155 Hicks Street
155 Hicks Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn
BBL 3002360087 · BIN 3001851
- Year built
- 1830
- Type
- Cooperative
- Units
- 10
- Floors
- 4
- Landmark
- Designated
- Flip tax
- Corporate documents authorize a transfer fee not to exceed $500 on board approval of a sale or lease; sponsor and unsold-share transfers exempt. Current practice unconfirmed
- Subletting
- Board approval or, if refused, consent of tenant-shareholders holding at least 75 percent of outstanding shares, per the proprietary lease as filed
- Pets
- No animal without express written permission of the corporation, revocable; dogs carried or leashed in public portions; sponsor could grant original purchasers non-revocable consent
Compiled by The Roebling Research Desk from the building’s offering plan, amendments, and related building documents (primary source dated 1984). Reported and subject to confirmation. Board policies can change by amendment — confirm at the offer stage.
155 Hicks Street is one of the smallest ownership propositions in Brooklyn Heights: fourteen apartments across two adjoining buildings, 1,000 shares in total, run by the people who live there. That scale is the whole story. In a district where most co-op inventory sits in six-story interwar elevator buildings with resident superintendents and formal managing agents, 155-157 Hicks is a shareholder-run house — closer in operating character to a small Willow Street conversion than to the Montague Street corridor's full-service stock.
The architecture underneath it is the district's oldest layer. The Landmarks Preservation Commission's Brooklyn Heights records date 155 Hicks to 1830 and describe it as Federal, crediting David Kimberly as its builder. That places the house within a decade of the Heights' first speculative wave, when the ferry to Manhattan turned the bluff into America's earliest commuter suburb and builders put up brick-fronted houses on the newly cut streets. The adjoining 157 Hicks carries a 1900 date in the same records — a later building absorbed into the same ownership, and eventually into the same cooperative corporation, so that a buyer today is purchasing shares in an entity that owns a Jacksonian-era house and its turn-of-the-century neighbor together.
The conversion paperwork records a specific moment in the Heights' history. David Khteeb and Jehuda Teichman bought the property in 1981 and filed a non-eviction plan on the last day of 1982, at the height of the borough's conversion wave. What the plan shows is a building caught mid-transition: at 155, ten apartments carrying a mix of rent-controlled and rent-stabilized tenancies; at 157, four apartments standing vacant and under rehabilitation, including a six-room duplex that was priced at $250,000 — more than four times the $60,000 asked for the smallest tenanted unit next door. The plan was declared effective in March 1984 on three sales, and the earliest closings recorded in the affidavit ran from $50,000 to $153,000.
Two structural features distinguish the building from its peers. The first is the six indoor parking spaces the sponsor carried into the cooperative as commercial income — genuinely rare in the historic district, where off-street parking is close to unobtainable and where a leased space is a durable, transferable amenity. The second is the self-managed operating model: the conversion budget provided for a visiting superintendent at $75 a month and explicitly contemplated shareholders handling billing, collections, and routine supervision themselves. Four decades on, that model produces low overhead and high shareholder involvement in equal measure, and it is the single most important thing a prospective buyer needs to diligence.
Architecture and unit composition
155 Hicks reads from the street as what it is — a low-scaled Federal-period brick house on a block face otherwise dominated by the Mansion House's 1930s Colonial Revival bulk to the north. Its value is in the block, the light, and the interior volumes rather than in ornament; the LPC's designation of the district in 1965 froze the exterior, and window, door, and façade work runs through the Commission.
The plan's share schedule is the clearest available guide to the apartment mix. At 155, the ten apartments are paired A and B on each level, numbered 1 through 5 — consistent with four stories over a garden floor, though the specific level nomenclature should be checked against the current certificate of occupancy. Share allocations run from 32 shares on the smallest unit to 72 shares on the larger line, a roughly two-to-one spread that maps to studio-and-one-bedroom through two-bedroom scale. At 157, the four apartments are materially larger: three at 95 shares each and the six-room duplex at 125 shares, the single largest block in the corporation. That duplex is the building's headline apartment and will always price on a different curve from the 155 side.
Because shares were allocated in 1982 on "number of rooms, square footage, cubic content, locational factors and additional amenities," and because four decades of alteration have followed, line-to-line comparison inside the building is weaker guidance than it would be in a purpose-built elevator co-op. Inspect the specific apartment.
Building operations
155-157 Hicks Street Housing Corporation has operated the property since the 1984 closing. The conversion-era model was deliberately lean: self-management, a visiting superintendent, no service contracts, oil heat, and a working capital fund of $2,000 against a first-year budget of roughly $67,000. Commercial income came from the six parking spaces; everything else came from maintenance at $64 per share per year.
Buyers should understand what that structure means in practice today. A small, self-managed corporation has no managing agent absorbing capital planning, insurance renewals, or Local Law 11 façade cycles — those land on a volunteer board. The upside is a low expense base and no agent fee; the exposure is that capital events arrive as assessments rather than as line items smoothed across a large reserve. The plan's own special-risk disclosures made that arithmetic explicit at conversion, quantifying four purchase-money mortgage balloons in per-share assessment terms. Those mortgages are long since resolved, but the mechanism is the one that still governs a 14-unit building: capital cost divided by 1,000 shares.
The Roebling Research Library holds the building's offering plan, both early amendments, the proprietary lease and house rules, the bylaws, and audited financial statements running from the late 1990s through 2011 — enough history to trend maintenance growth and capital practice before you sign a contract. For an 1830 masonry structure inside a historic district, façade cycles, roof, and any water-infiltration history are the diligence items that matter most.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Apr 24, 2025 | 3A | $515,000 |
| Mar 23, 2022 | 3B | $750,000 |
| Dec 11, 2019 | 3B | $660,000 |
Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 3-00236-0087) 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
Diligence the self-management model first. A 14-apartment corporation without a managing agent is only as strong as its board's record. Ask for the last several years of financial statements, the assessment history, the insurance placement, and the current Local Law 11 status before you go to contract.
Confirm which building your apartment is in. The plan's narrative and its Schedule A disagree about which address holds ten units and which holds four. Schedule A and city records point the same way; your attorney should verify the specific unit, its share count, and its building against the current ledger.
Ask about the parking. Six indoor spaces in the Heights are a real asset. Find out whether one is available, what it costs, and how transfers are handled.
The sublet standard is strict. Board approval, or a 75 percent shareholder override, is a genuine constraint. Buy this building as a primary residence, not as a flexible asset.
Price the capital exposure per share. In a 1,000-share corporation, a roof or façade campaign is felt immediately. Model it into your carrying cost rather than assuming a reserve will absorb it.
What to know if you’re selling
Lead with the 1830 date and the district. Most Heights listings at this scale are undated and unattributed. A Federal-period house credited to a named builder in the LPC's own district records is a differentiator competitors cannot manufacture.
Position against small co-ops, not elevator buildings. The right comparable set is the district's shareholder-run houses and small conversions. Pricing against Montague-corridor full-service inventory invites the wrong objection.
Turn the low overhead into a number. A light maintenance charge is one of the building's strongest arguments. Present the full monthly carry — maintenance plus taxes plus utilities — rather than letting buyers assume a self-managed building is a liability.
Document the alteration file. In a landmarked house, clean Landmarks and Buildings Department paperwork on any renovation is a price-maker and a closing accelerator.
Market the parking space if one conveys. It is the rarest thing the building owns.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering 155 Hicks Street, also evaluate:
- The Mansion House (145 Hicks Street) — the 1935 Colonial Revival co-op occupying the block front immediately north; the full-service alternative on the same sidewalk
- 142 Hicks Street — small prewar elevator co-op directly across the street; the closest operating comparable
- 130 Hicks Street — moderate-scale Hicks Street co-op two blocks north
- 187 Hicks Street — Hicks Street co-op at the Pierrepont end of the same block
- 87 Hicks Street — small north-Heights co-op with a comparable shareholder-run profile
- 277 Hicks Street — small south-Heights co-op peer
- 8 Old Fulton Street (Brooklyn City Railroad Company Building) — eleven-unit landmark co-op; the boutique-scale alternative at the foot of the Heights
- 135 Willow Street — Willow Street co-op in the district's quietest quarter
- 15 Clark Street — prewar co-op two blocks north on the Clark Street corridor
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