185 Clinton Avenue (Clinton Hill Co-ops, North Campus)
185 Clinton Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11205
Clinton Hill, Brooklyn
BBL 3019020001 · BIN 3322380
- Year built
- 1944
- Type
- Cooperative
- Units
- 520
- Floors
- 14
- Landmark
- No
- Flip tax
- None enacted as of the restated plan (2000-02-23); board may impose a transfer fee on net profit capped at 10% of gross selling price absent two-thirds shareholder consent
- Subletting
- Board resolution or written consent/vote of holders of at least 66-2/3% of outstanding shares; only resident shareholder-directors vote on sublet consent
- Washer / dryer
- Prohibited in apartments
- Pets
- Permitted with the board's express written permission, revocable; dogs carried or leashed in common areas and grounds; no relief on co-op property
Compiled by The Roebling Research Desk from the building’s offering plan, amendments, and related building documents (primary source dated 2020-02-01 (plan amendment) / 2018-08-16 (house rules)). Reported and subject to confirmation. Board policies can change by amendment — confirm at the offer stage.
The Clinton Hill Co-ops are the largest single block of cooperative apartments in brownstone Brooklyn, and 185 Clinton Avenue sits in the middle of the North Campus — six 12-to-14-story brick buildings arranged around a shared interior courtyard between Myrtle and Willoughby Avenues. The complex was built as defense housing. Equitable Life announced the project in January 1942, Starrett Brothers & Eken put up the first phase in time for families to move in during 1943, and a second phase followed a year later; the tenancy was Navy Yard engineers, officers, lathe operators and defense contractors' staff. Two full blocks of Clinton Avenue row houses and parts of others came down to make room, a fact the Landmarks Preservation Commission recorded plainly in its 1981 designation report when it drew the historic district boundary to exclude these blocks.
The architecture is better than the wartime program suggests. Harrison, Fouilhoux & Abramovitz designed eleven of the twelve buildings, with Wallace K. Harrison leading — the same office that would produce the United Nations Secretariat, the Metropolitan Opera House and Empire State Plaza. What Harrison did here was work the plan rather than the ornament. Each building is a modified rectangle whose long elevations push outward roughly seven feet several times along their length, so that essentially every apartment in the complex ends up on a corner with cross ventilation. The frames are reinforced-concrete flat plate, the walls face brick, the windows painted steel casements on slate sills. The entrances are framed in white marble with a blue-and-white ceramic tile mosaic in a nautical pattern set above the door — the one flourish the budget allowed, and a direct signal of who the buildings were for.
The conversion is the second act. Clinton Hill Equities Group, the Time Equities vehicle run by Francis Greenburger, bought the whole property on June 1, 1982 and filed a non-eviction plan that November covering 1,213 apartments and 134,673 shares. It was a slow effectuation: when the plan was declared effective on February 21, 1984, only 209 apartments — 17.2 percent — had been subscribed, 107 by tenants in occupancy and 102 vacant units by outside purchasers. Title passed to the apartment corporation on April 25, 1984, with a $3 million reserve fund funded by the sponsor over the following two years. Four decades of shareholder ownership later, the residue is a large, board-run cooperative with a long sell-down still in progress: as of February 1, 2020, the sponsor and its affiliated holders of unsold shares held 144 apartments, a co-sponsor group held 61, and the corporation itself owned 16.
For buyers, the North Campus is one of the few places in brownstone Brooklyn where cooperative apartments come with grounds. The courtyard, the security pavilion at its center, the on-site staff and the parking are all products of a 1940s site plan that no contemporary infill developer can reproduce on a Clinton Hill lot. For sellers, the trade-off runs the other way: this is a large, self-similar inventory, and the apartments that command attention are the ones with a specific case — a renovated kitchen, a high floor, a courtyard exposure, a line with more rooms than its neighbors.
Architecture and unit composition
The North Campus occupies the whole of Block 1902 between Clinton, Waverly, Myrtle and Willoughby Avenues, with a sixth building at 210 Clinton Avenue set at an angle on the block to the west. The Department of Finance records 520 apartments on the tax lot addressed 185 Clinton Avenue; the offering plan's site plan shows the North Campus buildings running 96 to 112 apartments each at 12 to 14 stories, with 165 Clinton Avenue the outlier — seven stories above a row of stores on Myrtle Avenue, and the one building Irwin Clavan designed.
Floor-to-floor heights run approximately 8 feet 10 inches. Apartments are laid out around a central corridor with two elevators and a scissor-stair pair; the small room between the elevators on each floor holds the compactor chute, originally an incinerator. Interiors were delivered with wood parquet floors, painted or stained wood base, plaster walls and ceilings, wood pantry and base cabinets, gas ranges and tiled bathrooms with pedestal sinks. Lobbies and first-floor corridors are terrazzo with stenciled plaster walls. The share schedule concentrates the inventory in 2½-, 3½- and 4½-room apartments — studios, one-bedrooms and two-bedrooms in current language — with larger lines scattered through the buildings.
Because the buildings share a plan, the variables that move price here are floor, exposure (courtyard versus avenue), line, and renovation state. The complex has no in-unit laundry anywhere: washing machines and dryers are prohibited in apartments under the house rules, and the laundry rooms are the substitute.
Building operations
Heat and hot water for the entire North Campus originate in a single plant at 201 Clinton Avenue, distributed to the other buildings through underground steam mains, with domestic water pumped to a 20,000-gallon Rosenwach wood tank above each building's elevator machine room. That district-plant arrangement is the single most important operational fact about the complex: capital work on the boilers, the mains or the tanks is shared across the section rather than confined to one address, and it is one reason the cooperative carries a large, professionally managed operation rather than a building-by-building one.
The refinancing history is documented in the plan. A GMAC first mortgage closing March 31, 1997 carried a $4,336,600 repair escrow earmarked for asbestos abatement, paving, repointing and masonry, boiler repairs, roof work, elevator renovation and replacement, Local Law 10 work and electrical wiring and metering, plus a monthly replacement-reserve deposit; the 1999 audited statements record that mortgage maturing April 1, 2027. A buyer transacting in 2026 should ask directly about the corporation's current mortgage position and refinancing plan, because a maturity inside the ownership horizon is a live carrying-cost question rather than a historical note.
Maintenance was running at approximately $8.417 per share per month as of February 1, 2020 per the plan's twenty-fourth amendment; current per-share maintenance, assessment history and reserve position should be pulled from the latest financial statements during diligence. The board seats seventeen directors and has never been controlled by the sponsor or the co-sponsors, a point the amendment states expressly. 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Jun 26, 2026 | 4H | $875,000 |
| Jun 22, 2026 | 12G | $920,000 |
| Apr 21, 2026 | 11C | $585,000 |
| Mar 4, 2026 | 5H | $815,000 |
| Feb 20, 2026 | 6F | $1,050,000 |
| Oct 29, 2025 | 15A | $800,000 |
Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 3-01902-0001) 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
This is an owner-occupant cooperative, and the rules say so. Sublet consent requires a board resolution or a two-thirds shareholder vote, washers and dryers are prohibited, and apartments sold after June 9, 2014 are smoke-free. Read the house rules before you fall for a floor plan.
You are buying into a twelve-building corporation, not a building. Your maintenance funds a district steam plant, two campuses of grounds, security staff and a shared capital program. That is why the operation is professional and why individual-building narratives do not apply.
Ask about the mortgage. The 1997 GMAC first mortgage was recorded as maturing April 1, 2027. Get the corporation's current debt, maturity and refinancing plan in writing, and run True Monthly Carrying Cost analysis on the specific apartment against the current maintenance and any assessment.
Confirm the sponsor and unsold-share position. As of February 2020 the sponsor group, co-sponsor and corporation together held more than 200 apartments. Lenders care about that ratio; ask management for the current figure early.
The North Campus is outside the historic district. No Landmarks review for exterior or window work here — the opposite of the position at the South Campus buildings on the far side of Willoughby Avenue.
What to know if you’re selling
Name the architects. Harrison, Fouilhoux & Abramovitz, with Wallace K. Harrison leading, is a credential most large Brooklyn co-ops cannot claim, and the corner-plan-with-cross-ventilation logic is a design argument you can show a buyer in the apartment itself.
Sell the grounds. The landscaped courtyard, the security pavilion, the on-site staff and the parking are the complex's structural advantage over boutique Clinton Hill inventory, and they photograph well in season.
Lead with condition. In a building of repeating plans, documented renovation quality and a clean alteration file are what separate one 3½-room apartment from the next.
Price per room against the right set. The comparables are the large Clinton Hill and Fort Greene cooperative complexes, not the small converted brownstone co-ops on Waverly and Vanderbilt.
Be direct about laundry and sublets. These surface in diligence every time; disclosing them up front keeps buyers in the deal rather than losing them at the board package.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering 185 Clinton Avenue, also evaluate:
- 345 Clinton Avenue (Clinton Hill Co-ops, South Campus) — the same cooperative corporation, five blocks south and inside the historic district
- 325 Clinton Avenue — the South Campus building on Lafayette Avenue, over the subway entrance
- 185 Hall Street (Willoughby Walk) — the 1950s urban-renewal co-op tower beside the Pratt campus; balconies and a very different rulebook
- 195 Willoughby Avenue (Willoughby Walk) — Willoughby Walk's second tower
- 135 Eastern Parkway (Turner Towers) — prewar Prospect Heights co-op at comparable scale
- 66 Montague Street — a Brooklyn Heights cooperative converted out of the same Time Equities program
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