1 Grand Army Plaza (Richard Meier on Prospect Park)

The building rises fifteen stories over a sub-cellar and cellar, with a setback above the eighth floor that steps the mass back from Plaza Street East and produces the terraced upper tier. The elevation is Meier's signature vocabulary applied at Brooklyn scale: white metal panel, clear glass, projecting horizontal balcony slabs, and a rigorously flat, unornamented plane. The main residential entrance faces Plaza Street East and the arch; the garage entrance is on St. John's Place; the health club entrance is on Eastern Parkway through the Temple Unit.

Interiors follow from the exterior. Floor-to-ceiling glazing is the organizing move, and the west and south exposures — over Grand Army Plaza and toward Prospect Park — are the ones the building was designed around. North and east units look toward St. John's Place and Underhill Avenue and price accordingly. Most residences have private balconies. Cellar storage units were allocated to unit owners under the plan.

Two practical consequences follow from a curtain-wall building of this type, and both belong in a buyer's underwriting. The first is thermal and acoustic performance: full-height glass is spectacular and it is not free, and energy and comfort should be evaluated on the specific exposure rather than in the abstract. The second is the balcony-and-roof waterproofing question, which this condominium has already addressed once with borrowed money. Ask what was done in 2014, what has been done since, and what the current envelope condition report says.

The white-backing rule for window treatments deserves particular mention because it surprises buyers. It is written into the offering plan as part of the building's design scheme rather than left to the house rules, and every opening was built to receive concealed ceiling-recessed roller shades. Plan your window treatments accordingly.

The condominium is a full-service building with an attended lobby, a resident superintendent housed in a unit the condominium itself owns, and an amenity structure that is unusual because part of it sits outside the building. The Eastern Athletic Club arrangement is the clearest example: residents have interior access through the Temple Unit, and the condominium carries a sports club membership expense at the building level that has moved substantially year to year. Confirm what the current agreement provides, what it costs the budget, and whether it is guaranteed for any term.

The operating budget also carries a line for the building's art program — a small, genuinely distinctive expense for a residential condominium, and a reflection of how the building has run itself.

The capital picture is legible and should be read in full. The 2014 waterproofing loan, the superintendent's-unit mortgage refinanced in 2015, and the 2021 line of credit are all documented in the audited statements, as is the disclosure, repeated by the auditors in the 2019 and 2020 statements, that the condominium had not commissioned a reserve study or adopted a funding plan for future major repairs. Ask management whether either exists now. The Roebling Research Library maintains the financial file and shares it with clients during diligence; confirm the current agent, reserve position and assessment history with management.

Purchaser approval: None. The offering plan states that the condominium board has no right to approve or disapprove purchasers and imposes no cap on investor ownership. Transfers run through the customary right of first refusal, and a holder of unsold units is not obliged to offer it.

Use: Residential. Changing a unit's certificate of occupancy for non-residential use requires board approval, and the plan provides that the board may unreasonably refuse.

Window treatments: All window treatments must have a white backing so that only white is visible from the exterior; openings were constructed to accept concealed roller shades.

Storage and parking: Cellar storage was allocated to unit owners under the plan. Garage spaces are rented, not owned, and the garage unit is a separate condominium unit; 98 of approximately 153 spaces are available to residents on a first-come basis, with 55 reserved for the Temple Unit.

Reserve fund: The offering plan provided no reserve fund, on the theory that a new building's major components would live out their expected lives. The 2019 and 2020 audited statements state that no reserve study had been performed and no funding plan adopted. Confirm with management whether either has been completed since. This is a real underwriting fact.

Property taxes: The sponsor filed for 421-a benefits and disclosed that they might not be in place at first closing. No phase-out year is asserted here. Verify the current bill on the specific unit.

Pets, subletting terms, minimum financing, flip tax: Not publicly documented in the records reviewed; confirm the current by-laws and house rules in writing.

Recent sales

Recent closings 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. Most recent trades (2026 to date) cleared a median $1,489/sf (floor-adjusted) across 3 sales. Floor-adjusted means each sale is restated to a constant mix of floors, so the figure can differ from the plain median of the sales listed above. Median listing discount 3.3% 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 3-01172-7502; each condominium apartment is its own tax lot). 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; square footage from recorded condo declarations and offering plans.

The view is the asset, and it is exposure-specific. Buy the Prospect Park and Grand Army Plaza side if that is what you came for. The difference between exposures here is larger than the difference between floors.

Read the DCR&E. The Union Temple easement package — the Temple Unit, the 55 reserved parking spaces, the health club access and non-competition terms, the Sabbath and holiday construction restrictions — is recorded, enforceable, and permanent. It is a genuinely interesting arrangement and it should be read, not skimmed.

Underwrite the envelope. A 2008 curtain-wall building that borrowed $2 million in 2014 to waterproof its roof and balconies has a documented envelope history. Ask for the current condition report, the post-2014 work, and the status of the line of credit.

The 2019 and 2020 audits report no reserve study. The auditors say so plainly. Ask whether a study or funding plan has been completed since; assessment risk in a building of this construction type is a live question, and the reserve position should be checked in the current year's statement, not a historical one.

Do not assume 421-a is still helping you. The plan filed for it; nothing here asserts what remains. Pull the specific unit's tax bill and run true monthly carrying cost.

The health club is an arrangement, not a fixture. Confirm the current terms before you value it.

Lead with the architect and the address. The only Richard Meier building in Brooklyn, on Grand Army Plaza, facing the arch. That sentence does more work than any amenity list, and it is factually unimpeachable.

Photograph the glass and the park. The building's argument is transparency and outlook. Interiors shot without the view undersell it badly.

Get ahead of the capital story. Waterproofing, litigation, settlement, line of credit — a buyer's attorney will assemble all of it. A seller who presents it first, with the current reserve position and assessment history attached, controls the narrative.

Separate your comparables carefully. Sponsor sales, early closings and resales are three different populations in this building's record. Price off recent arm's-length resales on comparable exposures.

Condominium purchase process. No co-op board admission; purchases run through the condominium's application and right-of-first-refusal process. Market that: it is a real difference from a cooperative purchase.

If you're considering Richard Meier on Prospect Park, also evaluate:

• 135 Eastern Parkway (Turner Towers) — the neighborhood's largest prewar cooperative, three blocks east; the tenure alternative
• 10 Plaza Street East — the largest of the Plaza Street cooperatives, on the opposite side of the circle
• 34 Plaza Street East — Plaza Street prewar co-op facing Grand Army Plaza; the direct prewar neighbor
• 41 Eastern Parkway — prewar co-op at the Grand Army Plaza end of the Parkway
• 1 Prospect Park West — condominium conversion at the Plaza's southwest corner; the closest tenure-and-location peer
• 550 Vanderbilt Avenue — the only condominium in Pacific Park; the newer full-service alternative in Prospect Heights
• 700 Pacific Street (Newswalk) — the neighborhood's large loft conversion, for buyers weighing volume against amenity
• 11 Hoyt Street — Downtown Brooklyn's amenity-tier condominium benchmark
• 50 Bridge Park Drive (Quay Tower) — Brooklyn Bridge Park's trophy condominium; the borough's park-view price ceiling