20 Plaza Street East
20 Plaza Street East, Brooklyn, NY 11238
Park Slope, Brooklyn
BBL 3011690024 · BIN 3029311
- Year built
- 1940
- Type
- Cooperative
- Units
- 100
- Floors
- 6
- Landmark
- No
- Pets
- Cats and dogs understood to be permitted; conditions unverified. Hedged on page.
Compiled by The Roebling Research Desk from the building’s offering plan, amendments, and related building documents. Reported and subject to confirmation. Board policies can change by amendment — confirm at the offer stage.
Every other building of consequence on the Grand Army Plaza rim answers the oval with height. Rosario Candela's 1927 cooperative on the western arc goes up fourteen stories; the postwar slab next door at 10 Plaza Street East goes up fifteen. 20 Plaza Street East answers it with length. Six stories and 266 feet of curved frontage, the building tracks the geometry of the plaza the way a garden wall tracks a lawn, and it is the only address on the rim that reads as part of the plaza's ground plane rather than as an object standing on it. The entrance sits at the curve under a circular marquee, approached across a landscaped walk that bends with the street.
The date matters. 1940 is the closing bracket on the interwar apartment-house era in Brooklyn: within two years the War Production Board had halted private residential construction, and nothing of this scale went up again until the 1950s. What got built in 1940 is late Art Deco worked in a horizontal, streamlined register — bands rather than setbacks, mass rather than ornament — and this building is a legible example of that moment applied to a site that could not have been more prominent.
The plaza itself is the amenity, and it is permanent. Olmsted and Vaux laid out the oval as the northern entrance to Prospect Park in the 1860s; John H. Duncan's Soldiers' and Sailors' Memorial Arch went up at the center in the early 1890s; the Central Library closed the eastern edge in 1941, a year after this building was finished. None of that ground is developable. From the plaza-facing lines the outlook over the oval and into the park is protected by the plan of the city rather than by anybody's promise, and at six stories that outlook arrives through a tree canopy rather than above it — a materially different experience from the upper floors of the tall buildings on the same rim, and one that some buyers prefer outright.
Two structural facts deserve underwriting attention rather than admiration. The first is the professional space: five non-residential units and roughly 2,500 square feet of ground-floor office area sit on the corporation's books alongside the 100 apartments. Commercial income at a residential co-op is a cushion in the maintenance line and a complication in the tax and lending analysis, and a buyer should know how much of the budget it carries. The second is bulk. The lot is zoned R8X, which permits about 6.02 FAR; the building carries roughly 4.75. That gap — on the order of 37,000 square feet of unused floor area on an unlandmarked lot facing Grand Army Plaza — is a live asset that most brownstone-belt cooperatives simply do not have, and how the board thinks about it is a fair question.
The conversion came late. 20 Plaza Associates bought the building in April 1982 and did not close the cooperative until April 1984, at the tail of the Brooklyn conversion wave. Forty-two years of shareholder governance since then means a long, self-generated financial record and a board that has run every capital cycle more than once.
Architecture and unit composition
The building is six stories of masonry on a 29,600-square-foot lot, with roughly 140,595 square feet of floor area and a frontage that follows the curve of Plaza Street East for 266 feet. That plan produces two things a rectangular lot cannot: a very long façade with a large number of front-facing lines, and interior geometry that changes as the building bends. Line position here is not just about exposure — it is about the angle at which an apartment meets the plaza.
The apartments follow the 1940 idiom: entry foyers, separated living and sleeping rooms, defined dining space in the larger lines, and closet counts that read as generous against later postwar stock. Unit sizes run from studios up through three-bedroom configurations, and the spread within the building is driven by three variables in roughly this order — whether the apartment faces the plaza, what floor it sits on, and how recently it was renovated. Because the building is only six stories, the floor premium is compressed relative to the tall buildings on the rim; the plaza-facing premium is not.
The ground floor carries the professional units. Buyers who want quiet should walk the specific apartment above or beside that space at a weekday hour rather than on a Sunday.
Building operations
20 Plaza Housing Corp. has run the building since the May 1984 closing. The service package documented for the building — full-time door staff, a resident superintendent, elevators, a children's playroom, storage cages, bicycle storage and a 24-hour laundry with a lending library — is a full-service operation, and it is the reason maintenance here reads heavier per room than at a self-managed brownstone conversion three blocks away. That is the trade, and it should be framed as one: the correct comparison across the two products is total monthly outlay, not the maintenance number in isolation.
One hundred apartments spread the fixed cost of that staffing more efficiently than the district's forty- and sixty-unit buildings can, and the commercial rent roll spreads it further. Ask management how much of the budget the professional units carry, what their lease terms are, and when they roll.
For a 1940 masonry building the recurring capital agenda is legible: FISP/Local Law 11 façade cycles across an unusually long elevation, roof and parapet, elevator modernization, boiler and riser work, and window replacement. The long frontage is a genuine cost factor — façade work is priced by area, and this building has more of it per apartment than a compact rectangular peer. Because the property is outside every historic district, that work proceeds through the Department of Buildings without Landmarks review, which shortens the calendar and lowers the cost against a comparable building inside the district line. Ask for the last two FISP filings, the reserve position, the assessment history and the board's capital plan. The corporation's financial statements are maintained in The Roebling Research Library and reviewed with clients during diligence; no managing agent is asserted here and the agent of record should be confirmed with the board.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Feb 17, 2026 | F23 | $599,000 |
| Nov 24, 2025 | A8 | $995,000 |
| Jun 17, 2025 | C4 | $940,000 |
| May 30, 2025 | C7 | $1,250,000 |
| Aug 12, 2024 | D21 | $727,000 |
| Jul 31, 2024 | A3 | $549,000 |
Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 3-01169-0024) 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
Face the plaza or price the difference. The building's whole thesis is its frontage. Establish what the specific apartment looks at, then set your number against matched exposures rather than against the building's average.
Ask what the commercial space contributes. Five professional units and roughly 2,500 square feet of office area sit in the corporation's budget. Learn the rent roll, the lease terms and the renewal calendar before you underwrite the maintenance line.
Ask the board about the unused floor area. The lot is zoned R8X and the building is under-built by a wide margin on an unlandmarked site. Whether the board has ever studied a rooftop addition or an air-rights sale is a legitimate diligence question with real value implications either way.
Underwrite 266 feet of façade. FISP cycles are priced by area, and this building has a great deal of area for 100 apartments. Review the last two filings, the reserve balance and the assessment history.
Get every policy in writing. Minimum down, sublets, pets and flip tax are not on the public record here. Ask before you bid, not at board-package stage.
What to know if you’re selling
Lead with the arc. Photograph the curve, the marquee and the plaza outlook. No competing listing on either side of Grand Army Plaza can show the same frontage, and the six-story vantage into the tree canopy is a distinct product from the tower views on the same rim.
Sell the service package explicitly. Buyers arriving from the brownstone-belt co-op market will read the maintenance as high until someone explains what it buys — door staff, a resident super, elevators, a playroom, storage, bikes and a 24-hour laundry. Say it plainly.
Say that the building is outside the historic district. It is a cost and calendar advantage over a comparable co-op inside the Park Slope line, and most sellers never mention it.
Comp on exposure, not on address. Averaging the building's sales across plaza-facing and rear lines understates one and overstates the other. Anchor to matched 2025-forward comparables.
Have the corporation's file ready. Financials, reserve position, FISP status, assessment history and the current policy answers. A complete package shortens diligence and removes the buyer's discount for uncertainty.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering 20 Plaza Street East, also evaluate:
- 10 Plaza Street East — the fifteen-story 1959 co-op alongside it on the same arc; the postwar high-rise alternative at the same address quality
- 34 Plaza Street East — plaza-rim cooperative peer a few doors along
- 50 Plaza Street East — the smaller plaza-rim cooperative; the boutique alternative on the same street
- 39 Plaza Street West — Rosario Candela's 1927 cooperative on the western arc, inside Extension II; the prewar-ornament answer to the same location
- 1 Prospect Park West — condominium ownership at the plaza; different form, overlapping buyer
- 135 Eastern Parkway (Turner Towers) — large full-service prewar cooperative on the parkway; the scale comparable
- 175 Eastern Parkway — full-service parkway cooperative; a direct per-room comparable
- 140 8th Avenue — the 1936 Art Deco co-op inside the Park Slope Historic District; the interwar alternative with Landmarks jurisdiction attached
- 209 Lincoln Place — the ten-story 1928 co-op with its own parking lot; the height-and-view alternative inside the district
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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