The Webster Apartments, a nearly 100-year-old student and intern housing nonprofit, has sold one of the few remaining women-only apartment buildings in New York City to Brooklyn-based Educational Housing Services for $52.5M, according to city property records. The sale also included an adjacent undeveloped lot on the corner of West 35th Street.

Educational Housing Services operates student and intern housing at five locations throughout New York City, including two year-round buildings and summer housing at Marymount University and Pace University residence halls.

The company has not announced any plans yet for the Webster Apartments building, which is located on West 34th Street in midtown Manhattan. Crain’s New York Business reports, according to a source familiar to the plans, that the building will become a coed student housing property that will no longer serve young professionals.  

Following the sale, the Webster Apartments organization is leaving the premises and moving its housing operations to Found Study Midtown East, a coed student and intern housing property operated by New York City–based Found Study, according to the property website. 

The Webster Apartments were founded by brothers Charles and Josiah Webster, cousins of Macy’s founder Raymond H. Macy, as an affordable housing option for the city’s single working women, including Macy’s employees. The building opened in 1923, offering a private single room and two meals per day for $8.50 to $12.00 per week. 

Out of the many women-only rooming houses that opened in the late 19th and early 20th century, the Webster Apartments is the only surviving organization from this era, according to the New York Historical Society. Today Manhattan has four women-only apartment buildings, down from nine recorded in 2019.

The modern-day Webster Apartments catered to students, interns and trainees, who could stay for a minimum of one month or up to five years, depending on the length of time for which they were eligible.