149 Willow Street
149 Willow Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn
BBL 3002350015 · BIN 3001786
- Year built
- 1889
- Type
- Cooperative
- Units
- 20
- Floors
- 5
- Landmark
- Designated
- Subletting
- Contemplated and administered — the corporation maintains a formal sublet application; terms and board limits not documented
- Pets
- Permissive by prewar standards: building rules state lessees may keep birds and animals so long as they do not jeopardize health or safety of other residents and are not allowed to roam free in public areas. No written-permission or revocable-consent requirement
Compiled by The Roebling Research Desk from the building’s offering plan, amendments, and related building documents (primary source dated 1982 plan documents). Reported and subject to confirmation. Board policies can change by amendment — confirm at the offer stage.
Willow Street is the Heights block people picture when they picture the Heights, and 149 sits in its middle stretch between Clark and Pierrepont. The building is Victorian — 1889, attributed by the LPC to J. S. Glover and catalogued in its Eclectic-Romanesque style field, with a brick-and-stone front and wood bay windows — and it is one of a handful of nineteenth-century structures on the street that became apartments rather than staying single-family.
That transformation has a date. The consulting engineer who inspected the property for the 1982 offering plan pulled the Building Department file and reported that a complete rehabilitation was finished on July 31, 1942, creating twenty rental units with new electrical, plumbing, heating and kitchen systems. So the shell is Victorian and the apartment plan is wartime — twenty flats, four to a floor, in a building that had not been laid out that way before. The 1889 detail that survives is inside individual apartments rather than in the common areas, and Brownstoner's coverage of resales here has repeatedly turned on exactly that: mantels and stained glass in units that were never stripped.
The ownership history is unusually continuous. Malcolm Brill and David Tishman bought the property in 1940, did the rehab, and held it as tenants in common for forty-two years before offering the cooperative plan in March 1982. It was an eviction plan — the harder-edged conversion form New York effectively retired later that decade — presented to a fully occupied building of five rent-controlled and fifteen rent-stabilized tenancies, with the statutory carve-out for senior and disabled tenants. Insiders could buy at $449.10 a share; a Willow Street apartment cost between $18,000 and $26,100. Nine years later the sponsor still held about 32 percent of the shares as unsold, by which point he no longer controlled the board.
What that leaves for a buyer today is a twenty-unit shareholder corporation on one of the best blocks in Brooklyn, with a small elevator, a rear yard attached to two ground-floor apartments, and a rulebook that reads like it was written by people who expected to do some of the work themselves.
Architecture and unit composition
Five stories of 1889 brick and stone above a basement, with the Romanesque-era bay windows still carrying the front elevation. The interior is a 1942 plan: one interior stairway serving four apartments per floor in A, B, C and D lines, a single small elevator, and refuse chutes to a basement compactor.
The elevator deserves specific mention because it shapes the experience of the building. The 1982 engineering report describes a Burvak Elevator Company installation with a five-horsepower motor and a cab measuring roughly five feet by three — genuinely small, and old at the time of the report. Whether and when it was modernized is a first-order diligence question; ask for the elevator's inspection and capital history alongside the financials.
Unit composition is even by prewar standards. All twenty apartments carry similar share counts, and the plan priced C- and D-line units above comparably sized A- and B-line units for a specific reason: Units 1C and 1D hold exclusive use of the rear yard. At conversion those two apartments were rented to the same tenant and had been physically consolidated into one unit, with the sponsor agreeing to correct the certificate of occupancy before closing. Any buyer looking at the ground floor should confirm the current legal configuration and the yard right in writing.
Building operations
149 Willow Street Owners Corp. has run the building since the 1982-era closing, and it runs lean: a superintendent line in the budget, a small elevator, a compactor, and twenty shareholders. There is no doorman, no laundry room documented in the conversion materials, and no amenity program.
Two operating features are worth understanding before making an offer. The shareholder-task rule — the board's authority to assign maintenance work among lessees on an equitable basis and bill the cost of hiring it out to whoever failed to do it — is a real provision in the building rules, and it signals a building that has historically expected participation. And the corporation carried an unusually long amendment history during the sponsor's wind-down, nineteen amendments across nine years, which makes the plan file thick and worth having your attorney read rather than skim.
For an 1889 masonry building in a historic district, the recurring capital items are the façade under the FISP/LL11 cycle, the bay windows and cornice, the roof, and the elevator. The co-op's financial statements in The Roebling Research Library support trend review on maintenance growth, assessments and reserve practice.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Dec 29, 2025 | 5D | $1,050,000 |
| Oct 21, 2024 | 4B | $999,000 |
| Jul 10, 2024 | 2CD | $2,495,000 |
| Apr 18, 2022 | 3B | $999,000 |
| May 10, 2019 | 4A | $716,500 |
| May 7, 2019 | 1B | $635,000 |
Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 3-00235-0015) 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
Read the plan file, not just the plan. Nineteen amendments across the sponsor's wind-down means the operative terms may sit in an amendment rather than the original document. Your attorney should work the whole file.
Ask about the elevator. The 1982 engineering report described a very small, very old cab. Confirm what has been modernized and when, and whether a capital project is pending.
Confirm the ground-floor configuration. Units 1C and 1D were consolidated at conversion with a certificate-of-occupancy correction promised by the sponsor. If you are buying on the ground floor, verify the current legal unit and the rear-yard right in writing.
The pet rule is a real advantage. The building rules permit animals without a written-permission regime. If pets matter to you, confirm the board still reads the rule that way — and price the flexibility in.
Expect a participatory building. Twenty shareholders, lean staffing, and a rule authorizing assigned maintenance tasks. That is a feature for some buyers and a deal-breaker for others.
What to know if you’re selling
Name the building's dates precisely. 1889 by J. S. Glover, rebuilt into apartments in 1942, converted in 1982. Specificity is credibility, and most Willow Street listings offer none of it.
Photograph the original detail first. Mantels and stained glass are what this building's resale record turns on. If your apartment has them, they lead.
If you have the yard, lead with the yard. Exclusive outdoor space on a Willow Street ground floor is a category of one or two in the whole building.
Surface the pet policy. A prewar Heights co-op that permits animals without a permission regime narrows nothing and widens your buyer pool. Say so in the listing.
Price against the small Willow Street and Columbia Heights set. Those are the comparables — not the district's full-service elevator buildings with heavier maintenance.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering 149 Willow Street, also evaluate:
- 115 Willow Street — small prewar co-op on the same block; the closest street comparable
- 128 Willow Street — Slee & Bryson's 1925 co-op directly across the way
- 135 Willow Street — larger Willow Street co-op with a fuller service model
- 129 Columbia Heights — small prewar co-op one street west, on the Promenade side
- 160 Columbia Heights — full-service prewar co-op peer near the harbor edge
- 87 Hicks Street — 1889 walk-up co-op of similar vintage and scale two blocks east
- 35 Pierrepont Street — moderate-scale prewar co-op at the corner of the block
- 1 Pierrepont Street — prewar co-op at the Promenade end of Pierrepont
- 15 Clark Street — prewar elevator co-op two blocks north at the express station
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.
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