128 Willow Street
128 Willow Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn
BBL 3002340059 · BIN 3001767
- Year built
- 1925
- Type
- Cooperative
- Units
- 33
- Floors
- 6
- Landmark
- Designated
- Subletting
- Board application required; formal sublet application exists (offering plan documents)
- Washer / dryer
- Central laundry; in-unit subject to alteration policy
- Pets
- Written permission of corporation required, revocable (house rules filed with offering plan)
Compiled by The Roebling Research Desk from the building’s offering plan, amendments, and related building documents (primary source dated 1981 plan documents). Reported and subject to confirmation. Board policies can change by amendment — confirm at the offer stage.
Every recorded sale at this building, 2004–2025
Bedroom-by-bedroom medians, the full transfer record, and how units trade against ask.
- 2BR median
- $1.3M
- Recent range
- $830K – $3.2M
- Listing discount
- 0.4%
- Recorded transfers
- 47
Own an apartment here? See what it would sell for.
A Private Pricing Opinion — what your apartment at 128 Willow 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.
Willow Street is the Heights' showpiece block — the Federal and Greek Revival row that anchors every walking tour of the district — and 128 Willow is the street's Gothic-dressed apartment house. Built in 1925 on the west side of the street between Clark and Pierrepont, the six-story cooperative is the work of Slee & Bryson, the Brooklyn firm that Brownstoner's architectural history calls the borough's arbiters of Colonial and Tudor taste. John Slee and Robert Bryson practiced from Montague Street a few blocks away, produced upwards of a thousand buildings across Brooklyn between 1905 and the late 1930s, and closed their career with the Appellate Division courthouse on Monroe Place — which still sits two blocks from this building. 128 Willow is core Slee & Bryson territory: a sturdy brick apartment house for the Heights' growing professional class, dressed in the firm's Tudor-Gothic vocabulary rather than the Colonial Revival they deployed elsewhere.
LPC records carry the style simply as Gothic, and the label matters. Among the Heights' 1920s apartment layer — mostly red-brick houses with Renaissance or Georgian trim — a collegiate Gothic front is a genuine rarity, and it earns the building its place in the district's fabric alongside the rowhouses rather than in spite of them. The building has been protected since November 23, 1965, when Brooklyn Heights became New York City's first designated historic district, so the façade buyers see today is the façade the corporation is obligated to keep.
The cooperative dates to the Heights' great conversion wave. Willowway Associates — a partnership led by Robert J. Ettinger — first offered the plan on May 19, 1981, with Alexander Wolf & Company as managing agent at conversion. The plan offered 34 apartments plus the superintendent's basement unit, and its house rules are a period piece of prewar co-op governance that still frames the building's policy defaults: pets only by written, revocable permission; carpeting over at least 80 percent of floor areas; window air-conditioners only with approval; sublets through board application. Current policy on each point should be confirmed at offer stage, but the framework is that of a conventionally governed small Heights co-op.
Architecture and unit composition
The building is a six-story elevator house over a full basement. Department of Finance records carry 33 residential units against the plan's 34-plus-super configuration — a one-unit gap most plausibly explained by a post-conversion apartment combination, and worth reconciling against the share ledger during diligence. The plan's Schedule A organizes the building into lettered lines with share allocations in the 600s for the A-line tier, and distinguishes the line structure floor by floor; as in any co-op of this vintage, the share allocation is the honest measure of relative apartment scale. Line-by-line layouts and share loads are maintained in The Roebling Research Library and shared with clients during diligence.
Interiors follow the 1920s Heights template — foyer entries, separated kitchens, prewar room proportions — at the compact-to-middle scale typical of the six-story tier rather than the grand layouts of the Pierrepont Street elevator houses. The building's position gives west-side apartments the deep-lot quiet of the Willow/Columbia Heights block interior, one block from the Clark Street entrance to the Promenade.
Building operations
128 Willow Apartments Corp. operates the building with an elevator, central laundry, and a live-in superintendent — the standard service package for the Heights' six-story co-op tier, without doorman staffing. The conversion-era service contracts disclosed in the plan (elevator maintenance, laundry concession) describe the operating model that persists in buildings of this class. The corporation's audited financials run in an unbroken series through the 2010s in The Roebling Research Library; current management, financials, and any assessment history should be reviewed during diligence, and The Roebling Team remains the contact of record for transaction questions.
Policy framework
Pets: The house rules filed with the offering plan permit birds and animals only with the corporation's written permission, expressly revocable; dogs must be carried or leashed in public areas. Confirm current practice at offer stage.
Subletting: Sales and sublets require compliance with the proprietary lease and board process; the corporation maintains a formal sublet application. Confirm current term limits and fees at offer stage.
Alterations: Work runs through the corporation's alteration agreement with architect review; window air-conditioners and any exterior-touching work require approval, and Landmarks Preservation Commission jurisdiction applies to regulated fabric.
Carpeting: The house rules require noise-reducing floor covering over at least 80 percent of most rooms — a standard prewar rule buyers planning bare-floor renovations should note.
Local Law 97
- 2024–2029 annual penalty
- $0 (under cap)
- 2030–2034 annual penalty
- $20,049/yr
- Per unit / month range
- $0 – $51
Source: NYC LL84 benchmarking and PLUTO · The Roebling Research Library. City record last verified September 2026.
See full Local Law 97 analysis — emissions history, scenarios, methodology →Facade safety — Local Law 11
The latest available filing classified the facade as SWARMP — Safe With A Repair and Maintenance Program: the engineer identified conditions requiring monitoring or repair before the next inspection cycle. The scope, timeline, and how the building funds the work are building-specific — we review the filings and board materials for you.
How to read this, and where it comes from
QEWI = Qualified Exterior Wall Inspector — the licensed engineer the city requires to sign the report (the independent expert, not the managing agent).
Penalties shown are amounts DOB assessed against filings on record across 2005–10 to 2020–25. The FISP dataset does not record whether they were paid, contested or remain open, so treat the figure as history rather than a current balance and confirm the building’s standing with the managing agent.
Source: NYC DOB facade filings (FISP) · The Roebling Research Library. City record last verified September 2026.
Recent sales
Recent transfers at this building, curated by The Roebling Team research desk. 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.
| Date | Unit | Apartment | Price | vs. Ask |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 23, 2025 | 4F | 2 BR · 1 BA | $1,150,000 | -3.8% |
| Sep 10, 2025 | 1B | 3 BR · 2 BA | $2,600,000 | -7.0% |
| Aug 22, 2025 | 6B | 3 BR · 3 BA | $3,175,000 | -0.8% |
| Oct 7, 2024 | 4A | 3 BR · 2 BA | $3,100,000 | +8.8% |
| Aug 13, 2024 | 3CD | 3 BR · 2 BA | $2,395,000 | +0.0% |
| Jul 1, 2024 | 3F | 2 BR · 1 BA | $1,300,000 | +0.0% |
| May 20, 2024 | 1E | 1 BR · 1 BA | $830,000 | -10.3% |
| May 17, 2023 | 5D | 2 BR · 2 BA | $1,750,000 | +0.0% |
Market read. $/sf is measured on the latest sales with reliable square footage (2009): a median $667/sf across 1 sale. The building has traded as recently as 2025. Median listing discount 1.3% from the last ask — a recurring negotiation gap worth pricing into any offer or listing strategy.
The retrade record
Lines that have traded more than once in the public record — the building’s appreciation arc, apartment by apartment.
Full closing history with price-per-square-foot over time, the complete retrade record, and every line that has traded.
Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 3-00234-0059) 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
The block is the premium. Willow between Clark and Pierrepont is among the two or three most photographed streetscapes in Brooklyn. You are buying the district's core fabric, one block from the Promenade, with the Clark Street 2/3 station three blocks east.
Read the house rules before the board package. The pet-permission, carpeting, and alteration frameworks date to the 1981 plan and remain the governing defaults. None is unusual; all are enforceable.
Reconcile the unit count. Public records and the plan differ by one unit (33 versus 34 plus super). The share ledger answers the question; ask for it.
Underwrite like a small co-op. Thirty-odd shareholders carry the building's capital program, and a landmark-district masonry façade carries recurring LL11 work at preservation-grade standards. Review reserves and the assessment history.
What to know if you’re selling
Market the architecture by name. Slee & Bryson carries genuine recognition among Brooklyn-literate buyers, and the Gothic façade separates the building from every red-brick peer in the district. The Appellate courthouse connection is a closing-table story worth telling.
Anchor pricing to the rowhouse-block co-op set. Willow, Columbia Heights, and the quiet Pierrepont cross-blocks are the comparables; Montague corridor buildings price on different fundamentals.
Have the governance file ready. Buyers' attorneys will ask for financials, the alteration agreement, and the sublet framework. The building's long, orderly document trail is an asset — use it.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering 128 Willow Street, also evaluate:
- 135 Willow Street — the large prewar co-op diagonally opposite; more units, same block prestige
- 115 Willow Street — 39-unit prewar co-op across the street
- 149 Willow Street — boutique 20-unit co-op toward Pierrepont
- 35 Pierrepont Street — Freehof's 1929 nine-story co-op around the corner; the staffed-building step up
- 1 Pierrepont Street — prewar co-op at the Promenade end of the same block
- 129 Columbia Heights — prewar co-op on the waterfront-facing spine one block west
- 15 Clark Street — the 1904 corner co-op at the north end of the block; earlier vintage, larger classic layouts
- 160 Columbia Heights — prewar co-op with Promenade proximity
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.
How to read the facts on this page. Items attributed to an offering plan describe the building as it was offered at that filing — unit mix, square footage, the amenity program as planned. They are not a statement about how the building operates today. Tax and compliance figures are sourced separately to current City records and carry their own dates. House rules, staffing and fee policy can change by board resolution without any public filing: treat every policy line here as a starting point for diligence and confirm it with the managing agent. Where this page compares one building or neighborhood to another, that is our analysis of the recorded record — it names the measure, the period and the sample it rests on, and it is an observation about medians rather than a prediction about any particular apartment.
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