138 Pierrepont Street (The Brooklyn Trust Company Building)

The building occupies a through-block site with its principal Montague Street elevation at Clinton, its long flank on Clinton Street, and its Pierrepont Street frontage at the rear — which is where the residential entrance sits, deliberately separated from the banking hall. The structural system is masonry load-bearing walls with steel beams and concrete-encased steel framing, and the section is unusual: a cellar and six levels comprising the ground floor, two mezzanines, and floors 2, 3, and 4. That section is why the Department of Finance counts four stories while the declaration counts six levels, and it is why unit designations run 2A on the first residential floor through 6L and 6M at the top.

The residences are large and few. Twelve run from roughly 2,270 to 3,090 square feet, configured as three-, four-, and five-bedroom apartments; a thirteenth unit is 514 square feet. Ceiling conditions vary meaningfully floor to floor, as they do in any conversion of a building designed around a double-height banking room and its mezzanines, and three of the residences are duplexes. Because the plan is not repetitive, comparables inside the building are scarce — an important pricing fact in a thirteen-unit condominium.

Everything visible from the street is governed twice: by the Landmarks Preservation Commission under the 1996 individual designation, and by the New York Landmarks Conservancy under the 2009 easement, which requires the Conservancy's approval for changes to exterior color, appearance, alteration, or reconstruction, and applies the Secretary of the Interior's Standards for Rehabilitation to that review. Window replacement is treated in the easement as maintenance so long as materials, colors, and workmanship substantially match — a meaningful practical carve-out, and one worth confirming before any unit-level window project.

The condominium is small, staffed, and structurally mixed-use. The residential common elements are enumerated tightly in the declaration: a dedicated residential elevator with its shaft and machine room, the Pierrepont Street vestibule, hallway and lobby, the corridors and stairs serving the residences, a ground-floor bicycle storage room, a pet spa, a common washer and dryer, a staff bathroom, and the fourth-floor amenity suite — owners' lounge, teen room, children's room, exercise room, and terrace. A sidewalk lift in the Clinton Street vault handles deliveries and service.

Two structural features deserve a buyer's attention. The first is the commercial unit: it holds the ground-floor banking hall and part of the cellar, it is not part of the residential offering, and residential unit owners have no interest in its rents. Its tenant's lease runs to 2037 with four ten-year options, and the declaration's use restrictions expressly do not bind that lease. Ask how the commercial unit's common-charge share and its consent rights are structured, because in a fourteen-unit condominium with one very large commercial unit, that allocation drives residential budgets.

The second is the plan's sponsor provisions. At the time of the offering the sponsor was not limited in its ability to rent rather than sell unsold units, and was required to sell only fifteen percent to declare the plan effective — a special risk disclosed in the plan itself and one that, a decade on, should be tested against the current ownership roster rather than assumed away. Ask for the sponsor's remaining holdings, the owner-occupancy percentage, and any resulting lender overlay before you rely on financing terms.

Beyond that, the ordinary questions apply with unusual force because the building is a century old and unusually ornate: the current reserve balance, the FISP/Local Law 11 cycle status, the terrace membrane and pavers on the fourth floor, elevator condition, and any Conservancy or LPC filings open on the exterior.

Recent sales

Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 3-00244-7502) 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.

You are buying into three layers of preservation control. Individual landmark designation, interior landmark designation, and a perpetual Conservancy easement all bear on the exterior. That fixes the building's appearance permanently, and it lengthens the approval path for anything you want to change that is visible from the street.

Understand the commercial unit before you underwrite the common charges. A bank on a lease to 2037 with four renewal options occupies the ground floor and part of the cellar. Its common-interest allocation and its consent rights shape the residential budget in a building this small.

Test the sponsor and owner-occupancy position. The plan permitted the sponsor to rent rather than sell unsold units and to declare effectiveness at fifteen percent. A decade on, the current roster is a lender question as much as a lifestyle one.

Expect scarce internal comparables. Thirteen residences, three duplexes, no repeating floor plan. Your valuation work will lean on the neighborhood, not on the building.

Confirm the fourth-floor amenity and terrace maintenance program. Pavers on pedestals over a roof membrane are a known capital item; ask when the membrane was last addressed and what the reserve holds against it.

Lead with York & Sawyer and the interior landmark. The 1996 exterior-and-interior designation and the 2009 Conservancy easement are documentation no competing Brooklyn Heights listing can produce.

Quantify the floor plate. Square footage in the 2,300-to-3,100 range is the building's scarcest attribute in this market. State it early and support it with the plan's own schedules.

Frame the bank as an asset. A long-term institutional ground-floor tenant on a lease running to 2037 is a stability story for a mixed-use condominium, and buyers who have been burned by empty retail will hear it.

Set expectations on approvals. Buyers planning renovations should understand the LPC and Conservancy path before contract, not after. Transparency here shortens deals.

If you're considering 138 Pierrepont Street, also evaluate:

• 110 Livingston Street — McKim, Mead & White's 1926 Elks clubhouse and Board of Education headquarters, converted to condominium in 2007; the closest Brooklyn Heights peer in landmark-conversion terms
• 75 Livingston Street — Abraham J. Simberg's 1926 neo-Gothic Chamber of Commerce tower, a cooperative since 1981; the other great Downtown Brooklyn institutional conversion
• 20 Henry Street — the Peaks Mason Mints candy-factory condominium conversion; loft-scale living inside the historic district
• 9 College Place (Love Lane Mews) — the mews condominium conversion on the Heights' interior lanes; boutique scale, different architecture
• 1 Clinton Street (One Clinton) — Marvel Architects' condominium tower above the Brooklyn Heights Library; the new-construction alternative two blocks away
• 166 Montague Street — boutique condominium on the same commercial spine
• 205 Hicks Street — small-scale Brooklyn Heights condominium alternative
• 8 Old Fulton Street (Brooklyn City Railroad Company Building) — the landmarked 1861 building converted to an eleven-unit loft cooperative; the neighborhood's other landmark-conversion address
• 1 Main Street (The Clock Tower) — the Gair Building conversion in DUMBO; the borough's other trophy landmark conversion