160 Columbia Heights
160 Columbia Heights, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn
BBL 3002080331 · BIN 3001510
- Year built
- 1937
- Type
- Cooperative
- Units
- 83
- Floors
- 10
- Landmark
- Designated
- Subletting
- Permitted with board approval; written sublet policy with application, fees, and renewal limits, managed against lender sublet-percentage parameters
- Pets
- Domesticated pets (dogs, cats, birds) permitted subject to nuisance provisions and limits on number
Compiled by The Roebling Research Desk from the building’s offering plan, amendments, and related building documents (primary source dated House rules on file, undated (2000s)). Reported and subject to confirmation. Board policies can change by amendment — confirm at the offer stage.
Columbia Heights is the bluff itself — the street of shipping merchants' mansions where Washington Roebling directed the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge from a rear window, and the street the Brooklyn Heights Promenade was later built beneath. 160 Columbia Heights is the street's great twentieth-century interloper: an Art Moderne apartment house that A. Rollin Caughey designed in 1937 for the builders Silk & Hitlin, on a corner plot assembled from nineteenth-century houses at the foot of Clark Street. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle was already noting in 1936 that fine old Heights residences were coming down for apartment operations; this building is the most rewarding survivor of that wave, and its original premise — unobstructed harbor and Manhattan views from a modern elevator building — has only strengthened since the Promenade opened below it after the war.
Caughey's design takes the view seriously. The harbor elevation carries two vertical rows of bay windows and cantilevered concrete balconies with wrought-iron rails; steel casement and corner windows wrap the exposures; setbacks at the ninth and eleventh floors produce terraced apartments at the top of the building, where a 1948 alteration reworked the original duplex tier into penthouse units. The yellow-brick street presence is quieter but precise — a curved entrance with red and black brick trim, a slate-floored entry alcove, and a terrazzo lobby with geometric metal inlay and ornamental plaster bas-relief columns on marble bases. Within a historic district celebrated for its Greek Revival and brownstone fabric, 160 Columbia Heights is the neighborhood's clearest statement of interwar modernism, and it is protected by the same November 23, 1965 designation that made Brooklyn Heights New York City's first historic district.
The cooperative itself dates to the first wave of Heights conversions. Ettgold Realty Associates — Robert J. Ettinger and Lawrence E. Goldschmidt — acquired the property in July 1979 and presented a non-eviction plan in February 1980, allocating 25,538 shares across 83 apartments, with the senior-citizen protections of the General Business Law spelled out at the front of the plan. The corporation has operated conservatively since: The Roebling Research Library's file documents a fully amortizing refinancing in the late 1990s undertaken specifically to rebuild reserves, and a written house-rule regime covering everything from sublet renewals to the package room.
For buyers, the proposition is among the most specific in Brooklyn: Promenade-front position, protected westward views over the harbor and lower Manhattan, prewar co-op economics priced per room, and a scale of apartment — studio to four rooms — that keeps the entry price to the bluff within reach of buyers who could not approach a Columbia Heights townhouse.
Architecture and unit composition
The building holds 83 apartments across ten stories plus a penthouse level, in configurations from studios through four-room, two-bath layouts. The prized stock divides into three tiers: harbor-front apartments with bay windows or balconies (balconies run on the water elevation from above the third-floor terraces to the ninth floor); the setback tier at the ninth and eleventh floors, where apartments carry real terraces; and the penthouse level created from the original duplexes in the 1948 alteration. Interior finishes reflect the building's Moderne vintage — casement proportions, hardwood floors, and at least one wood-burning fireplace documented in the building's fabric (one of the two chimneys serves a fireplace) — though unit-level condition varies with renovation history.
Construction is steel and concrete throughout, fully fireproofed, with brick curtain walls — a materially heavier building than the district's converted rowhouses, and one reason apartment-to-apartment sound transmission compares well with townhouse-scale co-ops. There are two passenger elevators and two interior stairways, and no exterior fire escapes to interrupt the elevations.
Building operations
Columbia 160 Apartments Corp. runs the building with a resident superintendent and porter, evening doorman coverage, and a managing agent whose office monitors the building around the clock — a service format sized to an 83-unit house rather than a full-service tower. The cellar holds the laundry room, tenant storage rooms and cubicles, and the meter and mechanical plant; refuse runs through a compactor that replaced the original incinerator. At conversion the building employed six elevator operators/doormen under a Local 32B contract — a reminder that this was a manned-elevator house — and the staffing economics of that era still shape the maintenance structure. Electricity has historically been billed through maintenance rather than sub-metered, which flatters the headline maintenance comparison and should be normalized when comparing carrying costs against other buildings. Financial statements, house rules, and the offering plan are maintained in The Roebling Research Library and shared with clients during diligence.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Oct 29, 2025 | 3F | $1,887,500 |
| Jun 6, 2025 | 8D | $525,000 |
| Apr 15, 2025 | 4C | $995,000 |
| Mar 19, 2025 | 2I | $735,000 |
| Mar 15, 2024 | 4A | $900,000 |
| Nov 27, 2023 | 4B | $915,000 |
Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 3-00208-0331) 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
Exposure is the asset — buy it deliberately. The spread between a harbor-front apartment with a balcony or bay window and an equivalent street-facing unit is the widest variable in the building. See the specific apartment at different times of day; the western light over the harbor is the product.
The view is protected. The Promenade, Fort Stirling Park, and the historic district sit between the building and the water; the Brooklyn Bridge Park build-out below the bluff is complete. Few view premiums in New York are this durable.
Model the maintenance correctly. Electricity riding in maintenance means the headline figure is not apples-to-apples with sub-metered buildings. Run the True Monthly Carrying Cost analysis on normalized terms.
Expect a traditional Heights board process. Owner-occupancy orientation, a managed sublet percentage, and a conventional board package. Financing and flip-tax specifics should be confirmed early.
It is a landmarked building. Window, balcony, and façade work runs through LPC review; the casement-window vocabulary is part of the designation's fabric. Review the current capital and LL11 status in diligence.
What to know if you’re selling
Lead with the street. Columbia Heights is the most storied address in the district — the bluff, the Promenade, the Roebling history at its doorstep. Marketing that treats the building as generic prewar stock underprices it.
Sell the architecture by name. Caughey's Art Moderne design — corner casements, bay windows, balconies, the terrazzo-and-plaster lobby — differentiates the building from both the brownstone co-ops and the postwar brick houses. Photograph the water elevation.
Anchor to same-exposure comparables. A street-facing sale is not a comparable for a harbor-front listing. The Roebling Research Library's line-level history supports exposure-matched pricing.
Have the alteration and policy file ready. Terrace and penthouse units in particular benefit from a clean record of approved work, and buyers' attorneys will ask for the sublet policy and two years of financials at contract.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering 160 Columbia Heights, also evaluate:
- The Breukelen (57 Montague Street) — Caughey's larger 1949 building at the Promenade end of Montague Street; the closest architectural sibling
- 129 Columbia Heights — smaller cooperative on the same street, north of Clark
- 177 Columbia Heights — boutique co-op on the bluff a block south
- 184 Columbia Heights — intimate cooperative in the same Promenade-front row
- 87 Columbia Heights — North Heights cooperative near the Fruit Streets
- 2 Montague Terrace — prewar co-op on the district's other Promenade-front terrace
- 10 Montague Terrace — neighboring Montague Terrace cooperative
- 145 Hicks Street — larger North Heights prewar cooperative one block inland
- One Brooklyn Bridge Park (360 Furman Street) — the waterfront condominium alternative below the bluff, for buyers weighing condo flexibility against the co-op register
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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