells 80 Washington Place for $17 million in cash to an anonymous buyer under the guise of an LLC. The sales price is about half of what he wanted for the building in 2012.
2025
In June, Marmol Radziner, a Los Angeles-based architectural firm, filed plans with the Landmarks Preservation Commission to change the building's roof and fence line. The client is not named.
On October 23, the FBI and the New York Police Department's Joint Organized Crime Task Force charged more than 30 people with gambling at NBA basketball games and running poker games rigged by Mafia families. The indictment names 80 Washington Place.