142 Hicks Street

Five stories over a cellar, 56 feet to the roof, on a mid-block lot with a six-story neighbor to the north at 136 Hicks and a three-story wood-frame house to the south at 146 Hicks. The east-west walls are bearing masonry, twelve inches thick at the exterior, with six- or eight-inch masonry at the public hall and party walls and framed partitions inside the apartments. The rear yard sits to the west, planted with mature trees and enclosed by fencing; the plan reserved its exclusive use to apartment 1B.

The floor plan is close to uniform. Three apartments occupy the first floor; four occupy each floor above, arranged as mirrored pairs about both the north-south and east-west axes. Each apartment as built carried one general living/bedroom, a bathroom, a kitchen, and a reception foyer. The C-line apartments on floors two through four take a larger foyer and an extra bedroom; the fifth-floor C apartment shares the layout without the extra room, and looks out over the flat roof of the rear extension. Apartments 5B and 5C carry lot-line windows over the roof of the wood-frame house to the south, and the D line takes two lot-line windows per floor into the open side court at 136 Hicks — light conditions worth confirming apartment by apartment, since lot-line windows are always contingent on what the neighbor does next.

Because the units are small and the plan repeats, renovation quality and combination history drive value inside the building far more than line position does. Exterior work, windows included, requires LPC approval under the district designation.

Heights Apt. Corp. has run the building since the mid-1980s. The model is the district's smallest workable one: an outside managing agent, part-time superintendence, outside contracts for the elevator and extermination, a cellar with tenant storage bins and building utilities, and a rear yard in private use. The house rules reflect a small self-administered building — occupants take refuse to the curb themselves, the roof is closed, and the carpeting rule is set at 75 percent rather than the usual 80, which for a masonry building with wood-framed floors is a sound noise-control decision rather than a formality.

The capital questions here are the ordinary ones for a 1950s-modernized masonry building of this age: façade and parapet inspection and repair needs, the roof and the retained-but-abandoned incinerator enclosure at the bulkhead, the elevator equipment above the 1958 shaft relocation, and the gas-fired heating and hot-water plant. The offering plan's engineering addendum recorded pointing needs at the elevator machine-room brickwork and cracking in the abandoned incinerator settling chamber as early as 1982; ask management what has been done since, and ask for the current reserve balance and assessment history. FISP applies to buildings higher than six stories; the reported five-story configuration does not establish a filing obligation.

Subletting: Under the plan as filed, consent must come by board resolution, by a majority of the directors in writing, or by written consent or vote of two-thirds of the shareholders, and the plan states plainly that consent may be arbitrarily withheld. Any current written sublet policy postdates the plan; ask for it in writing.

Resale: Board approval in the standard cooperative form.

Noise and carpeting: Quiet hours 11:00 p.m. to 8:00 a.m. weekdays and midnight to 9:00 a.m. weekends; no construction or repair noise outside weekday business hours; at least 75 percent of each apartment's floor area covered by carpet or rug.

Roof: Closed to all occupants under house rule.

Exterior alterations: Window air-conditioning units, ventilators, signage, and aerials all require board approval, and exterior-visible work additionally requires LPC approval.

Pets, flip tax, financing limits, pied-à-terre, washer-dryer: Not documented in the plan or the current house rules. Confirm each with management before you sign.

Recent sales

Recent transfers at this building, from The Roebling Research Library. 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.

Market read. $/sf is measured on the latest sales with reliable square footage (2017): a median $683/sf (recorded) across 1 sale. The building has traded as recently as 2022. Median listing discount 6.4% from the last ask — a recurring negotiation gap worth pricing into any offer or listing strategy.

Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 3-00235-0052). Apartment-level facts (line, condition, asking-price context) curated and cross-verified in The Roebling Research Library. Not all transactions cross-verify with ACRIS records — sponsor and LLC purchases sometimes record at stipulated values rather than market price; square footage on co-ops is not officially recorded, figures shown are approximate.

Buy the apartment, not the average. With nineteen units on a repeating plan, the C line, the garden-right ground floor, and the renovated units are distinct products at distinct prices.

Check the lot-line windows. The D line looks into an open side court at 136 Hicks and the fifth-floor apartments look over a low neighbor to the south. Both are pleasant today and neither is a protected outlook.

Get the current policies in writing. Pets, flip tax, financing minimums, and any current sublet rules all postdate the 1983 plan documents. Management's current answers control.

Budget for a small building's capital math. For this nineteen-apartment building, obtain actual facade, roof, elevator and boiler project estimates and the expense allocation. Size alone does not establish the same costs as a larger building. Ask for the assessment history and reserve balance.

Confirm the 75 percent carpeting rule fits your renovation plan. It is enforceable, and in a wood-framed building it exists for a reason.

Lead with the commute and the block. One block to the Clark Street 2/3, two blocks to the Promenade, inside the historic district. That sentence sells the building.

Name what is unusual about the specific unit. The extra bedroom, the garden right, the corner exposure, the renovation. Buyers in this price band are comparing floor plans, not addresses.

Explain the 1958 rebuild rather than avoiding it. The alteration history and the 1958 certificate of occupancy are clean documentation, and they answer the question every attorney asks about a building with no original plans on file.

Price against the district's small elevator co-ops. The correct comparable set is other sub-50-unit elevator buildings in the historic district, not the full-service Montague corridor.

If you're considering 142 Hicks Street, also evaluate:

• 130 Hicks Street — the 1958 postwar co-op two doors north on the same block face
• 145 Hicks Street (The Mansion House) — the 1935 Colonial Revival co-op directly across Hicks Street; larger and full-service
• 115 Willow Street — Slee & Bryson's 1926 Gothic co-op one street west, converted by its own tenants
• 128 Willow Street — Slee & Bryson's 1925 co-op on the same interior block
• 135 Willow Street — the 1955 postwar co-op with garage, one street west
• 35 Clark Street — George F. Pelham's 1922 co-op at the top of the block
• 15 Clark Street — 1904 corner co-op near the former Hotel St. George
• 35 Pierrepont Street — Freehof's 1929 nine-story co-op at the block's southern cross street
• 151 Joralemon Street — comparable scale in the South Heights, as a walk-up