175 Amity Street

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 run from 65 to 165, the largest roughly two and a half times the smallest. They indicate relative size only as far as the plan's allocation basis reflects area, so read them with the floor plans.

Use room count together with reliable interior area, layout and carrying costs when comparing these apartments with other district buildings. Floor and position also matter: assess the climb to the top floor, compare front curved-bay apartments with rear apartments by light, noise, layout and condition, and evaluate the basement apartment separately.

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 includes the façade, limestone bays, roof, heating plant and windows. At four stories, the building is below the FISP/Local Law 11 threshold of more than six stories. LPC permit requirements depend on the proposed scope; obtain condition reports and estimates for any window program across the seventeen-apartment cooperative. 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.

Purchaser review: Full cooperative board approval under the proprietary lease and by-laws. Confirm the current package requirements, interview practice, fee schedule and review timeline with the managing agent, and build them into contract timelines.

Pets: Permitted as of right. House Rule 12 allows lessees to keep cats, dogs or birds without the corporation's permission so long as the pets do not interfere with the rights or convenience of other lessees. Dogs must be carried or on a leash in public areas. Feeding animals from windowsills, terraces, balconies, yards, courts or the adjacent sidewalk is prohibited. This is a more permissive pet rule than most small prewar co-ops carry, and it is worth knowing.

Roof: Not a general common amenity. House Rule 2 bars children from the roof "except for the child or guest of a lessee who has exclusive use of said roof" — which indicates that roof rights are appurtenant to particular apartments. Confirm in writing whether the apartment you are buying carries them; in a four-story Cobble Hill walk-up, private roof access is a significant value item.

Floor covering: House Rule 14 requires at least 50 percent of the floor area of each room to be covered with rugs, carpeting or equally effective noise-reducing material, excluding kitchens, pantries, bathrooms, maids' rooms, closets and foyers, unless the board expressly authorizes otherwise. Buyers planning to expose original floors throughout should raise it with the board first.

Quiet hours: No musical instruments, phonograph, radio or television loudspeaker between 11:00 p.m. and 8:00 a.m. where it disturbs other occupants; construction and repair work only on weekdays between 8:30 a.m. and 5:00 p.m.

Alterations and projections: No awnings or ventilators and nothing projecting from a window without the corporation's or managing agent's express approval, except air conditioning units. No signage or exterior illumination without written approval. Exterior work additionally requires Landmarks approval.

Window cleaning: The lessee must keep the apartment's windows clean; on ten days' notice the corporation may have them cleaned and charge the cost to the lessee.

Subletting, flip tax, financing limits: Not documented in the materials reviewed. Confirm each at offer stage.

Recent sales

Recent transfers at this building, from The Roebling Research Library. Prices are the transfer amounts recorded with the NYC Department of Finance; apartment-level detail is checked against the building’s own file in The Roebling Research Library before publishing.

Market read. Most recent trades (2026 to date) cleared a median $1,242/sf (recorded) across 1 sale. Median listing discount 2.5% from the last ask — a recurring negotiation gap worth pricing into any offer or listing strategy.

Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 3-00292-0050). Apartment-level facts (line, condition, asking-price context) curated and cross-verified in The Roebling Research Library. Not all transactions cross-verify with ACRIS records — sponsor and LLC purchases sometimes record at stipulated values rather than market price; square footage on co-ops is not officially recorded, figures shown are approximate.

Ask about roof rights in writing. The house rules imply that roof access is exclusive to certain apartments rather than common. Confirm the scope, permitted use and maintenance obligations of any roof right, and use comparable sales to assess its value rather than treating it as unique.

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. Review the reserve position and underlying mortgage maturity alongside the operating budget, project estimates, borrowing terms and assessment history; their relative importance depends on the building’s actual obligations.

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.

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. Document its scope and obligations, then assess the value alongside floor, exposure, area and condition.

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.

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