10 Montague Terrace

Roberts's house reads as Neo-Grec with Italianate and Queen Anne detail — flat window hoods, a heavy dentilled cornice, and the massing of a freestanding merchant's residence rather than a row house. The stoop that once climbed to a piano-nobile entrance came down after 1940, lowering the entry and changing the street reading; the gardens on three sides survive and are, in co-op terms, the building's scarcest asset.

The apartment stock is unusual in every respect. The 1985 Schedule A ran from one-and-a-half-room studios through five-and-a-half-room homes, with an elevator serving the house and outdoor rights allocated by line rather than shared. Since then the trend has been consolidation: city records carry sixteen units against the eighteen offered, and recent coverage describes thirteen, with one garden-floor apartment documented as a combination of three original flats running to two kitchens, four entrances, two wood-burning fireplaces, and a private garden with a pond. Comparing apartments here by line number is close to meaningless; light, level, garden or deck rights, and the state of the original woodwork are what separate them.

One more piece of the ledger belongs in diligence. The plan originally carried apartment 1A as a professional unit with no shares, held by the corporation subject to a thirty-year lease to the sponsor. By the eighth amendment the share total had been restated to 2,406 and then to 2,496, adding 90 shares for 1A when the certificate of occupancy was amended to make it residential and the sponsor surrendered the lease in exchange for the right to sell it. Any share-count question here runs against the amendments, not the original plan. Exterior work, windows included, runs through the LPC.

10 Montague Terrace Owners Corp. has run the house since 1986 on the small-building model: an elevator under a maintenance contract, a cellar laundry, common areas limited to the halls, front yard, stoop, and cellar, and a board that governs closely because there are only a dozen or so shareholders to govern. Recent coverage describes the building as self-managed, which is common at this scale in the Heights and worth confirming directly. The corporation's audited financial statements in The Roebling Research Library begin in 1999, supporting trend-level diligence on maintenance growth, capital practice, and assessment history — the right lens for a building where a single façade or roof cycle is a large share of the annual budget. For an 1870s masonry structure inside the historic district, FISP/LL11 work and the condition of the original window openings are the recurring capital items.

Recent sales

Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 3-00208-0501) and verified listing data. Apartment-level facts (line, condition, asking-price context) curated and cross-verified by The Roebling Team research desk. Not all transactions cross-verify with ACRIS records — sponsor and LLC purchases sometimes record at stipulated values rather than market price.

Reconcile the share ledger first. Eighteen apartments offered in 1985, sixteen in city records, thirteen in current coverage, and a share total restated twice by amendment.

Outdoor rights are assigned, not shared. Garden, deck, and roof rights attach to particular apartments under the plan. If outdoor space is part of why you are buying, verify it is part of what you are buying.

This is a converted house. Layouts are idiosyncratic, ceiling heights and window openings vary by floor, and the original finishes are both the appeal and the maintenance obligation.

Ask for policy in writing. Sublet terms, pets, financing minimums, and any flip tax postdate the plan documents; the board's current answers control.

Underwrite the capital cycle at small-building scale. With roughly a dozen shareholders, a façade or roof project lands hard on every line.

Lead with the house. Sanger mansion, Roberts design, the Promenade at the corner, the gardens, the original cherry and maple joinery — this listing competes with Heights townhouses, and the marketing should say so.

Use the cultural record carefully. "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" was written under this roof and The Sentinel was filmed here in 1977. Both are documented and memorable; neither should carry the pricing argument alone.

Sell the apartment, not the line. Where no two homes match, floor plans, light studies, and honest photography of the original detail do more than building-level positioning.

Have the amendment file ready. Buyers' attorneys will ask how the share count moved from 3,075 to 2,496 and what happened to apartment 1A.

If you're considering 10 Montague Terrace, also evaluate:

• 1 Pierrepont Street — Caughey & Evans's 1924 co-op at the harbor end of Pierrepont; the tall-building alternative on the same edge
• 62 Montague Street — Montrose W. Morris's 1888 apartment house at the Montague Terrace corner; the block's nineteenth-century neighbor
• 1 Grace Court — boutique 1920s co-op at the end of a cul-de-sac above the bluff; the same quiet-street premium
• 19 Grace Court — Sugarman & Berger's 1925 co-op on the same cul-de-sac
• 65 Montague Street — interwar elevator co-op at the Promenade end of Montague; the value alternative
• 68 Remsen Street — H. I. Feldman's 1929 co-op one block east on Remsen
• 129 Columbia Heights — Frank L. Lowe's 1907 Beaux-Arts co-op on the bluff
• 8 Old Fulton Street (Brooklyn City Railroad Company Building) — 1861 building converted to lofts in 1975; the district's other very small, very old co-op
• 128 Willow Street — Slee & Bryson's 1925 co-op; boutique prewar peer in the north Heights