City Lore Museum Stays Put as East Village Landlord Faces $4M Foreclosure

A 40-year-old museum rooted in preservation may have preserved itself amid an ongoing foreclosure saga.

City Lore, a New York nonprofit with ties to the Smithsonian Institution, currently occupies the ground floor of a building whose owner is facing a foreclosure lawsuit by a lender that claims he has defaulted on a $4-million mortgage. However, thanks to a clause in its lease, the museum board is confident it will be staying put, regardless of who owns the building.

“We don’t think the landlord’s foreclosure is affecting City Lore at all since we have a non-disturbance agreement in our lease,” City Lore executive director Steve Zeitlin wrote in an email to Straus Media. “For that reason, I don’t think it amounts to a very interesting story.”

A non-disturbance clause in a lease agreement, particularly a commercial lease, ensures that a tenant’s lease will be honored even if the property is sold at foreclosure.

The foreclosure action is against affordable housing developer Eric Anderson after lender Western Adventist Foundation said he defaulted on millions of dollars in payments. Anderson has failed to deliver on promises, owing millions of dollars in loans and property taxes for 56 E. 1st St., according to a lawsuit filed by the foundation.

Western Adventist Foundation alleges that 56 East First Street LLC, controlled by Eric Anderson, defaulted on a $3.5-million loan issued in 2017, according to a foreclosure complaint filed June 4 in Manhattan’s State Supreme Court. An attorney for Western Adventist Foundation did not return a call seeking comment.

The Western Adventist Foundation was founded in 1997 as a nonprofit organization affiliated with the Seventh-day Adventist Church to “assist Adventist entities by expertly managing their trust services and planned giving programs,” according to its website.

”We’re attorneys, administrators, and MBA-carrying business professionals with a vision—to be an active part of the mission and ministry of the Seventh-day Adventist Church through the work we do,” according to the website.

The church foundation may have initially been attracted to Anderson because of his claimed specialization in affordable housing and working with catastrophically injured clients.

But whatever good intentions initially brought them together, the arrangement appears to have soured several years ago.

Court records state that in December 2020, 56 East First Street LLC and the lender agreed to extend the maturity date of the original 2017 loan to Nov. 1, 2021 but Anderson failed to repay the loan by that date, according to the lawsuit. The lender now considers the loan to be in default.

Additionally, the suit reveals that Anderson is believed to owe $76,038.46 in outstanding real estate taxes, interest, and penalties, as of Feb. 1, 2025. As a result of the above factors, among others, Western Adventist Foundation has requested that the premises be sold at a foreclosure sale.

Eric Anderson did not respond to emails seeking comment, but according to his LinkedIn profile, he started Accessible Housing Services in 2006 after starting Rehab USA, a medical-supply distributor in the late 1990s. His website says he has been involved in over 1,500 rehab construction jobs. “Today, I work as a consultant with insurance companies, special needs trust attorneys, and catastrophically injured individuals being discharged into their communities,” according to the profile. He claims to have “assisted in negotiating settlements and completed projects for high-profile clients who have been catastrophically injured in their line of work, including professional hockey players, Indy 500 race car drivers, and Cirque du Soleil performers.”

Despite the uncertainty over the building’s ownership, City Lore is set to remain open and in place. The museum, a cultural nonprofit with ties to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, is dedicated to preserving stories, traditions, and folk arts from New York City. The museum celebrates the vibrant culture of the melting pot, featuring oral histories, poetry, neighborhood murals, and immigrant heritage.

The seven-bedroom, six-bath townhouse with a terrace spans 6,090 square feet and has been listed on Zillow for nearly seven years. Currently, Anderson’s asking price is $9.9 million, or an estimated $63,540 per month.

The property has only garnered around 900 views and 28 saves on Zillow in the seven years it has been listed, an indicator that Anderson’s nearly $10-million price tag may be somewhat optimistic.