148 Henry Street

A brick row house of 1840, three and a half stories, twenty-five feet wide on a ninety-two-and-a-half-foot lot, with a building footprint about fifty-two feet deep. The rear forty feet of the lot is open yard. Because the stoop is gone, the entry sits at or near grade rather than at a raised parlor floor, which changes both the street reading and the internal floor sequence — the old basement is now a garden-level living floor.

The apartment stock follows from the arithmetic. Twelve homes in a twenty-five-foot-wide house means small, efficient plans: studios, junior ones, and one-bedrooms, with the largest apartments most likely at the garden and top levels where the floor plate is least interrupted. Ceiling heights, window openings and light will vary materially by floor in a house of this date, and there is no line structure worth comparing — this is a building where you evaluate the specific apartment and nothing else. Exposures run east to Henry Street and west to the rear yard and the block's interior.

Everything on the exterior — brick, windows, cornice, areaway, ironwork — is regulated fabric under the historic district designation, and the fact that the original details were already removed before 1965 does not exempt the building; it means any restoration or replacement proposal will be reviewed against the Commission's record of what was lost.

148 Henry Street Owners Corp. has run the house since the 1989 closing. HPD's current multiple-dwelling registration names Trezza Management of 224 Pacific Street, Brooklyn, as managing agent — a small Brooklyn firm of the kind that serves most of the district's twelve-apartment corporations. That is a real advantage in diligence: an outside agent means an outside set of books, financial statements prepared to a professional standard, and a single point of contact for the questions that matter.

The financing profile is the item to underwrite first. Public records show a $1 million facility with Flushing Bank in 2016 and an agreement and mortgage recorded July 8, 2021 at a stated consolidated amount of approximately $2.74 million. Underlying debt is shared by every shareholder in proportion to shares, so a $2.74 million consolidated obligation across twelve apartments is a materially different carrying-cost picture from the near-unlevered corporations elsewhere in the district. Ask for the current balance, the rate, the maturity date, and what the 2021 proceeds funded — a façade cycle, a roof, a boiler, or working capital are all plausible and all tell you something different about what comes next.

For an 1840 brick house the recurring capital items are façade and parapet work under FISP/LL11 with Landmarks review attached, roof, party walls, and the age of the plumbing and heating risers. Across twelve small apartments, each of those lands as an assessment rather than as a line item absorbed by scale. Read the reserve balance and assessment history before you read the maintenance figure.

Recent sales

Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 3-00236-0133) 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.

Underwrite the underlying mortgage before anything else. Roughly $2.74 million consolidated across twelve apartments is a real per-share obligation. Get the balance, rate, maturity and use of proceeds in writing.

Assume a walk-up and confirm. No elevator is recorded for this house. On a three-and-a-half-story building that is usually livable, but it should be a known fact rather than an assumption.

Measure the apartment. An average of about 465 square feet per home means the specific plan matters more here than at almost any other building in the district. Verify square footage, ceiling height and window count yourself.

Ask for every current policy in writing. There is no offering plan for this building in our library. Pets, sublets, financing minimums and any flip tax come from the board's current documents, not from a plan file.

The block is the amenity. Love Lane and College Place, the First Presbyterian brownstone, the Clark Street express — the daily-life case for this purchase is made outside the front door.

Lead with 1840 and the LPC record. A documented owner-developer — Rev. Lawson Carter — in the Commission's district file is a pedigree line most Heights listings cannot write, and it costs nothing to state accurately.

Price against the district's small walk-up houses. The comparables are Brooklyn Heights' converted row-house cooperatives, not the staffed elevator buildings on Montague, Remsen and Clark. The maintenance differential is the whole argument.

Have the corporation's financials ready. With an outside managing agent and a substantial underlying mortgage, buyers' attorneys will ask early. Getting the statements and the mortgage terms into the deal room before the first offer prevents a mid-contract renegotiation.

Sell the apartment, not the building. In a twelve-unit house of small plans, renovation quality, light and Landmarks-clean alteration files set the price. Document all three before you list.

If you're considering 148 Henry Street, also evaluate:

• 153 Henry Street — Mortimer E. Freehof's 1928 apartment house directly across Henry Street; the prewar elevator alternative on the same block face
• 160 Henry Street — the 1920s cooperative at the Pierrepont Street corner of the same tax block; built as a co-op rather than converted
• 155 Hicks Street — 1830 house cooperative on the Hicks Street side of the same block; the closest peer in age and scale
• 145 Hicks Street — 1930s apartment cooperative on the same block; the service-model contrast
• 187 Hicks Street — turn-of-the-century elevator cooperative at the block's Pierrepont corner
• 9 College Place (Love Lane Mews) — the converted mews at the interior of the same block
• 123 Henry Street — ten-apartment cooperative a few blocks north on the same street
• 70 Clark Street — postwar elevator cooperative one block north; the full-service comparison
• 151 Joralemon Street — small prewar walk-up cooperative in the southern Heights; the closest operating-model match