161 Henry Street
161 Henry Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn
BBL 3002370008 · BIN 3001882
- Year built
- 1905
- Type
- Cooperative
- Units
- 30
- Floors
- 100
- Landmark
- Designated
- Flip tax
- Greater of $500 or 1.5% of gross profit on the sale (sale price less purchase price), paid by seller at closing; certain share transfers may also trigger it
- Financing
- Minimum 20% down payment; board approval withheld on financed purchases until mortgage commitment issued; refinancing requires board approval with credit report and FICO score
- Subletting
- Written board application stating reasons; normally one year, extendable to a second with approval; full purchase-grade package and board interview for the lessee ($250 application fee plus credit/background costs); annual sublease surcharge equal to the greater of two months' rent or two months' maintenance
- Pied-à-terre
- Not addressed as such; proprietary lease para. 14 bars use of an apartment as a primary workplace without express written board consent
- Washer / dryer
- Installation requires board approval and may be denied where plumbing capacity is inadequate; garbage disposals prohibited outright (pipes too old)
- Pets
- Cats, dogs and other pets permitted, maximum two per apartment, licensed and immunized with documentation filed with management; board may require permanent removal of a disturbing pet, burden of proof on the owner
Compiled by The Roebling Research Desk from the building’s offering plan, amendments, and related building documents (primary source dated 2012 (handbook)). Reported and subject to confirmation. Board policies can change by amendment — confirm at the offer stage.
161 Henry Street is the best-documented small cooperative in central Brooklyn Heights, and one of the handsomest. Schneider & Herter built it in 1905 at the northeast corner of Henry and Pierrepont: a rusticated limestone base, red brick and limestone above, a mansard roof carrying restored medallions, and a row of heavy limestone brackets at the seventh floor that gives the elevation its weight. The AIA Guide to New York City compares its presence to the grand apartment houses of Central Park West, which for a nine-story corner building on a residential Brooklyn street is high praise and, standing across Pierrepont, defensible.
The firm's reputation was made elsewhere. Ernest W. Schneider and Henry Herter built their practice on Lower East Side tenements and flats and on synagogue commissions — Park East Synagogue on East 67th Street is theirs — working largely for German-Jewish developers, and they produced better than a hundred multiple dwellings in Manhattan. 161 Henry is their Brooklyn Heights entry, and it is a Beaux-Arts building rather than the Romanesque idiom the firm is usually filed under.
The interior history is a subdivision history, and buyers should understand it. The building opened with large apartments, and Department of Buildings records read as a sixty-year record of cutting them down: alterations in 1941, 1954, 1963, and 1963 again created a new fourth-floor apartment, subdivided the northerly units on three floors, and split a large sixth-floor apartment and a third-floor south apartment in two; a 1967 filing converted a first-floor apartment into a doctor's office with its own Pierrepont Street entrance. What survived that process is the A-South line — the 1977 share schedule shows eight-room, three-bath apartments on floors four through nine, carrying 800 to 850 shares apiece against 305 to 455 shares for the four-room units. Those are the building's trophy apartments, and there are six of them.
The 1977 conversion was early. Harbor Realties, which had owned 161 Henry for roughly two decades, filed on January 15, 1977 and spent the year negotiating: an amendment offering to rewire the building for window air-conditioning capacity, another resetting the effectiveness threshold at 35 percent of tenants in occupancy, a third that traded the rewiring commitment away in exchange for raising the reserve fund from $30,000 to $111,000, and a fourth declaring the plan effective in November with closing that December. The reserve fund won — a defensible trade for a co-op in 1977, and also why a buyer today should ask specifically about electrical service capacity in the apartment under contract, since the sponsor's amperage upgrade was withdrawn rather than performed.
What the co-op did with the following decades answers the question. From 2005 to 2012 the corporation carried out a roughly $2.0 million capital program: repointing and repair of the exterior walls and brick face, mansard roof repair, restoration of the rooftop medallions, new double-hung windows in the stairwell and in every residential apartment, renovation of the front entrance, and restoration of the gardens. For a thirty-unit building that is a serious program, competently sequenced, and it is the single most useful fact in the file for anyone underwriting future assessment risk.
Architecture and unit composition
Nine stories and a penthouse over a cellar, roughly a hundred feet, Class I fireproof, masonry and steel with foundations mostly on rock and face brick over masonry backup. The lobby carries a marble floor and base under painted plaster; the public stairs are marble on steel stringers with marble winders; the upper halls are ceramic tile landings serving the elevators and stairs. A wooden water tank of 6,000 gallons — 3,500 of it reserved to the standpipe — sits on a steel frame at the roof, alongside two elevator machine penthouses with wired-glass skylights.
The apartment mix runs from four-room, one-bath units through the six eight-room, three-bath A-South apartments on floors four through nine, with two penthouse units at 580 shares each. The 1977 plan noted that certain four-room apartments carried roughly 200 additional square feet, which accounts for share-price differences within nominally identical layouts — a useful thing to know when comparing two four-room units on paper. Two ground-floor spaces served for decades as doctors' offices with direct entrances from Pierrepont Street; the plan gave their tenants a route to convert to 535 shares apiece, and the corporation's current share count says both took it.
Landmarks governs the exterior. The co-op's own guidance is explicit that in-wall air conditioners are barred as a façade alteration; window units are permitted, and central air requires board approval before installation.
Building operations
161 Henry Street Corporation is a shareholder-run cooperative with a seven-member board that meets monthly, designates one of its members as an ombudsman for shareholder disputes, and maintains standing garden and security committees. A resident superintendent works weekdays 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., holds keys to every apartment as a condition of shareholding, operates the freight elevator manually for deliveries and moves, and handles smoke and carbon monoxide detector installation as part of regular duties. An exterminator services the building monthly. All shares are allocated to individual shareholders — the corporation holds none, and there is no sponsor overhang.
Maintenance covers the corporation's mortgage, taxes, insurance, water, sewer and heat, superintendent payroll, professional fees, public-area electricity, and equipment maintenance on boilers, pumps, elevators, and the water tank. Late payment draws a $100 fee after the tenth of the month, escalating by $100 for each additional month unpaid. Shareholders must carry cooperative apartment insurance with at least $500,000 of liability coverage. Moves run Monday to Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., against a $500 refundable deposit.
Two building-systems rules are worth flagging because they constrain renovation: garbage disposals are prohibited outright — the corporation's stated reason is that the pipes are too old to take the load — and washer-dryer installation requires board approval and may be denied where plumbing capacity is inadequate. Neither is a blanket ban on in-unit laundry, but neither should be assumed away.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Aug 30, 2024 | 10N | $1,995,000 |
| Jul 15, 2024 | 5A | $1,125,000 |
| Jun 18, 2024 | 3D | $1,465,000 |
| May 15, 2024 | 1C/D | $1,250,000 |
| Jan 23, 2024 | 1A | $1,375,000 |
| Feb 7, 2022 | 7A | $1,075,000 |
Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 3-00237-0008) 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
The eight-room apartments are the reason to be here. Floors four through nine on the A-South line carry eight rooms and three baths at 800 to 850 shares. Very little in the small-building Heights market compares.
The capital program is done. A roughly $2.0 million exterior and window program ran from 2005 to 2012 — repointing, mansard roof, medallions, new windows throughout, entrance, gardens. Confirm what has been done since, but the heavy lift is behind the corporation, not in front of it.
Two rules will shape your renovation. Garbage disposals are prohibited; washer-dryer installation needs board approval and can be refused on plumbing capacity. Ask about your specific stack before you plan a kitchen.
Check the electrical service in your line. The sponsor's 1977 offer to increase amperage and replace fuses with circuit breakers was withdrawn in exchange for a larger reserve fund. Have your inspector look at the panel and riser capacity.
Plan around the right of first refusal. Ten days for existing shareholders to match, on every deal. It rarely changes the outcome; it always changes the calendar.
What to know if you’re selling
Model the flip tax on gain, not price. At the greater of $500 or 1.5 percent of gross profit, a long-held apartment carries a materially larger transfer cost than a recently purchased one. Run the number before you set an asking price.
Lead with the architecture and the citation. Schneider & Herter, Beaux-Arts, mansard and limestone brackets, and a named appearance in the AIA Guide to New York City. Most thirty-unit Heights co-ops have no such line available.
Sell the completed capital program. Buyers underwrite assessment risk. A finished $2.0 million exterior and window project is the strongest answer to that question a small co-op can give.
Position against the district's small prewars, not the full-service towers. The correct comparison set is the thirty- to forty-unit prewar co-ops of central Brooklyn Heights, where 161 Henry's apartment sizes and building condition both stand out.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering 161 Henry Street, also evaluate:
- 160 Henry Street — prewar elevator co-op directly across Henry Street, running the blockfront from Pierrepont to Love Lane
- 187 Hicks Street (Florence Court) — the 1900 apartment hotel at the other end of the same block cluster; the closest peer in vintage and ambition
- 153 Henry Street — prewar co-op peer on the same Henry Street corridor
- 9 College Place (Love Lane Mews) — condominium alternative on the interior lanes behind Henry Street
- 145 Hicks Street — larger Heights co-op one block west, between Clark and Pierrepont
- 35 Pierrepont Street — prewar co-op on the same Pierrepont Street corridor, closer to the Promenade
- 100 Remsen Street — prewar co-op of comparable scale in the Remsen–Montague blocks
- 1 Pierrepont Street — co-op at the Promenade end of Pierrepont, for buyers weighing view and quiet against central location
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