175 Amity Street
175 Amity Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Cobble Hill, Brooklyn
BBL 3002920050 · BIN 3003087
- Year built
- 1900
- Type
- Cooperative
- Units
- 17
- Floors
- 4
- Landmark
- No
- Pets
- permitted without the corporation's consent - house rule 12 allows cats, dogs or birds so long as they do not interfere with the rights or convenience of other lessees; dogs must be carried or on a leash in public areas; no feeding animals from windowsills, terraces, balconies, yards, courts or the adjacent sidewalk
Compiled by The Roebling Research Desk from the building’s offering plan, amendments, and related building documents (primary source dated 1988-12-20 (plan amendment); house rules undated). Reported and subject to confirmation. Board policies can change by amendment — confirm at the offer stage.
In 1900 the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition was seven years old and its influence was everywhere in American building. Albert Parfitt — of the Brooklyn family firm whose work shaped much of the borough's late-nineteenth-century church and apartment architecture — designed a pair of low apartment houses at the Clinton Street end of Amity Street for Henry Roth, and the Landmarks Preservation Commission's 1969 designation report reads them exactly that way: the two buildings "illustrate the architectural influence of the then recent World's Fair at Chicago in their eclecticism."
What that means on the street is a small building doing several things at once. Twin curved limestone bays rise four stories at the front of No. 175, a gesture the Commission traces back to Bulfinch's Federal-period Boston, and the railings carry an intricate curving design the report also calls Federal in derivation. Amity Street between Court and Clinton is otherwise a Greek Revival and Italianate row-house street, and two purpose-built apartment houses inserted into that fabric in 1900 could easily have been an intrusion. In the Commission's own assessment they were not: the pair's "low height blends ideally with their earlier brick neighbors on both sides of the street."
The building's second chapter is arithmetic. Parfitt designed it for nine families. It now holds 17 apartments. Somewhere in the twentieth century the original layouts were subdivided, and the practical consequence for a buyer today is that unit sizes vary considerably behind a façade that reads as regular. Share allocations at conversion ranged from 65 to 165 — a spread of more than two and a half to one — which says the same thing in the cooperative's own language.
The third chapter is 1988–89, when ES Associates and its principals converted the building to cooperative ownership, issuing 2,085 shares and offering apartments at $700 per share to sitting tenants and $930 per share to outside buyers. Nearly forty years later, this is a small, shareholder-controlled walk-up cooperative inside one of New York's early historic districts — the true entry point to Cobble Hill, and a category that trades very differently from the neighborhood's condominium tier.
Architecture and unit composition
The building sits on a 3,600-square-foot lot with 36 feet of frontage and 100 feet of depth, and carries roughly 13,725 square feet across four stories. The defining exterior element is the pair of curved limestone bays rising the full height of the front elevation — the feature the Commission singled out, and the one that most distinguishes the building from its brick neighbors. The ironwork, with its curving Federal-derived pattern, is original protected fabric, and everything on the exterior, windows included, is under Landmarks jurisdiction.
Inside, the stock is what a 1900 apartment house subdivided over time produces. The conversion Schedule A records apartments predominantly of three rooms and one bath, with a one-room apartment, a four-room apartment and a basement unit in the mix. Share allocations from 65 to 165 map that range directly: the largest apartments carry roughly two and a half times the shares of the smallest, which in a co-op is the cleanest available proxy for relative size at conversion.
The room count is the right pricing instrument here, unlike in the district's converted institutional buildings, because these are genuinely apartment-house layouts rather than adapted plates. What complicates it is floor and position: in a four-story walk-up, the top floor is a real climb, the front apartments behind the curved bays are a materially better product than the rear, and the basement apartment is its own category.
Building operations
175 Amity Corp. is a small shareholder-controlled cooperative and its economics reflect that. Seventeen apartments and 2,085 shares carry the entire operating and capital burden of a 125-year-old masonry building, with no commercial income, no garage income and no scale to spread costs across. At conversion the corporation took title subject to an underlying mortgage of roughly $675,000, about $323.74 per share, and the sponsor's real estate tax obligation was capped at $7,887 for the first year and nothing after. The plan published Schedule A twice — once with J-51 benefits and once without — because the abatement was applied for rather than granted, and whatever remained of it expired long ago.
The capital agenda is specific: façade and limestone bays under both Local Law 11 and Landmarks jurisdiction; the roof; the heating plant; and the windows, where a replacement program in a landmarked building is a proportionally large undertaking for seventeen shareholders. Ask for the last three years of audited statements, the underlying mortgage terms and maturity, the current assessment schedule and the board minutes. 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Jul 22, 2025 | A1 | $1,350,000 |
| Dec 20, 2024 | C3 | $748,000 |
| Jul 24, 2023 | A1 | $1,265,000 |
| Nov 24, 2021 | B-3 | $717,000 |
| May 11, 2021 | B4 | $750,000 |
| Apr 22, 2021 | C1 | $705,000 |
Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 3-00292-0050) 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
Ask about roof rights in writing. The house rules imply that roof access is exclusive to certain apartments rather than common. In a four-story building on a landmarked block, that is a real and unreproducible amenity — and its absence should be priced too.
Check the shares against the size. Allocations run from 65 to 165 across seventeen apartments. The share count is the cooperative's own statement of relative value, and the fastest sanity check on any asking price.
Read the reserve. Seventeen apartments carry a 125-year-old landmarked masonry building with limestone bays and original ironwork. The reserve position and the underlying mortgage maturity are the two numbers that matter most.
Understand the floor-covering rule. Fifty percent of each room must be carpeted absent board authorization. If your plan is exposed floors throughout, raise it before you sign.
Budget the board process. Full approval with an interview is the norm here. Confirm the current requirements and the review timeline before you set a closing date.
What to know if you’re selling
Name the architect. Albert Parfitt, working for Henry Roth in 1900, described by the Landmarks Preservation Commission in its own 1969 report. Most competing small co-ops in the district have no documented credential at all.
Photograph the bays. The twin curved limestone bays are the building's signature and the Commission's own point of emphasis. Shoot them from the street and shoot the light they produce inside.
Document the roof right if you have it. It is the single largest swing factor between apartments here.
Lead with the pet rule. Cats, dogs and birds permitted without the corporation's consent is a genuine differentiator against the district's stricter small cooperatives, and it widens the buyer pool.
Anchor per room, and to this block. Cobble Hill's converted schools and churches are priced by area and describe a different product.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering 175 Amity Street, also evaluate:
- 177 Amity Street — the 15-unit cooperative next door, converted by the same sponsor group in the same season
- 174 Pacific Street — 28-unit cooperative in the former Public School No. 78, on the same block from the Pacific Street side
- 214 Clinton Street — small Cobble Hill cooperative a block west; the closest peer on scale and tenure
- 200 Congress Street — the largest cooperative in Cobble Hill; elevator, superintendent, laundry and garage
- 501 Hicks Street (Cobble Hill School Condominium) — converted school condominium with parking, at the district's southwest corner
- 58 Strong Place (The Landmark at Strong) — Minard Lafever's church converted to condominiums; the district's other institutional conversion
- 417 Hicks Street — the Tower Buildings group of the Cobble Hill Towers condominium; landmark model housing
- 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 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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