Physical Therapy Office Space in NYC: Floor Plates, Ceilings, Ground Floors, and What It Costs (2026)
What a PT clinic needs from a building, where clinics cluster around HSS and NYU Langone, the direct-access rule, and costs.
Murray Hill medical office space and the Kips Bay blocks just south of it sit on the densest hospital spine in Manhattan. NYU Langone, Bellevue and the Manhattan VA line First Avenue from 23rd to 34th Streets, NYU’s ambulatory buildings reach west into the 30s, and the city is about to add a two-million-square-foot life sciences campus at 25th Street. This guide covers what makes a building here usable for clinical work, where a Kips Bay medical office or a Murray Hill practice actually sits block by block, what the options cost, and how to run the search. It is one of the neighborhood guides under our Manhattan medical office space hub; the citywide view is in our NYC medical office guide.
What makes Murray Hill and Kips Bay space “medical”
The neighborhood is a mix of prewar apartment buildings, postwar towers with ground-floor commercial space, and a band of office buildings along Park, Lexington and Third in the high 30s. Each type has its own constraints.
Medical & therapy spaces in New York right now
Clinical suiteWestchester Coworking and Office Space in New York - Carr Workplacespricing on requestView this space →Medical spaceUnified Health Suites - 501 Fifth Avenue - Unified Health Suitespricing on requestView this space →Also availableSuites by NYLO - Grand Central - Suites by NYLOpricing on requestView this space →
Clinical suites and therapy rooms on flexible terms, updated as inventory changes. See all New York listings →
- Permitted use. Ground-floor units under apartment towers are often already zoned and built for professional use, and many have housed physicians for decades. Prewar co-ops in the side streets are stricter, and a board approval can add months. The office buildings in the 30s generally accept medical tenants on the lower floors.
- Plumbing. Second-generation medical space, where a previous practice already ran sinks to every exam room, is the target. Kips Bay has a lot of it because so many NYU-affiliated practices have cycled through the ground floors near First and Second Avenues.
- Mechanical. Postwar towers usually have through-wall units or central air with limited capacity for a dedicated treatment-room zone. Imaging, infusion and procedure-heavy practices need to confirm electrical capacity early.
- Accessibility. Step-free street entrances are common in the postwar stock, which is an advantage. The prewar buildings often have a half-flight up or down at the door and need a ramp or lift.
Where medical space concentrates in Murray Hill and Kips Bay
The First Avenue hospital spine
NYU Langone’s main campus runs along First Avenue in the low 30s, with Tisch Hospital and the Kimmel Pavilion at 550 First Avenue and Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital inside Kimmel. Bellevue Hospital, the flagship of the city’s public system, is at 462 First Avenue between 26th and 28th Streets. The VA New York Harbor Manhattan campus is at 423 East 23rd Street. Between them, First and Second Avenues from 23rd to 34th Streets carry the highest density of hospital-affiliated practices south of the Upper East Side.
SPARC Kips Bay and Innovation East
In February 2025 the City Council approved SPARC Kips Bay, the Science Park and Research Campus that will replace Hunter College’s Brookdale campus at First Avenue and East 25th Street with nearly two million square feet of academic, research and outpatient healthcare space. Deconstruction of the existing buildings was scheduled to begin in early 2026, construction of the new campus in 2027, and completion around 2031. A companion project, Innovation East at 455 First Avenue, is replacing the former Public Health Laboratory with a life sciences building. Together they add more than 2.5 million square feet to the East Side, and they will pull research-adjacent practices, specialty clinics and the vendors that serve them into the blocks around 25th Street for the rest of the decade.
NYU Langone’s ambulatory buildings in the 30s
NYU Langone’s Ambulatory Care Center at 240 East 38th Street houses Perlmutter Cancer Center offices, Rusk Rehabilitation and several specialty centers, and NYU Langone Ambulatory Care 23rd Street covers orthopedics, rheumatology and neurology. These buildings pull independent practices into the office stock along Third, Lexington and Park in the 30s, where a specialist can be a short walk from both the hospital and Grand Central.
Second and Third Avenues
The commercial strips on Second and Third Avenues from 23rd to 40th Streets are where most independent Murray Hill and Kips Bay practices live: ground-floor and second-floor space under apartment towers, serving a dense residential population of young professionals along with hospital staff. Dental, dermatology, physical therapy, mental health and primary care practices dominate.
The 40th Street edge
North of 38th Street the neighborhood blends into the Grand Central submarket, and established medical addresses such as 30 East 40th Street serve both. We cover that stock in our Midtown East guide.
The options, from cheapest to most permanent
Metro Manhattan’s 2026 survey groups Murray Hill with Grand Central and Midtown East at roughly $55 to $90 per square foot for medical space, below the Upper East Side’s $70 to $130 and above the Financial District’s $45 to $75. Kips Bay ground-floor space south of 30th Street generally sits toward the lower end of that range.
Hourly and daily rooms
Therapy and counseling rooms rent by the hour throughout the 20s and 30s, generally $25 to $50 an hour. Exam rooms inside existing practices rent by the day at about $1,800 a month for one day a week and $2,900 for two. For a specialist who operates at NYU Langone or Bellevue and wants a private office nearby one or two days a week, this rung is the obvious one.
Turnkey private suites on flexible terms
Fully built private suites of 100 to 175 square feet, with a chair and a sink, on month-to-year terms, run $3,500 to $7,500 a month in Midtown, and most of the operators are within a short walk of Murray Hill. A practice can open in about a week with no build-out.
Medical coworking
Shared clinical floors with a private office, bookable exam rooms and a shared waiting room on a monthly membership. Midtown South and the Flatiron district have several, a few blocks west of Kips Bay.
A traditional lease
Established practices lease 1,500 to 5,000 square feet on five- to ten-year terms, and this neighborhood has more ground-floor second-generation space at that size than Midtown does. Fit-out in Manhattan runs well into the hundreds of dollars per square foot, so the tenant improvement allowance and free rent during construction carry the negotiation. A lease near 25th Street should account for years of construction noise and street closures around SPARC.
Buying
Murray Hill has a small market of physician-owned ground-floor condos and co-ops, mostly in the postwar towers on Second and Third Avenues. It is thinner than the Upper East Side’s and turns over slowly.
How to run the search
- Decide your rung first. An hourly or daily room is a call to an operator this week. A lease is a six- to twelve-month project that starts with a broker.
- For a lease, sign an exclusive with a healthcare tenant broker before you tour. The best ground-floor space near NYU Langone passes from one affiliated practice to the next without ever being listed. The landlord pays the fee, so an exclusive costs you nothing and it gives you a representative on your side of the work letter. Here is why medical practices should sign an exclusive broker agreement before touring space.
- Ask four questions on every space. Does the building permit medical use? Where is plumbing today? What are HVAC hours, and can the suite get dedicated cooling? Is the patient path ADA-compliant from the sidewalk to the exam room?
- Map your referral source. A practice that lives on NYU Langone referrals belongs on First or Second Avenue in the 30s or in the office buildings near 38th Street. A practice serving the residential population belongs on Second or Third in the 20s and 30s. A research-adjacent practice should look at the blocks around 25th Street with a long view.
- Plan for time. A full medical lease takes six to twelve months from first tour to opening. A turnkey suite takes about a week.
Get matched
SquareFoot works with a healthcare-only tenant representative in New York City for practices that need a lease, and with flexible medical and therapy suite operators for practices that need a room this month. See New York medical spaces and prices, or read why medical practices should sign an exclusive broker agreement before touring space before your first tour.