174 Pacific Street (Cobble Heights)
174 Pacific Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Cobble Hill, Brooklyn
BBL 3002920016 · BIN 3003067
- Year built
- 1888
- Type
- Cooperative
- Units
- 28
- Floors
- 4
- Landmark
- No
- Financing
- board policy not publicly documented; the corporation recognizes financing on the Aztech recognition agreement form ONLY, per its transfer procedure - a real constraint on lender selection, flagged on the page
- Subletting
- requires prior written board consent; the purchase application also bars, without prior written consent, permitting non-family members to reside in the apartment for more than one month, pledging the shares, making structural alterations, or non-residential use
- Pets
- the purchase application asks applicants to declare whether they wish to maintain pets and to specify type, size and age - indicating board discretion rather than a blanket rule. Current house rules not reviewed
Compiled by The Roebling Research Desk from the building’s offering plan, amendments, and related building documents. Reported and subject to confirmation. Board policies can change by amendment — confirm at the offer stage.
The Cobble Hill Historic District is a row-house district measured in twenty-five-foot lots. The 1969 designation report walks it street by street, cataloguing Greek Revival doorways and Italianate ironwork, and when it reaches the south side of Pacific Street between Court and Clinton it changes register entirely. "Dominating the street in height and picturesque mass," it says, "is the Louis Hirsch Memorial Jewish Education Center (Nos. 174–182). Built in 1888–89 as Public School No. 78, it is an interesting example of municipal architecture in the early Victorian style."
That is the building. A late-nineteenth-century Brooklyn public school, put up by the City of Brooklyn's Board of Education a decade before consolidation, sitting on a 16,000-square-foot lot with 160 feet of frontage in a district where the neighbors occupy 2,500 square feet apiece. The report's description of the exterior is worth reading before any visit: a high three-story bulk surmounted by an elaborate roof cornice of formal balanced design, gables and a central tower in bold profile against the sky, and a projecting entrance tower rising above the cornice under a truncated slate roof. Municipal architecture of the 1880s did not apologize for itself.
Its second life was as the Louis Hirsch Memorial Jewish Education Center, the use the Commission recorded in 1969. Its third began in the 1980s, when it was converted to cooperative ownership as Cobble Heights Owners Corp. — Department of Finance carries the alteration as 1984 — producing 28 apartments across roughly 32,052 square feet of building area.
That ratio is the reason to look at this building. Twenty-eight apartments in more than 32,000 square feet averages well over 1,100 square feet apiece, in a district where the competing product is a floor of a brownstone. And they are school apartments: built into plates designed for daylight, with the window openings and floor-to-floor heights that implies. A buyer looking for scale inside the Cobble Hill Historic District has very few places to find it.
The tradeoff is tenure and governance. This is a full-approval cooperative with a personal interview, a prior-written-consent regime that reaches subletting, alterations, share pledges and even long-staying houseguests, and a lender-recognition requirement that narrows financing options. Those are not defects — they are the terms, and they are why the building trades at a discount to condominium product of similar scale. But they need to be understood before an offer, not after.
Architecture and unit composition
The parcel is the story. Sixteen thousand square feet, 160 feet of Pacific Street frontage, 100 feet deep, with the cooperative also holding the adjoining lot at 188 Pacific Street. The building covers roughly 104 by 100 feet of that footprint and carries about 32,052 square feet of residential area over four stories. The exterior is the 1888–89 school as the Commission described it, and the elements it singled out — the elaborate cornice, the gables, the central tower, the projecting entrance tower under its truncated slate roof — are what a buyer should expect Landmarks to protect. Every part of that exterior is under Commission jurisdiction: windows above all, in a building whose defining interior feature is the size of its window openings.
Inside, the apartments inherit the school's geometry. Deep plates, tall floor-to-floor heights, large openings, and layouts fitted to an existing structure rather than drawn on a clean sheet. The practical consequence is that no two apartments here are quite the same, and the room count that governs pricing in the district's brownstone co-ops is close to meaningless. Square footage, ceiling height, exposure and where the apartment sits relative to the entrance tower and the corridor are the variables that matter. Exposure divides between the Pacific Street frontage — which the 1969 report notes was then a street of "multiple uses," with a north side "primarily devoted to manufacturing or storage, including street level garages in converted stables" — and the rear of the plate. That industrial north side has largely turned over since, but the street's mixed character remains part of what makes this block different from the district's purely residential runs.
Building operations
Cobble Heights Owners Corp. has operated the building since the 1980s conversion, and it is a shareholder-controlled cooperative of modest size with a full document set — proprietary lease, by-laws, house rules, a formal transfer procedure and an annual audited financial statement.
The capital agenda for an 1888–89 masonry school building converted forty years ago is specific rather than generic. The façade and roof cornice sit in the Local Law 11 cycle and under Landmarks jurisdiction simultaneously, so every façade project carries both a Department of Buildings and a Commission track. The slate-roofed entrance tower and the gables are ornamental masonry and roofing elements that are expensive to restore correctly and conspicuous when they are not. Window replacement across school-scale openings in a landmarked building is a project of real magnitude, and the mechanical plant serving 28 apartments in a converted institutional structure has its own life cycle. Ask for the last three years of audited statements, the current assessment schedule, the underlying mortgage terms and maturity, the FISP filing history and the board minutes — and ask specifically what façade, roof and window work has been done and when. Management history and current agent details are maintained in The Roebling Research Library and confirmed 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Sep 3, 2025 | 3A | $2,100,000 |
| May 5, 2025 | G2 | $1,935,000 |
| Jun 14, 2024 | 4D | $2,000,000 |
| Nov 14, 2023 | 4E | $937,500 |
| Apr 19, 2023 | 1B | $1,615,000 |
| Oct 7, 2022 | G1 | $1,985,000 |
Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 3-00292-0016) 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
Raise the Aztech form with your lender first. The cooperative recognizes financing on the Aztech recognition agreement form only. That narrows the lender field, and discovering it after a commitment letter issues is an expensive way to learn it.
Budget the board process honestly. Seven copies, five reference letters, two years of returns, a credit report, a $50 fee and a required interview. This is a full-approval cooperative and the package is not perfunctory.
Buy the square footage, not the room count. Twenty-eight apartments in more than 32,000 square feet is the reason to be here. Measure the apartment and compare it on that basis.
Price the landmark and the ornament. The cornice, gables, central tower and slate-roofed entrance tower are what the Commission protects and what the corporation must maintain. Ask what has been restored, when, and how it was funded.
Read the consent regime. Subletting, structural alterations, share pledges and non-family occupants staying more than a month all require prior written board consent. If your plans include any of those, confirm the current policy before you sign.
What to know if you’re selling
Lead with the building, then the apartment. A landmarked 1888–89 Brooklyn public school is a specific and verifiable story, and the Commission's own language about its "picturesque mass" is better copy than anything a listing can invent.
Photograph the windows and the volume. School-plate ceiling heights and openings are the product. Buyers comparing against brownstone floor-throughs need to see the difference in the first frame.
Publish the square footage. In a market where the competition is priced per room, your advantage is area. Make it explicit and document it.
Prepare the buyer for the package. Seven copies, five references and an interview are a real friction point. Sellers who brief the buyer's broker early lose fewer deals late.
Anchor to the district's converted institutional stock. Brownstone floor-through comparables will not describe your apartment, and neither will new-construction condominium comparables.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering 174 Pacific Street, also evaluate:
- 501 Hicks Street (Cobble Hill School Condominium) — the district's other converted school, in condominium form and with on-site parking
- 214 Clinton Street — small Cobble Hill cooperative a block west; the walk-up row-house alternative in the same district
- 175 Amity Street — 17-unit cooperative on the same block, in a 1900 apartment house
- 177 Amity Street — 15-unit cooperative next door to it on the same block
- 200 Congress Street — the largest cooperative in Cobble Hill; elevator, superintendent and garage at the accessible end of the market
- 58 Strong Place (The Landmark at Strong) — the district's church conversion; the condominium comparison on institutional stock
- 439 Hicks Street (Cobble Hill Towers) — Alfred Tredway White's model housing at the district's western edge
- 450 Clinton Street — 36-unit Carroll Gardens cooperative down the same corridor
- 301 Henry Street — cooperative on the Brooklyn Heights side of Atlantic Avenue; the nearest full-scale prewar comparison
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 Cobble Heights?
Request a private building brief with the relevant comparable sales, current and off-market availability, and an apartment-specific view of value.
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A Private Pricing Opinion — what your apartment at Cobble Heights 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.