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It was the first New York City home they owned, shortly after the breakup of the Beatles.
In the fall of 1971 — two years before moving to the famed Dakota apartment house on the Upper West Side — John Lennon and Yoko Ono had settled downtown, buying a petite loft-style building at 496 Broome Street in SoHo.
At the time, Lennon had just released his second solo studio album, “Imagine.”
Upon relocating to New York, Lennon began forging his own identity with Ms. Ono, an avant-garde artist, musician and peace activist, while publicly distancing himself from his former bandmate Paul McCartney, with whom he had created some of the 20th century’s most popular songs.
“He thought New York was a place where he could be left alone,” said Philip Norman, the author of the biography “John Lennon: The Life.” “It really did seem like freedom — freedom from the Beatles. It was a very miserable life being a Beatle.”
Mr. Norman, who wrote biographies on McCartney and George Harrison, among other famous musicians, noted that Lennon and Ms. Ono had first stayed in a couple of suites at the St. Regis Hotel before buying the Broome Street building and also renting an apartment at 105 Bank Street in the West Village. “The building on Broome Street was sort of like a base for their artistic ventures,” he said. “Bank Street was their salon, where people could just walk in.”
The Broome Street building — still owned by Ms. Ono and her son, Sean Ono Lennon, also a musician — is now on the market for the first time in more than half a century through the real estate services company JLL. The asking price is $5.5 million. Annual property taxes are $55,069.
The two-story, red brick structure, with decorative checkerboard glass squares on the facade, was purchased from the artist David Diao through the entity Ono Music in November 1971. The deed was later transferred to Sekhmet Productions, once run by Sam Havadtoy, a former boyfriend of Ms. Ono. The production company is currently controlled by Ms. Ono and Sean Ono Lennon.
In addition to serving as a residence, the Broome Street building has had numerous other uses.
“The property has been used intermittently over the years as a meeting and work space for various projects of Sekhmet Productions, art storage, press interviews, etc.,” said Paul Smadbeck, a managing director in the private capital group of JLL, who is the listing broker, along with Guthrie Garvin, also a JLL managing director.
“The property was also used as a recording studio,” Mr. Smadbeck added.
The structure, which was erected around 1920 between Wooster Street and West Broadway, is zoned for both commercial and residential use, according to Mr. Smadbeck, who also handled the nearly $6.5 million sale in 2017 of 110 West 79th Street, which housed Bag One Arts, the licensing and publishing arm of the Lennon estate.
Currently vacant, the building on Broome Street has a total of 3,832 square feet of loftlike space, including the cellar, along with 4,600 square feet of air rights, which, Mr. Smadbeck said, could mean the potential to add up to three more floors.
The ground level, with soaring 14-foot ceilings and hardwood floors, features a spacious open kitchen with a breakfast bar and stainless-steel appliances. At the rear of the first floor, near the kitchen, are a short set of stairs to a full-height bedroom loft and a full bathroom below with a soaking tub.
A vestibule near the building’s entrance has stairs leading up to the top floor, currently configured with a gallery space, a sound studio and another full bathroom.
So who might be interested in this storied property?
The listing says the building is “ideal for an end-user looking to create a unique home/office, restaurant, retail, art gallery in the heart of SoHo.”
Of course, it wouldn’t hurt if the buyer was also a Lennon-Ono fan.
“Anywhere that they lived,” Mr. Norman said, “is going to have some sort of value.”
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