A 116-year-old single-family home on Harrison Avenue in Morris Heights is on track to be replaced by a four-story building with 17 rental apartments, according to newly filed permit applications. The site at 1855 Harrison Avenue, sandwiched between West 179th Street and Morton Place, sold for $850,000 in late April, just months before the plans surfaced.
Property transfer records reported by Crezly show the April 23 sale price for the lot, which immediately preceded the summer filing of building permit applications for the project, as reported by New York YIMBY. The outlet's Vanessa Londono reports that the applications, filed under 1855 Harrison Ave NY LLC and listing Shea Freund as owner, describe a 52-foot-tall structure with a steel-based frame, a rear yard measuring 35 feet, and a penthouse level. Boris Balkhiyev, PE, is listed as the architect of record.
The proposed building would yield 8,604 square feet of residential space across 17 residences, working out to an average unit size of about 506 square feet, per the same account. The units are most likely to be rentals, according to the article, though no estimated completion date has been announced and no demolition permits have yet been filed to clear the existing structure.
A Century-Old House Gives Way to Denser Housing
Before the sale, the property held an 1,832-square-foot single-family home built in 1910 on a 0.07-acre lot, according to real estate records from Sotheby's International Realty. The house had previously been marketed with an asking price of $979,000 through Coldwell Banker Easton Properties, per listing history reviewed by Trulia, under MLS ID 960637, before it ultimately sold for less than that ask.
The swap from a low-density, early 20th-century home to a 17-unit rental building reflects a broader shift underway in Morris Heights, where older single-family housing stock is increasingly being replaced by multi-family infill. Real estate analytics compiled by PropertyShark peg the median home sale price in Morris Heights at $1.2 million, well above the $345,000 median across the Bronx as a whole.
Why a Transit-Heavy Block Draws Developers
The Harrison Avenue site sits near the Burnside Avenue subway station, served by the 4 train. Location metrics for the surrounding 10453 ZIP code assign the area a Transit Score of 100 out of 100 — a “Rider's Paradise” rating — and a Walk Score of 90, according to PropertyShark, a combination that tends to reduce reliance on private parking for small-footprint rental buildings like the one proposed for 1855 Harrison Avenue.
Balkhiyev's name also turns up elsewhere in the borough's building boom. The same architect of record was filed in April as lead architect for a proposed 124-foot-tall, 97-unit multi-family building at 3374 Boston Road in Laconia, according to New York YIMBY's earlier coverage, suggesting an active hand in Bronx multi-family filings well beyond this one project.
A Neighborhood Where Renting Is the Norm
Any new units at 1855 Harrison Avenue would land in a community overwhelmingly built around renting rather than owning. Demographic data from Data USA shows Bronx Community District 5, which includes Morris Heights, has a homeownership rate of just 4.45%, with more than 95% of residents living in rental units.
The district also ranks among the ten lowest-income community districts in New York City, according to an economic overview from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation covering Morris Heights, University Heights, Fordham, and Mount Hope. That backdrop has fueled ongoing local debate over housing affordability, one that has played out in recent Hoodline reporting on a Morris Heights housing lottery for units renting as low as $777 a month.
Building safety has also been a persistent concern in the neighborhood. Citywide emergency dispatch data analyzed by Documented NY found that Bronx Community District 5 recorded the fourth-highest number of reported building fires among all 59 New York City community districts, a statistic community advocates have cited when discussing the borough's aging housing inventory. Any new construction at 1855 Harrison Avenue would need to comply with the NYC Department of City Planning's Quality Housing Program regulations that govern medium-density R7-1 zoning districts, which mandate interior residential amenities and planted street frontage.
It remains unclear whether the 17 planned units will be offered as market-rate rentals or folded into a city affordability program, and no timeline has been set for demolishing the 1910 house that still stands on the lot. The Harrison Avenue corridor has drawn other headlines this year, including Hoodline's report on a shooting that left a 21-year-old wounded on the same street this past spring, underscoring the range of issues shaping daily life on this stretch of Morris Heights even as new development moves forward.
