Franco-Italian Perrone family has continuously owned NYC land since late 18th century

New York City real estate investors often talk about the long-term hold. Typically that means 10 years or 20 years or even 30 years. New York City has a handful of well-known long-term investors, such as the country’s first millionaire John Jacob Astor from the late eighteenth century to the nineteenth century. It has the buy-and-hold believer Sol Goldman from the 20th century whose family still controls a multi-billion-dollar portfolio. The city also has scores of lesser known families that have owned significant buildings or portfolios for decades. And of course there is the City of New York, the State of New York and various churches that have owned properties in the city for more than 200 years.

Yet apart from them, there is a private family that has held New York City real estate not just for years or decades, but for centuries, the Franco-Italian Perrone family, which owns property in the city through the holding company Valeray Real Estate.

It just picked up 73-75 Sullivan Street in SoHo from John A. Zaccaro’s P. Zaccaro for $43.5 million.

One of their ancestors, a well-connected colonial merchant named Cornelius Ray, was a business leader and real estate investor with English heritage living in New York City in the 18th and 19th centuries, before and after the Revolutionary War. He was at one time the president of the New York Chamber of Commerce and president of the New York branch of the Bank of the United States. He was also an opportunistic real estate investor, snapping up distressed properties at auction. And he bought property confiscated from loyalists who stuck with the British during the Revolutionary War. Over his lifetime, he owned land in Lower Manhattan, Chelsea, other areas of Manhattan, and the Hudson Valley, and likely elsewhere.

At some point likely before the turn of the eighteenth century he bought a large parcel of farmland in what is now Chelsea, and the Perrone family still owns pieces of it, including the ground leased fee parcels at 539 West 28th Street (leased by AvalonBay Communities) and at 613 West 28th Street. That’s about 226 years later. Douglaston Development is the ground lessor at 613 West 28th Street, and built a large residential building there.

Cornelius Ray (1755-1827) was the son of an Englishman, Richard Ray (1717-1763). Cornelius married Elizabeth Elmendorf Ray, and they had a son, Richard Ray (June 17, 1792 – March 21, 1836). He married Mary Rebecca Ray Boggs (September 14, 1808-January 01, 1876) and they had a daughter, Marie Ray (died approximately 1876). Marie Ray married Arthur Constant Dubois de Courval (3rd Baron Dubois de Courval, vicomte de Courval), and they had a daughter Madeleine Marie Isabelle Dubois de Courval de Poix (1870-1944), who married Francois de Noailles, Prince de Poix. They had a daughter, Nathalie Valentine Marie de Naoilles (December 28, 1927-August 18, 2004), who married Alessandro Maria Perrone, a publisher and reporter, (1920-1980), and they had a son, who is a publisher, Carlo Perrone. Carlo Perrone married Polissena Guidi di Bagno, and they have a son, Alessandro Perrone.

The Perrone family’s Valeray Real Estate owned dozens of properties over the past approximately 100 years, which they accumulated as they sold off pieces of the Chelsea land. Nearly all of that has been sold off.

Their most recent sale was about two years ago when it sold 175 East 82nd Street and 170 East 83rd Street to Douglaston Development for $124.5 million on June 5, 2024. Douglaston is constructing a high rise apartment building on a portion of the site.

In addition to the Chelsea ground leased fee, they own 56 West 11th Street, and another Chelsea parcel ground leased to AvalonBay Communities, at 539 West 28th Street, also known as 282 11th Avenue.