1 Grace Court

Freehof's building puts six stories of brick around an interior courtyard, with three exposures at work: the Grace Court front with its window boxes, the interior court, and the west end above the bluff. The corporation's audited financial statements describe 21 apartments against 4,000 issued shares (3,832 outstanding — the corporation holds treasury stock from a documented 2010 reorganization, when two former superintendent's units were renovated, one sold and one retained as a rental). Public records carry 18 units; aggregate references cite 24; the co-op's own documents are the count we work from. Line-by-line layouts and share allocations are maintained in The Roebling Research Library and shared with clients during diligence.

Interiors follow the mid-1920s Heights template — foyer entries, separated kitchens, prewar ceiling heights — at boutique scale. The building's scarcest asset is orientation: upper-floor west and southwest exposures work the harbor and lower-Manhattan sight lines from the bluff, and the shared roof deck delivers that view to every shareholder. An elevator serves the house (the lobby has a short run of steps, with a building-owned ramp available under the house rules — worth knowing for accessibility planning), and fire escapes and the courtyard reflect the original 1920s life-safety fabric, all of it under Landmarks jurisdiction.

One Grace Court Corporation runs as a professionally managed small co-op with a superintendent and an unusually well-documented operating history: audited financial statements across the 2000s show the ordinary course of a stable boutique corporation — laundry income, a 2007 refinancing with a secured credit line, capital spending on apartments and building systems. The 2009-revised house rules are detailed and practical, from move-in elevator protocol to recycling, and they route maintenance complaints in writing through the managing agent with a copy to the board president. Exterior work — windows included — runs under LPC review, as everywhere in the district.

Recent sales

Recent transfers at this building, from The Roebling Research Library. Prices are the transfer amounts recorded with the NYC Department of Finance; apartment-level detail is checked against the building’s own file in The Roebling Research Library before publishing.

Market read. $/sf is measured on the latest sales with reliable square footage (2014): a median $866/sf (recorded) across 1 sale. The building has traded as recently as 2025. Median listing discount 4.2% from the last ask — a recurring negotiation gap worth pricing into any offer or listing strategy.

Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 3-00251-0001). Apartment-level facts (line, condition, asking-price context) curated and cross-verified in The Roebling Research Library. Not all transactions cross-verify with ACRIS records — sponsor and LLC purchases sometimes record at stipulated values rather than market price.

The count you underwrite is the co-op's own. Public records say 18 units, references say 24, the audited financials say 21 apartments on 4,000 shares. Price the shares and confirm the allocation for the specific unit.

This is a fifty-plus-year cooperative, not a 1980s conversion. The corporation has operated since 1970, with resident-shareholder governance written into its amended by-laws. Expect a board that knows the building deeply, and prepare a full package.

The roof deck and west exposures are the value story. The harbor view from the bluff is the feature that distinguishes this address from nearly every small co-op in the district; weigh it explicitly in line selection.

Pets are genuinely permitted. Dogs and cats are allowed under the house rules, with the privilege revocable for nuisance — more permissive than much of the Heights' boutique tier, and worth confirming in current form at application.

Check the accessibility and systems details. The lobby steps and elevator-ramp arrangement, the fire-escape fabric, and any open LL11 façade cycle should all be reviewed during diligence.

Lead with the site and the lineage. The Prentice mansion history, the Freehof attribution, and the end-of-cul-de-sac harbor position are the three facts no competing listing on the street can match; use all of them.

Market the roof deck as a private-view amenity. In a district where boutique co-ops rarely offer any shared outdoor space, a reserved-use harbor-facing deck is a differentiator that photographs and shows.

Price against the quiet-street set, not the corridor. The right comparables are Grace Court, Remsen, and Montague Terrace boutique prewars — not the elevator buildings on the retail spines. Scarcity supports patience on pricing.

If you're considering 1 Grace Court, also evaluate:

• 2 Grace Court — a substantially larger prewar cooperative across the street
• 19 Grace Court — Sugarman & Berger's 1925 co-op on the same block; the closest like-for-like alternative
• 35 Pierrepont Street — Freehof's 1929 nine-story co-op; the same architect with attended-service tradition
• 153 Henry Street — Freehof's 1928 apartment house at Love Lane; the same architect at larger unit count
• 130 Clinton Street — Freehof's 1925–26 tower, converted to a co-op in 1976; the lineage's office-to-residential chapter
• 2 Montague Terrace — boutique prewar co-op on the Heights' other quiet terrace, directly above the Promenade
• 68 Remsen Street — prewar co-op one block north on Remsen's residential run
• 76 Remsen Street — 23-unit boutique co-op nearby at the harbor end of Remsen