175 Columbia Heights
175 Columbia Heights, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn
BBL 3002340022 · BIN 3001740
- Year built
- 1849
- Type
- Cooperative
- Units
- 10
- Floors
- 4
- Landmark
- Designated
- Subletting
- Board consent by resolution, written consent of a majority of directors, or a shareholder supermajority. The plan states the supermajority inconsistently - 'at least seventy percent' in the features-of-ownership introduction and 'at least 75%' in the Summary of Proprietary Lease. Both figures are stated on the page and the reader is directed to the executed lease
- Pets
- House rules: no bird or animal may be kept or harbored unless expressly permitted in writing by the corporation, such permission revocable; dogs carried or leashed in public portions
Compiled by The Roebling Research Desk from the building’s offering plan, amendments, and related building documents (primary source dated 1982-1983 (conversion-era documents)). Reported and subject to confirmation. Board policies can change by amendment — confirm at the offer stage.
175 Columbia Heights is the smallest kind of thing a cooperative can be: ten apartments, one hundred shares, no mortgage, no managing agent. One share is one percent of the corporation, and that structure is what a buyer here is actually acquiring.
The house was built in 1849 for Albert Woodruff, one of the speculators putting up brownstones along what was then Columbia Street as Brooklyn Heights filled in westward toward the bluff; its neighbor at No. 173 went up the same year for Warren Carpenter. By the time the Landmarks Preservation Commission surveyed the block for the 1965 designation, both houses had lost their stoops and their original detail, and the Commission left the style field on each blank — placing them among the roughly 190 buildings the Brooklyn Heights Association described in its own testimony as of unknown or unrecognized original style while conforming in scale. That is the honest architectural position: an 1849 brownstone shell, refaced in part with stucco, its ornament gone and its designer never recorded.
What is not diminished is the address. This is Columbia Heights, one block from the Promenade entrance at Clark Street, on the block that also holds the 1903 hotel building at 169 and the carriage house at 181. A buyer on the odd-numbered side does not get the open harbor view — that belongs to the west side of the street — but does get the street, the quiet, and a basis the view buildings cannot approach.
The conversion repays reading, because it nearly failed. Stephen M. Raphael filed an eviction plan in April 1982 on a property he had contracted to buy in 1981 for $510,000. By November the sponsorship had passed to Hite Realty Corp., which had converted 135 Hicks Street. By March 1983 the plan had been rewritten as a non-eviction plan and declared effective — with, on the record of the Second Amendment, exactly two purchasers having signed subscription agreements. All ten apartments were rent-stabilized. The plan closed at $544,500 in cash across 100 shares plus a $175,000 wraparound mortgage at 11 percent, interest-only at $1,605 a month with the full principal balloon due at ten years, and a reserve fund of $2,000; if the wraparound could not be refinanced, shareholders faced an assessment of $1,750 per share.
Four decades later that risk is not merely resolved but inverted. The corporation's financial statements show no mortgage interest at all — the per-share interest deduction reported to shareholders is zero and there is no mortgage on the balance sheet. A building capitalized with a $2,000 reserve and a balloon note is now debt-free, which for a ten-unit walk-up is the most consequential fact on this page.
Architecture and unit composition
Four floors on a 25-by-101-foot lot, with the building occupying the front 50 feet of it — roughly 6,250 gross square feet, and a rear yard behind. Classic Brooklyn Heights row-house dimensions, and the apartment sizes follow.
Schedule A is unambiguous about what this building holds: a garden studio, one apartment of one and a half rooms with a bath, and eight apartments of two and a half rooms with a bath. Share allocations run from 8 to 19 out of 100; in 1982 dollars, prices ran from $33,000 to $76,500. This is a building of studios and small one-bedrooms — the district's genuine entry tier, on its most famous street. Buyers arriving with two-bedroom expectations should look elsewhere; buyers who want a Columbia Heights address at the bottom of the district's price ladder will find very few alternatives.
The façade is brownstone with stucco, stripped of its original detail and stoop, so the building presents as a flat-fronted four-story house rather than a stooped brownstone. The absence of ornament reduces the restoration exposure ornamented neighbors carry and simplifies what Landmarks reviews on any exterior application; windows remain the usual approval item. The house rules, meanwhile, are the standard prewar form and describe a building this one is not — incinerator provisions, service-elevator delivery rules and passenger-elevator operating rules, in a four-story walk-up with none of those things.
Building operations
175 Columbia Heights Housing Corporation was incorporated on October 30, 1980 and began operating the building in 1983. The conversion budget was expressly prepared on the basis that the building would be self-managed, and the later financial statements bear that out: there is no management fee line. Terri Management Corp. was to be engaged at closing under the amended plan, but the statements reviewed here show no continuing agent, so a buyer should establish in writing who is responsible today for billing, financials, closings and repairs.
The operating picture is about as simple as New York cooperative accounting gets. Income is maintenance and a little interest. Expenses are, in order of size, real estate taxes, then gas, insurance, water and sewer, repairs, the janitor contract, professional fees and franchise tax. There is no debt service. The statements are prepared on the income-tax basis and compiled rather than audited — normal at this scale, and something a lender may question, so raise it early with your mortgage broker.
Two cautions belong on the record. The accountants have consistently noted that no study of remaining useful lives or replacement costs has been performed. And with no mortgage and small cash balances, capital events here are funded by assessment. Ask for the assessment history, the FISP/Local Law 11 cycle, and the ages of the roof, boiler and building-side plumbing.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Dec 8, 2025 | 4R | $550,000 |
| Jun 23, 2022 | 5F | $555,000 |
| Feb 6, 2015 | 1 | $1,300,000 |
| Nov 16, 2012 | 1 | $999,999 |
| Mar 20, 2007 | 1R | $660,000 |
Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 3-00234-0022) 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
One hundred shares is the whole company. Your apartment carries between 8 and 19 of them. Verify the allocation against the stock ledger — on this base, a share is a full percent of everything.
No mortgage is an asset; no reserve study is a gap. The corporation carries no debt and no study of replacement costs, which makes the assessment history the document that tells you how capital work actually gets funded.
Confirm who manages the building. The conversion budget assumed self-management and the statements show no management fee. Establish in writing who handles financials, closings and repairs before contract.
Know which side of the street you are on. The odd-numbered east side does not hold the open harbor view.
What to know if you’re selling
Lead with the balance sheet. A debt-free cooperative is rare and verifiable, and it answers the carrying-cost question before a buyer asks it.
Be precise about the address and honest about the view. Columbia Heights sells itself; the east-side position converts better stated than implied.
Frame the scale correctly. These are studios and small one-bedrooms, and the buyer is someone who wants this street at an achievable number.
Assemble the paperwork. In a self-managed hundred-share corporation, a seller who arrives with financials, house rules, the lease and the assessment history in order shortens the deal by weeks.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering 175 Columbia Heights, also evaluate:
- 177 Columbia Heights — the walk-up cooperative immediately next door on the same side of the same block; the closest comparable
- 169 Columbia Heights — the 1903 hotel building on the same block, converted to condominium; the deed-ownership alternative on the same address line
- 1 Pierrepont Street — Caughey & Evans's 1924 apartment house anchoring the block's Pierrepont corner
- 129 Columbia Heights — prewar co-op at the Clark Street corner, one block north on the same east side
- 184 Columbia Heights — the west-side cooperative on the Promenade block, for weighing the view premium directly
- 160 Columbia Heights — Art Moderne co-op at Clark on the harbor side
- 87 Columbia Heights — Slee & Bryson's walk-up cooperative further north on the same street
- 115 Willow Street — small prewar co-op one block east, between Clark and Pierrepont
- 128 Willow Street — Slee & Bryson's 1925 Willow Street building at comparable scale
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 175 Columbia 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 175 Columbia 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.