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.
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.
Recent sales
The retrade record
Lines that have traded more than once in the public record — the building’s appreciation arc, apartment by apartment.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Oct 28, 2025 | 4F | $1,150,000 |
| Sep 18, 2025 | 1B | $2,600,000 |
| Sep 4, 2025 | 6B | $3,175,000 |
| Oct 18, 2024 | 4A | $3,100,000 |
| Jul 16, 2024 | 804 | $1,300,000 |
| May 29, 2024 | 1E | $830,000 |
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.
Considering a move at 128 Willow 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 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.