177 Amity Street

The building occupies a 2,500-square-foot lot — 25 feet by 100 — and rises four stories to roughly 7,920 square feet of building area, with a building depth of about 84 feet. In scale, cornice line and material it sits comfortably within the block's brick row-house context, which is presumably why the Commission included it in the district without describing it separately. Everything on the exterior — windows, cornice, façade — is under Landmarks jurisdiction.

The unit mix from the conversion Schedule A is predominantly two rooms and one bath, with a three-room apartment at the front carrying 110 shares and the two cellar-duplex apartments at 95 shares apiece; the remaining allocations cluster between roughly 80 and 95. That narrow band is meaningful. Unlike a converted school or a subdivided apartment house, this building's apartments are genuinely similar to one another, and the pricing spread inside it is driven far more by floor, exposure and renovation state than by size. The exceptions are Apartments 2 and 3, whose exclusive cellar rights convert a two-room apartment into a duplex with a finished lower level. Confirm the current condition and the lease language before assigning value: the right to use and maintain cellar space is a lease right, not a deeded one.

The 1988–89 electrical work is the other detail worth carrying into a tour. The conversion installed a new 400-amp three-phase service with separate metering per apartment and a two-pole 40-amp main breaker panel for each unit in the cellar — but the plan's addendum states that vacant apartments were rewired for air conditioning outlets while occupied apartments were not. Nearly forty years on, some apartments may still carry the legacy of that distinction. Check the panel and the circuits.

177 Amity St. Owners Corp. is a small cooperative: fifteen apartments and 1,380 shares carry the whole operating and capital burden of a century-old masonry building, with no commercial income, so an unplanned expense is spread across few shareholders. Review the current budget, reserves and assessment history for how it is funded. The conversion-era balance sheet gives the shape — an underlying mortgage of roughly $450,000, about $326.09 per share, and a reserve fund of $34,640 — and the question forty years later is what has replaced those figures.

Two operating items are specific to this building. The first is fuel: the plan documents number 2 fuel oil, at 5,766 gallons in 1988 against a three-year average near 5,144. Oil-to-gas conversion has been a standard capital project in small Brooklyn buildings since; ask whether it has happened here, when, and how it was funded. The second is the shared electrical infrastructure — a 400-amp three-phase service installed in 1988–89 now serving fifteen apartments with modern loads. Beyond those, the agenda is the usual one for a landmarked four-story masonry walk-up: façade and cornice within Commission jurisdiction, roof, and windows. At four stories, the building is below the FISP/Local Law 11 height threshold of more than six stories. The effect of a project on maintenance or assessments depends on its cost, reserves, borrowing and share allocation. Review the reserve position and underlying mortgage maturity alongside the capital plan and operating budget. Ask for the last three years of audited statements, 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. In a building this small the board is made up of neighbors, and the process is correspondingly personal.

Pets: Permitted as of right. House Rule 12 allows cats, dogs or birds without the corporation's permission so long as they do not interfere with the rights or convenience of other lessees; dogs must be carried or leashed in public areas, and no animals may be fed from windowsills, terraces, balconies, yards, courts or the adjacent sidewalk.

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 roof rights appurtenant to particular apartments. Confirm in writing whether the apartment carries them.

Cellar rights: Apartments 2 and 3 hold the exclusive right to use and maintain the cellar space directly beneath them, combined with the apartment above, at 95 shares each under the First Amendment to the plan. Verify the current lease language and the condition of the space.

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.

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.

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. $/sf is measured on the latest sales with reliable square footage (2021): a median $992/sf (recorded) across 1 sale. The building has traded as recently as 2025. Median listing discount 0.1% 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 3-00292-0049). 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.

Find out whether you are buying Apartment 2 or 3. Those two apartments carry exclusive cellar rights and a finished lower level under the First Amendment to the offering plan. Their cellar rights distinguish them from other apartments; adjust comparisons for the scope, permitted use and condition of that space.

Ask about roof rights in writing. The house rules imply roof access is exclusive to certain apartments. Evaluate the extent and condition of any right using comparable sales rather than assuming a fixed price effect.

Check the electrical panel. The 1988–89 conversion rewired vacant apartments for air conditioning and did not rewire occupied ones. Confirm the circuits and capacity in the specific unit.

Ask whether the building still burns oil. The plan documents number 2 fuel oil at conversion. If the conversion to gas has not happened, it is a foreseeable capital project for a small building; ask how its cost would be allocated across shares.

Read the reserve and the underlying mortgage. The reserve balance and mortgage maturity help assess funding capacity, but the budget, project costs, borrowing terms and board funding decisions determine whether additional charges are needed.

Describe its district setting and scale. Cobble Hill Historic District, four stories, fifteen apartments, one block from Court Street. Support any affordability claim with current comparable sales and carrying costs.

Lead with the pet rule. Cats, dogs and birds permitted without the corporation's consent is a genuine differentiator against stricter small cooperatives and materially widens the buyer pool.

Document the cellar or roof right if you have one. These rights are important differences alongside floor, exposure, layout and condition. Put the lease language and the amendment in the package.

Prepare for a thin comparable set. With turnover this low, the pricing conversation will be conducted against other buildings. Come to it with the district's small-co-op data already assembled.

Compare layouts within the district. Use room counts and reliable interior areas together, accounting for differences between this building and converted schools or churches.

If you're considering 177 Amity Street, also evaluate:

• 175 Amity Street — the 17-unit cooperative next door, in Albert Parfitt's 1900 apartment house, converted by the same sponsor group
• 214 Clinton Street — small Cobble Hill cooperative a block west; the closest peer on scale and tenure
• 174 Pacific Street — 28-unit cooperative in the former Public School No. 78, on the same block from the Pacific Street side
• 200 Congress Street — the largest cooperative in Cobble Hill; elevator, superintendent, laundry and garage
• 417 Hicks Street — the Tower Buildings group of the Cobble Hill Towers condominium; landmark model housing at the accessible end of the condo market
• 439 Hicks Street (Cobble Hill Towers) — the balance of Alfred Tredway White's model-housing complex
• 501 Hicks Street (Cobble Hill School Condominium) — converted school condominium with on-site parking
• 450 Clinton Street — 36-unit Carroll Gardens cooperative down the same corridor
• 301 Henry Street — cooperative on the Brooklyn Heights side of Atlantic Avenue