The last remaining New York City property owned by the estate of celebrated pop artist Roy Lichtenstein has found a buyer, The Post has learned.
Located at 739 Washington Street in Manhattan’s West Village, the redbrick Greek Revival townhouse sold this week for $6.525 million, marking the latest step in the methodical dissolution of the artist’s once-expansive real estate footprint.
Tucked away on a quiet block steps from the Hudson River, the three-story home built in 1845 spans nearly 3,700 square feet and retains many of its 19th-century details, including pumpkin pine floors, six fireplaces and intricate molding.
Despite being used as an office for the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation in recent years, the home’s layout and period charm offered strong appeal to buyers drawn to historic authenticity in a neighborhood increasingly dotted with modern conversions.
It was initially listed for $6.9 million in November before entering into contract just a few short months later, at the start of 2025.
Clayton Orrigo, also of Compass, represented the unidentified buyer.
The building sits directly adjacent to Lichtenstein’s longtime home and studio, a former metalworking shop at 741/745 Washington Street, donated in 2022 by his widow, Dorothy Lichtenstein, to the Whitney Museum of American Art.
According to Lee Ann Jaffee of Compass, who co-listed the property with colleague Steven Sumser, “It was a guest house. I shouldn’t say he never lived there. I do not know of him ever living there. It was always represented to me that it was a guest house.”
Just a few feet south lies 747 Washington Street, a garage that once housed the artist’s personal art and wine collection.
The Post previously reported that the property sold earlier this year for $5.5 million to an anonymous buyer operating under the LLC “WHAAM-NOMAD”— a not-so-subtle nod to Lichtenstein’s iconic 1963 painting “Whaam!”
The sale of 739 Washington concludes a physical chapter in the Lichtenstein estate’s multi-year effort to downsize and distribute the artist’s holdings following Dorothy’s death last July. She had spent decades preserving and stewarding her husband’s legacy through exhibitions, donations and the meticulous cataloguing of his oeuvre through the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation.
That work has culminated in a broader unwinding.
The foundation has announced it will cease operations by 2026, having fulfilled its mission of publishing Lichtenstein’s catalogue raisonné and distributing thousands of works and archival materials to institutions around the world.
Among the most prominent recipients, the Whitney now occupies Lichtenstein’s former Manhattan studio as the permanent home of its Independent Study Program.
The building — originally constructed in 1912 — was where Lichtenstein lived, painted, and entertained visitors during his later years.
“He worked downstairs, ate lunch at the same diner every day, and lived upstairs in a one-bedroom with Dorothy,” according to Curbed. The space is currently being renovated by Johnston Marklee, the architecture firm behind major museum projects in Houston and Chicago.
Just next door, the garage at 747 Washington has a more utilitarian design, but it proved equally valuable.
In addition to room for four cars, it includes a steel-and-wood staircase leading to a private office, a landscaped roof deck and skyline views.
Beyond Manhattan, the artist’s coastal sanctuary is also on the market.
In September, the couple’s longtime home, once a carriage house on Southampton’s prestigious Gin Lane, was listed for $19.99 million, The Post reported.
The 2-acre property, where Roy worked in a separate studio across the lawn and Dorothy ultimately passed away last summer, had never before been for sale in the 54 years since the Lichtensteins purchased it.
“It’s going to make a really nice home for somebody because it’s unique,” Harald Grant of Sotheby’s International Realty, one of the co-listing agents, told The Post.
While the real estate assets are being dispersed, the centerpiece of the estate’s final chapter is unfolding this evening and Friday night at Sotheby’s New York.
More than 40 works from the private collection of Roy and Dorothy Lichtenstein are headed to the auction block as part of the house’s marquee Contemporary Evening and Day Sales.
Estimated to exceed $35 million in total, the works chart four decades of the artist’s output—from early drawings to large-scale paintings, sculptures, and prints.
“From drawings to paintings to sculpture, this phenomenal group of works provides a front row seat to Lichtenstein’s incomparable genius,” David Galperin, Sotheby’s Vice Chairman and Head of Contemporary Art in New York, said in a statement.
“Together, the group is a survey of the artist’s reflections of art history over four decades of practice.”
Among the highlights is Reflections: Art (1988), estimated to fetch between $4 million and $6 million. The acrylic-on-canvas piece belongs to Lichtenstein’s celebrated “Reflections” series, where he obscured iconic images with simulated glass glares — both a play on illusion and a metaphor for art’s relationship to perception.
“To my father, art was all about composition,” said Mitchell Lichtenstein, the artist’s son, in a statement. “When asked for comment about his subject matter, he often said, ‘It’s just marks on a page.’”
Other marquee offerings include Woman: Sunlight, Moonlight (1996), a double-sided sculpture in painted wood — a study for a bronze edition later acquired by institutions like The Broad in Los Angeles — and Stretcher Frame with Cross Bars III (1968), one of only eleven such works exploring the backside of a painting.
“The amusing aspect of the Stretcher Frame painting is that of the two sides of a canvas, it depicts the side we least want to see,” said Mitchell.
Sculptures such as Mirror I (1976) echo the artist’s lifelong fascination with the idea of reflection and illusion, while collage studies like Interior with African Mask (Study) (1990) reveal his painstaking process in constructing his “Interiors” series, which poked fun at the aspirational settings common in shelter magazines.
1976, painted and patinated bronze
Estimate $1,000,000 – 1,500,000
“One amusing thing to consider about the Interior series is that the generic furniture ad aesthetic of the rooms depicted in them is likely to be antithetical to the taste of the collector and to the room in which they hang the work,” Mitchell noted.
Other featured works include Haystacks (1968), Lichtenstein’s tongue-in-cheek nod to Monet’s Impressionist series, reinterpreted with bold Ben-Day dots; Entablature (1975), incorporating sand from the Southampton beaches near his studio; and Cover Image (The Gun in America) for Time Magazine (Study) (circa 1968), a graphite-on-paper rendering originally commissioned in response to the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy.
“Lichtenstein was keenly aware of his place in the lineage of art history,” said Lucius Elliott, Head of Sotheby’s Contemporary Evening Auctions in New York. “The crux of his practice is this interrogation of the nature of art and image making.”
Born in New York City in 1923, Roy’s early artistic ambitions took shape at Ohio State University, where he studied after World War II.
He rose to fame in the 1960s for his stylized comic book paintings — and went on to produce over 5,000 works spanning media, genres, and decades. Despite early critical controversy, his pieces are now held by museums including MoMA, the Whitney, the Centre Pompidou, and the Art Institute of Chicago.
His widow, Dorothy, was instrumental in cementing that legacy. A Brooklyn native and former gallery director, she co-founded the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation and was its longtime president, overseeing major donations of more than 1,000 works to institutions worldwide.