159 Lafayette Avenue
159 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11238
Fort Greene, Brooklyn
BBL 3021030062 · BIN 3326231
- Year built
- 1897
- Type
- Cooperative
- Floors
- 5
- Landmark status
- Not an individual landmark; in the Fort Greene Historic District
- NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission records, updated February 2026
- Doorman
- No doorman
Every recorded sale at this building, 2004–2025
Price-per-square-foot over time, the line- and floor-premium curves, and every recorded sale.
- Median $/sf, 2021
- $920
- floor-adjusted, 1 sale
- Listing discount
- 0.0%
- Recorded sales
- 25
- On record
- 2004–2025
Own an apartment here? See what it would sell for.
A Private Pricing Opinion — what your apartment at 159 Lafayette Avenue would likely sell for today, what it costs to sell, and what you’d walk away with — reviewed personally against condition, exposures, renovation quality, and the competition actually on the market.
In 1897 a developer named G. R. Barteaux tore down a twelve-year-old mansion on Lafayette Avenue and put up two apartment houses in its place. He hired an architect named Frank Bosworth, who appears to have left almost nothing else behind. These two buildings are the record of him.
They are flats buildings, which in 1890s Brooklyn was a term of art with money behind it. The flats house of that decade was built for well-off tenants — larger rooms, ceremonial entrances, a resident's expectation of light — at a moment when Brooklyn's professional class was starting to accept that an apartment was an acceptable place for a respectable household to live. Bosworth designed accordingly. The pair carries Ionic columns supporting the entry porticos, Greek key friezes, Palladian windows at the second floor, three-sided central bays running the full height, a heavy bracketed cornice, and a continuous stone band at the ground floor that reads the two buildings as one. They rise five stories where their neighbors rise three or four, so from the sidewalk the pair breaks the block's roofline deliberately.
The façades combine several classical motifs. Assess the actual apartment’s proportions and daylight from plans and inspection; a purpose-built 1890s flat does not by itself establish larger or brighter rooms than a subdivided house.
The two buildings operate as one cooperative, 155-159 Lafayette Owners Corp., on one tax lot, with 20 apartments between them. That structure has a practical consequence worth stating early: apartments in this corporation are recorded and marketed under both street numbers, so a buyer looking at "155 Lafayette" and a buyer looking at "159 Lafayette" are looking at the same building, the same board and the same maintenance structure.
The buildings sit inside the Fort Greene Historic District, designated in September 1978, and they are among the more elaborate façades the designation protects on this stretch of Lafayette. That cuts both ways. It is the reason the block looks the way it does and a durable component of value; it is also the reason that proposed work on the cornice, portico, columns, bays and windows must be checked against LPC permit requirements, including specified routine maintenance exemptions.
Architecture and unit composition
Two buildings, five stories each, roughly 17,600 square feet of building on a 4,950-square-foot lot, 20 apartments in total. The 17,600-square-foot whole-building area divided by 20 gives 880 gross square feet per apartment, not measured interior area; inspect the specific plan and dimensions.
The three-sided central bays are the feature that governs how the apartments live. A full-height bay on a five-story flats building means the front rooms in the center lines get light on three planes rather than one, and it means the front of each floor is materially different from the rear. Combine that with the entry porticos and the raised ground floor, and the exposure hierarchy inside the corporation is legible from the street before anyone opens a floor plan: front-and-bay, front-and-flat, rear.
The unit count deserves the honesty the numbers require. Department of Finance carries 20 residential units across the pair. An architectural account gives 19 one- and two-bedroom apartments and notes sources citing 35. Dividing 17,600 gross building square feet by 35 yields about 503 gross square feet per apartment, not an interior-area measurement; that ratio cannot resolve which unit count is current. Recorded transfers in the corporation include a combined 1AB apartment, so combinations are documented, but the transfer alone does not reconcile the 19, 20 and 35 counts.
Exterior alterations generally require LPC approval, while specified routine maintenance is exempt. Evaluate cornice, portico, column, bay-flashing and window work by scope and permit route when preparing the capital plan.
Building operations
A 20-unit walk-up cooperative in two adjoining 1897 buildings, self-directed, with no elevator and no staffed lobby. Finance's C6 classification is the operating summary: five flights and a superintendent rather than a staff.
The capital profile is the one an 1890s masonry pair produces. Two buildings under one corporation means two roofs, two boiler and riser systems unless they were combined at some point, a shared party condition between the pair, and a Lafayette Avenue façade with cornice, porticos, columns and bays that all age at different rates. The reported five-story buildings are below FISP’s higher-than-six-story threshold, though façade maintenance remains necessary. Confirm the applicable LPC approvals and scaffold requirements for the proposed work. Twenty apartments carry all of it, by the share allocation in the offering plan.
The diligence list follows directly. Ask whether the two buildings share mechanical systems or run independently, because that determines how a boiler replacement is scoped and priced. Ask for several consecutive years of financial statements and the reserve position. Ask about the cornice and the porticos specifically — they are the expensive parts of this façade — and about the building's Landmarks permit history. Ask about the underlying mortgage, and calculate its actual contribution to maintenance from the current debt terms and budget.
The reviewed materials do not establish the cooperative’s current governing terms. There is no offering plan for 155-159 Lafayette in The Roebling Research Library, and the house rules, sublet policy, pet policy, transfer fee and financing minimum are undocumented in the records reviewed for this page. A buyer should request the proprietary lease, by-laws, current house rules, purchase application and financials as a package rather than assume any of it.
Building staffing and amenities
- Doorman
- No doormanSource: The Roebling Team's building profile
- Elevator
- NoSource: NYC Department of City Planning records (PLUTO)
Staffing and amenities as our building profile and recent listing records describe them. A feature not listed is not confirmed absent. Outdoor space, parking and some facilities can belong to particular apartments or to a separate owner; confirm access for the specific apartment.
Local Law 97
This building is below the 25,000 sq ft threshold at which LL97 limits apply to a building on its own. It is still covered if it shares a tax lot or condominium board with buildings totaling over 50,000 sq ft; confirm on DOB’s covered-buildings list.
See full Local Law 97 analysis →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.
| Date | Unit | Apartment | Price | PPSF | vs. Ask |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 8, 2025 | 1AB | 3 BR · 2 BA | $2,250,000 | -1.1% | |
| Dec 30, 2024 | 5C | 2 BR · 1 BA | $1,250,000 | +4.6% | |
| Apr 22, 2022 | 3D | 1 BR · 1 BA | $800,000 | +10.3% | |
| Oct 1, 2021 | 2C | 2 BR · 1 BA | $950,155 | +5.6% | |
| Jan 8, 2021 | 5B | 2 BR · 1 BA · 940 sf | $865,000 | $920/sf | -4.9% |
| Aug 15, 2019 | 4A | 1 BR · 1 BA · 720 sf | $690,000 | $958/sf | -0.7% |
| Aug 13, 2019 | 1C | 1 BR · 1 BA · 770 sf | $649,000 | $843/sf | +0.0% |
| Apr 19, 2018 | 1D | 1 BR · 1 BA | $765,000 | +9.4% |
Market read. $/sf is measured on the latest sales with reliable square footage (2021): a median $920/sf (floor-adjusted) across 1 sale. The building has traded as recently as 2025. Median listing discount 0.0% from the last ask.
The retrade record
Lines that have traded more than once in the public record — the building’s appreciation arc, apartment by apartment.
Full closing history with price-per-square-foot over time, the complete retrade record, and every line that has traded.
Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 3-02103-0062). 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.
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What to know if you’re buying
155 and 159 are one cooperative. One tax lot, two buildings, twenty apartments, one board. Apartments are recorded under both numbers, so do not treat a listing at the other address as a different building.
Get the unit count straight before you compare. Finance says 20; the published architectural history says 19 and notes sources citing 35. Reconcile those figures against the dated certificates and current share schedule.
Ask which line you are in. The three-sided bays define the front-center apartments, and they are a different product from the flat-fronted and rear units at the same room count.
Underwrite the façade. Porticos with Ionic columns, Greek key friezes, a bracketed cornice and full-height bays, all inside a historic district. Ask for the Landmarks permit history and the board's account of upcoming envelope work.
Request the entire governing package. The current rules were not established in this review. Lease, by-laws, current house rules, purchase application and several years of financials, before you rely on any assumption about pets, sublets or transfer fees.
What to know if you’re selling
Lead with Bosworth and Barteaux. An 1897 pair of flats buildings by an architect with no other documented work, built for a named developer, on the site of an 1885 mansion, inside the Fort Greene Historic District. That is a listing story with the LPC's records and a published architectural history behind it.
State the district and the date plainly. Fort Greene Historic District, designated September 26, 1978.
Sell the apartment's proportions. What a purpose-built 1890s flat offers over a subdivided brownstone is room size and light. If your apartment sits in a bay line, that is the photograph and the first line of the description.
Handle the walk-up honestly and price it in. Five stories, no elevator. Say it early and comp accordingly — it is a known quantity to this buyer pool and a surprise only when it is buried.
Have the diligence package ready on day one. The reviewed library lacks an offering plan; provide the operative lease, bylaws, amendments, current rules and financials to support buyer diligence, without promising faster offers.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering 159 Lafayette Avenue, also evaluate:
- 147 Lafayette Avenue — the Lafayette Court group a block west; 1860s row houses combined and remodeled into apartments by Horace B. Mann in the 1930s, at nearly identical unit count
- 149 Lafayette Avenue — ten-unit Colonial Revival co-op on the Carlton Avenue corner; the same corridor at smaller scale
- 60 South Oxford Street — ten-unit row-house co-op on a signature district block; the single-house alternative
- 147 South Oxford Street — 21-apartment elevator co-op south of Fulton; the trade of district address for elevator access
- 264 Cumberland Street (The Sanctuary) — the district's boutique condominium, for buyers weighing ownership form
- 360 Clinton Avenue — Clinton Hill co-op on the mansion row; a useful cross-neighborhood check
More Fort Greene buildings
- 147 South Oxford Street — 1930 co-op
- 149 Lafayette Avenue — 1938 co-op
- 151 Lafayette Avenue — 1874 co-op
- 168 Washington Park — 1869 co-op
- 171 South Portland Avenue — condominium
- 176 Washington Park — 1899 condominium
The neighborhood
For the full neighborhood — its buildings, character, and market — read The Roebling Team Guide to Fort Greene.
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.
How to read the facts on this page. Items attributed to an offering plan describe the building as it was offered at that filing — unit mix, square footage, the amenity program as planned. They are not a statement about how the building operates today. Tax and compliance figures are sourced separately to current City records and carry their own dates. House rules, staffing and fee policy can change by board resolution without any public filing: treat every policy line here as a starting point for diligence and confirm it with the managing agent. Where this page compares one building or neighborhood to another, that is our analysis of the recorded record — it names the measure, the period and the sample it rests on, and it is an observation about medians rather than a prediction about any particular apartment.
Considering a move at 159 Lafayette Avenue?
Request a private building brief with the relevant comparable sales, current and off-market availability, and an apartment-specific view of value.
646.939.7375 · c.cohen@compass.com