166 State Street
166 State Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn
BBL 3002760028 · BIN 3002782
- Year built
- 1930
- Type
- Cooperative
- Units
- 20
- Floors
- 5
- Landmark
- Designated
166 State Street is the district at its most ordinary and its most useful: a 1930 five-story walk-up of twenty small apartments, on the last block of State Street the Brooklyn Heights Historic District takes in before it stops at Court Street. Nothing about it is grand. What it offers is a landmarked Brooklyn Heights address at the smallest apartment sizes and the lowest entry basis the district reliably produces.
The block explains the building. The Department of Finance's record of this State Street frontage reads like a construction ledger of the neighborhood's first century — 160 and 162 built in 1842, 164 in 1843, 174 in 1839, and the long run from 176 through 192 in 1879. Into that row, in 1930, someone dropped a five-story apartment house on a single 25-foot lot. The 1965 designation report is unusually frank about the pattern: before the postwar restoration wave, it records, "the Heights had begun to lose its character as a community of individual residences with the advent of apartment houses and the infiltration of rooming houses." 166 State is a specimen of that sentence — and thirty-five years later, the designation that protected the row houses protected it too.
Location is where a buyer has to be clear-eyed. Court Street is a half block east; across it the grid becomes Boerum Hill and, north of Livingston, the Downtown Brooklyn civic core. Atlantic Avenue is a block south, and across Atlantic the Cobble Hill Historic District begins. The Promenade is a ten-minute walk, not a two-block one. What the position buys instead is transit density no other part of the Heights matches — Borough Hall's 2/3/4/5, the R at Court Street, the A/C/G at Hoyt-Schermerhorn — plus the Atlantic Avenue and Court Street retail corridors at the door.
The apartments are small, and the arithmetic is worth stating plainly: 12,600 square feet across twenty apartments is roughly 630 gross square feet apiece before common areas come out. This is studio and one-bedroom stock in a walk-up. Priced accordingly, it is one of the few remaining ways to own inside a Brooklyn Heights historic district at an entry number.
Architecture and unit composition
The building fills its 25-foot lot to a depth of 87 feet across five stories, with the plan discipline a narrow lot forces: a single stair core, front apartments to State Street, rear apartments to the block interior toward Atlantic Avenue.
Recorded cooperative documents show apartments numbered 1 through 19 with a 14A among them, against the Department of Finance's count of twenty. The gap is the drift that combinations, superintendent units and renumbering produce in small buildings — a diligence item rather than a problem. The 1987 alteration of record most likely marks the renovation accompanying conversion, but the offering plan is the document that settles it, and we obtain it before clients commit.
Building operations
Twenty apartments, five walk-up floors, and an expense base with no elevator, no doorman and no amenity program. That is the structural advantage: maintenance per room here should sit well below the district's serviced tiers, and for many buyers the monthly differential is the whole argument.
The corresponding obligation is capital. A 1930 masonry building inside a historic district carries a recurring FISP/Local Law 11 façade cycle, spread across twenty shares. Ask for three years of financial statements, the current budget, the assessment history, and board minutes covering the most recent façade filing. Management at this scale is frequently self-administered or handled by a small local firm; we do not name an agent that is not publicly documented.
What to know if you’re buying
Price the walk-up honestly. Five flights with no elevator constrains resale and narrows the buyer pool. It is also why the maintenance is what it is.
Confirm the conversion paperwork. The offering plan, the sponsor's identity and any remaining unsold shares are unsettled in the public record here.
Understand the edge location. You are four doors inside the district line, with Downtown Brooklyn and Boerum Hill immediately east — an advantage for transit and a discount to Promenade-adjacent pricing. Both facts are real.
Ask about the façade cycle. Twenty shareholders carrying Local Law 11 on a 1930 masonry building is the largest predictable expense in this corporation.
What to know if you’re selling
Lead with the transit case. Borough Hall, Court Street and Hoyt-Schermerhorn within minutes reaches a buyer pool the Promenade blocks price out.
Sell the historic-district line. The 1965 boundary runs down State Street and takes this building in. Buyers at this price point are also seeing unlandmarked stock across Court Street and cannot tell the difference from a photograph.
Photograph for light, not size. At roughly 630 gross square feet, the listing wins on daylight, ceiling height and renovation quality. Wide-angle shots of small rooms read as evasive.
Have the financial package ready. Small walk-up corporations get underwritten conservatively; statements, budget and a clean assessment history in the deal room shortens every timeline after.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering 166 State Street, also evaluate:
- 60 State Street — small State Street condominium at the district's western end; same street, different product
- 199 State Street (The Lookout Hill Condominium) — State Street continued east of Court, outside the district; the honest cross-boundary comparable
- 99 Clinton Street — small Clinton Street co-op two blocks north
- 130 Clinton Street — prewar Clinton Street co-op in the district's southern half
- 151 Joralemon Street — moderate-scale co-op on the Joralemon corridor
- 96 Schermerhorn Street (Boerum Court) — the district's southeastern-edge alternative, at larger scale
- 11 Schermerhorn Street — co-op near the Hoyt-Schermerhorn transit hub
- 56 Court Street — Court Street corridor condominium a block east
- 65 Atlantic Avenue — the district's other southern-boundary walk-up co-op, at 1849 vintage
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.
Considering a move at 166 State Street?
Request a private building brief with the relevant comparable sales, current and off-market availability, and an apartment-specific view of value.
Own an apartment here? See what it would sell for.
A Private Pricing Opinion — what your apartment at 166 State Street 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.