123 Henry Street
123 Henry Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn
BBL 3002370033 · BIN 3001892
- Year built
- 1894
- Type
- Cooperative
- Units
- 10
- Floors
- 45
- Landmark
- Designated
- Subletting
- Consent by board resolution, or in writing by a majority of the directors, or by written consent or vote of shareholders holding at least 60% of shares; the plan states consent may be arbitrarily withheld (plan/bylaws as filed 1982)
Compiled by The Roebling Research Desk from the building’s offering plan, amendments, and related building documents (primary source dated 1982 plan as filed). Reported and subject to confirmation. Board policies can change by amendment — confirm at the offer stage.
123 Henry Street is Brooklyn Heights co-op ownership at its smallest and most direct: ten apartments in a twenty-five-foot-wide brick building, four floors and no elevator, on the Henry Street blocks that most people picture when they picture the neighborhood. There is no lobby to speak of, no staff to speak of, and no amenity story. What there is instead is scale — an unusual amount of apartment per shareholder in a building where two hundred shares are divided ten ways, and where the plan's floor-by-floor description shows apartments running the full twenty-five-foot width and roughly forty-eight feet deep on the lower floors.
The conversion history is a compact record of how the Heights became a co-op neighborhood. The sponsor, 1-2-3 Associates, presented the plan on June 15, 1982 as an eviction plan — the harder-edged conversion form New York effectively retired in the reform era. Two months later a first amendment eliminated a $100,000 purchase-money third mortgage, cut the total price from $1,095,000 to $995,000, and dropped projected maintenance from $25.29 to $21.16 per share per month. Then, in October 1983, the property changed hands mid-conversion: title passed to Henry Development Associates, a partnership of eight practicing attorneys, and the third amendment did two consequential things at once. It renamed the apartment corporation Heights Owners Corp., and it made the plan non-eviction — no tenant would be displaced for declining to buy. The same amendment brought the building under Local Law 70, establishing a reserve fund and requiring the sponsor to post every violation of record during the offering.
The plan's small numbers are the period's whole economy in miniature: a superintendent's line of $70 a month for a non-resident, non-union man who cleaned the halls, tended the furnace, and took the cans out, against total projected first-year expenses for the entire building of just over $50,000. Four decades of increases separate those figures from today's, but the operating model — a shareholder-run walk-up with an outside superintendent and no staff on site — is the model the building still runs on.
Architecture and unit composition
The building is twenty-five feet wide and extends roughly forty-eight feet on the lot, set back about five feet from the front lot line, rising four stories over a basement and a cellar to a main roof at approximately forty-five feet. Floor areas run to roughly 1,200 square feet each at the basement, first, and second floors, tightening to about 1,060 square feet at the third and fourth — so the lower apartments are the larger ones. The cellar carries roughly 1,000 square feet and holds the boiler room and accessory storage under the certificate of occupancy.
Construction is Class 3 non-fireproof: brick masonry walls on stone foundations, wood floor and roof beams, with the north wall serving as a party wall. The rear and side elevations are stuccoed, and the windows at conversion were generally steel casement units. The roof is a built-up assembly pitched to a drain, reached by an iron ladder from the fourth-floor stair hall through a small hatch; a metal-and-glass skylight lights the stair hall and two more light the top-floor bathrooms. A brick chimney with a clay flue liner serves the boiler, on a one-pipe steam system with stand-up cast-iron radiators throughout; a second, central chimney once served an incinerator long out of use. Above the rear of the second floor there is a roof area of roughly fifteen by sixteen feet, reached from the third-floor rear apartment — the building's one piece of private outdoor space. All of this describes the building as inspected at conversion; four decades of shareholder capital work sit between that report and today, and current conditions should be confirmed from the co-op's own records.
Building operations
Heights Owners Corp. has run the building since the mid-1980s closing, on the small-building model: a superintendent who is not resident, shareholder attention in place of staff, and a managing arrangement under which routine expenditures below a modest threshold could be made without board approval while anything larger required the directors. In a ten-unit corporation with two hundred shares, every capital decision is a meaningful per-shareholder number. For a masonry building of this age inside the historic district, the recurring items are the expected ones — façade and FISP cycles, roof, windows, and the steam plant — and exterior work of any kind engages the Landmarks Preservation Commission. The Roebling Research Library holds the plan, its amendments, the bylaws, the house rules, the proprietary lease, and the corporation's tax filings for client diligence.
Recent sales
Recent transfers at this building, sourced from NYC Department of Finance records. Apartment-level detail (line, condition, asking-price context) verified upon consultation request.
| Date | Unit | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Jul 5, 2022 | 2B | $515,000 |
| Mar 19, 2021 | 2C | $550,000 |
| Sep 17, 2015 | D1/D2 | $800,000 |
| Aug 1, 2013 | 2A | $655,000 |
Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 3-00237-0033) 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.
What to know if you’re buying
Check the proprietary lease expiration. The lease as filed runs to the end of 2031. Confirm in writing that shareholders have extended it; a lender will require this.
Price the walk-up honestly. Four floors, no elevator, and the larger apartments at the bottom. That is a real resale factor and should be priced in rather than argued away.
Ask for the capital history. In a ten-unit corporation, one façade cycle or boiler replacement is a substantial per-shareholder number. Get the assessment history, reserve balance, and any planned work before you bid.
Confirm current policy in writing. Sublet rules, pets, and financing standards postdate the 1982 papers; management's current answers control.
What to know if you’re selling
Sell the apartment, not the building. With ten units and no amenities, the listing lives or dies on the apartment's light, layout, and renovation. Photograph and document accordingly.
Lead with the block. Henry between Clark and Pierrepont is the middle of the historic district, two blocks from the Promenade and close to the Clark Street express. That address does work no feature list can substitute for.
Have the co-op's file ready. Small buildings invite scrutiny. A clean package — plan, amendments, current financials, reserve position, lease-extension documentation — removes the friction that most often stalls small-co-op deals.
Comp against the district's small walk-ups. The right set is the ten-to-fifteen-unit prewar buildings on the Henry, Hicks, and Willow Street blocks, not the Montague corridor's staffed elevator co-ops.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering 123 Henry Street, also evaluate:
- 21 Monroe Place — a ten-unit co-op on the same tax block, converted two years later; the closest direct comparable in the district
- 153 Henry Street — the large prewar elevator co-op on the same block; the service-and-scale alternative
- 161 Henry Street — turn-of-the-century co-op on the same block, at a middle scale
- 108 Pierrepont Street — ten-unit Greek Revival house co-op one block south; the house-scale peer
- 99 Clinton Street — ten-unit mid-nineteenth-century co-op on Clinton Street
- 160 Henry Street — prewar elevator co-op further south on Henry
- 145 Hicks Street — large prewar co-op one block west
- 15 Clark Street — prewar co-op at the Clark Street corner
- 20 Pierrepont Street — small prewar co-op peer on Pierrepont
The full playbook — what goes in the package, how boards read your financials, the interview, and the timeline — plus sample cover, reference, and personal letters you can adapt.
Considering a move at 123 Henry Street?
Request a private building brief with the relevant comparable sales, current and off-market availability, and an apartment-specific view of value.
Own an apartment here? See what it would sell for.
A Private Pricing Opinion — what your apartment at 123 Henry Street would likely sell for today, what it costs to sell, and what you’d walk away with — reviewed personally against condition, exposures, renovation quality, and the competition actually on the market.