Airbnb has bought 281 Park Ave. S., the landmarked Church Missions House in the Gramercy neighborhood of Manhattan, N.Y., for a reported $81.5 million — the first building that the company has ever owned in New York City. It plans to turn the six-story property into a hub for its more than 600 employees in the area. The seller was Aby Rosen’s RFR.

RFR had held the building since 2014, when it paid $50 million, before it listed the property for sale in 2022 at an asking price of $135 million. The final price, about $1,917 per square foot across the 42,500-square-foot building, came in well below that asking price while still clearing what RFR originally paid. Airbnb has been leasing office space downtown at 222 Broadway and will keep that footing while it renovates the new building.

The property will serve as “one of our largest employee hubs outside of San Francisco,” said Airbnb CEO, Brian Chesky.

Built in the 1890s for the Episcopal Church with donors that included Cornelius Vanderbilt and J.P. Morgan, 281 Park Ave. S. is a medieval-inspired limestone building that the city designated a landmark in 1979. Its most recent tenant was the Swedish photography museum Fotografiska, which has since left. Then, the building drew a stranger kind of notice a few years ago as the address that con artist Anna Delvey tried to lease for a members’ club that never opened.

Airbnb’s new home sits at the corner of East 22nd Street in the Midtown South submarket, where availability has tightened as tenants have moved back into the area.

The purchase lands in one of the country’s busiest office markets: Manhattan’s office vacancy stands at 13.1%, which is among the lowest of any major U.S. market and well below the national rate of 17.6%, according to Yardi Research Data. The borough has also logged the most office sales in the country with nearly $3.7 billion.