200 Hicks Street (Casino Mansions)

Boring's eight stories are faced in the brick and stone of the Casino next door, under the gabled Dutch Revival profile that gives the pair its street identity. The plan's virtue is scarcity of neighbors — two apartments per landing at the original layout, producing cross-ventilated homes of eight and nine rooms with the service circulation a 1910 luxury house was built with. Surviving interiors carry neo-Classical mantels, libraries that open through to adjoining rooms, herringbone flooring, deep foyers, and generous built-in storage.

The unit ledger is the item to reconcile. DOF carries 17 units at the Hicks Street lot, the audited statements describe 21 across both buildings on 2,292 shares, and a mid-1990s lender disclosure recorded 2,197. The by-laws expressly permit regrouping — subdivision, combination, absorption of former servants' rooms — with treasury shares issued to match, which is how a century-old ledger drifts. Price the shares, not the room count. Every exterior element, windows included, sits under LPC jurisdiction.

The corporation runs as a staffed prewar house at unusually small scale: salaries, payroll taxes, employer health coverage, and uniforms against roughly two dozen apartments, a service ratio far heavier per shareholder than the district's six-story elevator buildings and a meaningful share of the monthly charge. Elevator service, a roof deck, and an attended lobby are the amenity set; there is no commercial space and no ground lease.

Two structural items belong in every diligence file. The underlying mortgage was refinanced in 2014 onto a ten-year term with a 2024 balloon, so current financing is newer than the last statements in our library. And the accountants' notes record that no study of the remaining useful lives of common components has been commissioned, meaning major repairs are met through cash, borrowing, assessment, or deferral rather than a funded schedule; the by-laws cap ordinary reserve accumulation at 5 percent of annual cash requirements, with a 20 percent ceiling, absent a two-thirds shareholder vote.

The by-laws also carry a feature buyers rarely meet: shareholder accounts. Capital-improvement borrowings are allocated pro rata across shareholders, each carrying an individual interest-bearing balance that must be discharged in full at transfer. Ask for the account statement on the specific apartment before modeling closing cash.

Subletting: Consent requires a majority of directors or, failing that, lessees holding at least 66⅔ percent of shares. The written policy adds a non-refundable application fee, a monthly sublet fee of 5 percent of rent or maintenance, a two-month deposit, and a New York City agent for service of process; proposed subtenants must show net worth of thirty months' rent, liquid assets of twelve months' rent, and income of four times the annual rent. The board may suspend the policy entirely.

Purchase approval: A full-dress prewar submission — four bound sets, two years of returns, six months of statements, employer and landlord references covering five years of residency, seven reference letters, credit report, and a board interview, with fees for application processing, credit, mortgage processing, recognition agreement, and closing services. Allow two to three weeks after a complete package before the interview.

Flip tax, financing, washer/dryer: No flip tax appears in the lease or by-laws as filed; the reported 50 percent minimum down payment (financing capped at 50 percent of the price) and any laundry-installation rules are board-set. Get all three in writing.

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 $2,500/sf (recorded) across 1 sale. Median listing discount 3.4% 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 3-00241-0001). 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.

The corporation predates most conversions by seventy years. Diligence runs on by-laws, proprietary lease, sublet policy, house rules, financials, and board minutes. Ask the managing agent to confirm that no sponsor or holder of unsold shares, and no regulated tenancy, remains in either building.

Two buildings, one share ledger. Read the financials as a two-building enterprise and reconcile DOF's 17 units against the corporation's 21.

Ask for the shareholder-account balance in writing. The allocated capital-borrowing balance rides with the apartment and must be paid off at transfer.

The lease is occupancy-restrictive by design. If your plan involves anyone beyond shareholder, spouse, and children, or any rental use, raise it before contract.

Confirm the lease term and the mortgage. The lease runs to December 31, 2040 with a documented intent to extend, and the underlying mortgage passed a 2024 maturity.

Name Boring and name the Casino. An Ellis Island architect who designed the club next door and matched this building to it is provenance no competing Heights listing can claim.

Market the plan, not the square footage. Two homes per floor, eight and nine rooms, libraries and fireplaces and service entrances — the apartment type draws a townhouse-alternative buyer.

Prepare the buyer for the board. A four-binder package, seven reference letters, an interview, and a reported 50 percent minimum down payment screen out unprepared purchasers. Qualify early.

Assemble the corporate file before you list. Share allocation, shareholder-account balance, current mortgage, lease-extension status, and the latest financials protect the price where comparables are thin.

If you're considering 200 Hicks Street, also evaluate:

• 1 Pierrepont Street — Caughey & Evans's 1924 co-op at the harbor end of Pierrepont; another original-era corporation with large apartments
• 62 Montague Street — Montrose W. Morris's 1888 apartment house one block west; the district's other architecturally consequential early building
• 1 Grace Court — boutique 1920s co-op at the end of the district's quietest cul-de-sac
• 35 Pierrepont Street — Mortimer E. Freehof's 1929 co-op; prewar peer with attended-service tradition
• 145 Hicks Street — the corridor's large 1930s Colonial Revival co-op; the scale alternative
• 130 Hicks Street — the corridor's postwar counterpoint, two blocks north
• 129 Columbia Heights — Frank L. Lowe's 1907 Beaux-Arts co-op; the district's other first-generation apartment house
• 160 Columbia Heights — A. Rollin Caughey's Art Moderne building on the bluff; the harbor-view alternative
• 100 Remsen Street — Caughey's postwar co-op nearby, structured as a leasehold