134 Remsen Street
134 Remsen Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn
BBL 3002540078 · BIN 3002237
- Year built
- 1861
- Type
- Cooperative
- Units
- 10
- Floors
- 57
- Landmark
- Designated
- Subletting
- Up to 18 months in any continuous five-year period measured from the first day of the sublet; a new five-year period may begin only after a full year has elapsed since the prior sublet ended; every sublet, renewal or extension requires board authorization under Section 15 of the proprietary lease. Policy effective July 1, 1997
- Pets
- No bird or animal may be kept or harbored without express written permission of the corporation, revocable at any time; dogs must be carried or on leash in all public portions of the building; feeding animals from windows, yard, courts, public portions, sidewalk or street is prohibited
Compiled by The Roebling Research Desk from the building’s offering plan, amendments, and related building documents (primary source dated July 1, 1997 (sublet); house rules undated in the archived copy). Reported and subject to confirmation. Board policies can change by amendment — confirm at the offer stage.
The first thing to understand about 134 Remsen Street is that it is half of something. The cooperative corporation is 13438 Homes Corp., and it owns two buildings — 134–136 Remsen and 138 Remsen — as a single legal and financial entity. Buy an apartment at 134 and you are buying shares in both houses: one board, one budget, one reserve, one mortgage, one façade program across two brownstone fronts. That is the first thing a buyer's attorney should read the paperwork for.
The house itself is Anglo-Italianate, dated 1861 in the LPC's district file — the low-stoop, English-basement idiom that filled in the Heights just before the Civil War, after the Greek Revival houses at the Hicks Street end of Remsen and before the mansard work of the 1870s. What survives on the front is genuinely good: a brownstone façade with carved ornamental stone bordering the windows on the first, second, and third floors. What does not survive is the top. In 1946 the owners filed two identical alteration applications — 4007 and 4088 — that stripped the dormers, raised the front portion of the roof to create a full penthouse story in red brick above the brownstone, and cut both houses into twenty small apartments. New certificates of occupancy issued October 9, 1947. The entrances went down with the alteration: today you reach them by three concrete steps below street grade.
That 1946–47 conversion is why 134 Remsen contains ten apartments and only eighteen residential rooms. These are the smallest apartments on Remsen Street by a wide margin — studios and one-bedrooms in a district whose co-op stock is dominated by prewar twos and threes — and that scale is the building's market identity: one of the least expensive ways to own inside New York City's first historic district.
The cooperative arrived in 1982, sponsored by Irving and Sidney Bassuk through Bassuk Brothers, Inc. of Jamaica, at $675,000 in cash for 5,010 shares plus $300,000 of mortgage indebtedness. It was an eviction plan — the harder-edged form New York effectively retired in the reform era — carrying the statutory carve-outs for senior citizens and eligible disabled persons; eighteen of the nineteen offered apartments were occupied at presentation, all rent-stabilized. The plan's special-risk disclosure flagged a $300,000 balloon due eight years after closing. That cycle is long past, but the point stands: this corporation has always been financed rather than debt-free, and the debt is shared across two buildings.
Architecture and unit composition
The structure is Class III non-fireproof ordinary construction — brick and stone foundation, two-by-eight wood floor beams roughly 16 inches on center, brick exterior walls with the decorative finish carried on the front elevation, sprinklers throughout, and a stair enclosure that is fire-resistant though the stair itself is not. The 1982 engineer found the building structurally sound, with pointing required in places and repair needed to the brownstone façade, particularly around the windows — then original wood frames in two-over-two, one-over-one, and six-over-one patterns, a mixed inventory typical of a house re-fenestrated over a century.
Inside 134–136, the basement holds two apartments and each of the first through fourth floors holds two more. Ten apartments and eighteen rooms means most units are one- or two-room homes; conversion share allocations run from 150 for the smallest to 350 for the largest, the clearest available guide to relative size. Front apartments face Remsen Street, rear apartments the block interior, and the penthouse-floor units sit inside the 1946 roof raise. Evaluate the specific apartment; there are no repeating lines here.
Building operations
13438 Homes Corp. runs both buildings from one budget, which doubles the diligence set: ask for the combined financial statements, the schedule of any assessments and how they were allocated between the two houses, the reserve balance, and the current mortgage terms. The corporation's annual tax letter is a useful window on scale — for 2005 it reported real estate taxes of $54,260 and interest of $13,494 across the corporation, allocating $10.048 per share of tax and $2.500 per share of interest as shareholder deductions, and treating $2.115 per share as a capital contribution. Flag that last line to your accountant; it affects basis on a future sale.
There is no elevator and no staff beyond the superintendent, who occupies apartment 1B at 138 Remsen. The 1982 report recommended pouring a reinforced slab where the cellar lacked one and adding a railing to the main-roof parapet; ask whether both were done. Two brownstone façades and a raised 1946 roofline across two adjoining buildings is the recurring capital story, and all of it runs through the LPC.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Feb 27, 2024 | 4B | $878,000 |
| May 26, 2022 | 3AB | $1,999,995 |
| Apr 15, 2019 | 2A | $796,000 |
| Apr 15, 2019 | 2B | $1,045,000 |
| Feb 8, 2016 | 4B | $500,000 |
| Jun 29, 2015 | 3AB | $1,800,000 |
Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 3-00254-0078) 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
You are buying into two buildings. 13438 Homes Corp. owns 134–136 and 138 Remsen together. Read the combined financials and the assessment history for both houses before you value the apartment.
The 18-months-in-five-years sublet rule is the operative limit. More permissive than the strictest Heights co-ops, stricter than most condos. If a rental period matters, map it against the policy precisely.
Pets need written, revocable permission. Confirm the board's current practice early.
Expect small. Ten apartments and eighteen rooms at 134–136. Check the share allocation — the most reliable proxy for relative size in a building with no repeating lines.
What to know if you’re selling
Lead with the address and the entry price. Brooklyn Heights Historic District, an 1861 brownstone front, and Borough Hall's express trains three blocks away — for the district's most price-sensitive buyer pool, that is the whole pitch.
Explain the corporation up front. The two-building structure surprises buyers who find it in the board package. Disclosing it early, financials in hand, converts a question into a non-issue.
Show the façade work. The 1982 engineer flagged brownstone repair around the windows. Documented restoration since is a selling point; silence invites a discount.
Comp against small-unit walk-ups, not the district's prewar elevator buildings.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering 134 Remsen Street, also evaluate:
- 138 Remsen Street — the other half of the same cooperative corporation
- 149 Willow Street — an 1889 building gut-rehabilitated into apartments in 1942; the closest structural analogue
- 87 Columbia Heights — prewar walk-up co-op with a comparable small-unit mix
- 151 Joralemon Street — 20-unit prewar walk-up converted in the early 1980s
- 87 Hicks Street — small nineteenth-century walk-up cooperative
- 44 Remsen Street — 1844 Greek Revival house, ten apartments, at the Hicks Street end
- 100 Remsen Street — the postwar co-op nearby, for a full-service contrast
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 134 Remsen 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 134 Remsen 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.