[VIDEO] Non-Billionaire Residents of Billionaires’ Row Co-op Told to Pony up $280M or Get Lost

Co-op apartments in a luxury doorman building on Billionaires’ Row are selling for as low as $100,000 for a studio and $659,000 for a three-bedroom penthouse with a terrace.

But the glitch in the only-in-New York scenario is that owners in the 324-unit building must pay a combined $280 million to buy the land under the structure, or face an additional $26 million a year in ground rent on top of the current $4.4 million a year. If they don’t cough up, they face losing their homes.

Carnegie House at 100 W. 57th St., at the corner of Sixth Avenue, is a 21-story, gray brick structure that resembles many other early 1960s, middle-class Manhattan apartment buildings. Its “luxury” status seems modest compared with neighboring giants, such as the 1,550-foot-tall Central Park Tower to the west and 111 W. 57th St. to the east; units in both new projects cost up to $30 million.

[WATCH] New York City's LOST Pulitzer Tower - The Rise and Fall of The World Building

Once the tallest building in New York City and the tallest office building in the world, the World Building of New York is no longer present in its skyline. Officially known as the Pulitzer Building, named for the same man as the Pulitzer Prize in Journalism, this building had an extensive history despite being wiped from the map. Tied to both the American Civil War and the Second World War, one can feel its presence over decades, and it still has reverberations to this day.