205 Hicks Street
205 Hicks Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn
BBL 3002427501 · BIN 3255619
- Year built
- 1919
- Type
- Cooperative
- Units
- 22
- Floors
- 6
- Landmark
- Designated
- Subletting
- Under the proprietary lease, subletting or assignment requires written consent of a majority of the board, or of the managing agent or an officer acting under board or shareholder resolution, or of the holders of two-thirds of the outstanding shares; spousal and co-lessee transfers exempt. Current board policy not publicly documented
- Pets
- No bird or animal without the corporation's express written permission, revocable; dogs never permitted in elevators or public portions unless carried or leashed
Compiled by The Roebling Research Desk from the building’s offering plan, amendments, and related building documents (primary source dated 1986 plan). Reported and subject to confirmation. Board policies can change by amendment — confirm at the offer stage.
205 Hicks Street is central Brooklyn Heights co-op stock in its most useful form: a 1919 six-story elevator building of twenty-two apartments on the east side of Hicks between Montague and Pierrepont, storefronts at the base and the Promenade two blocks west. It does not announce itself and does not need to — location, an elevator, a superintendent and prewar rooms at a price point the district's grand apartment houses left behind decades ago.
The architectural attribution is the surprise. The LPC's district records name Andrew Thomas and 1919. Andrew J. Thomas was, within a few years of that date, the most influential garden-apartment designer in the United States — a man who had worked the Yukon gold fields and collected rents before teaching himself architecture, who spent the First World War as supervising architect for the Emergency Fleet Corporation learning to build cheaply, and who then produced Linden Court in Queens, the Metropolitan Life housing at Long Island City, and the Dunbar Apartments in Harlem, commissioned by John D. Rockefeller Jr. as a cooperative for Black families. His signature was the U-shaped plan that pushed light and air into every room at minimum cost. A 1919 Brooklyn Heights apartment house sits right at the hinge of that career.
The conversion is a 1980s Brooklyn story with a well-connected paper trail. Delroy Realty Corporation, an entity of Abraham L. Poses working through Gam Holding Corp. in the Bronx, presented a plan in June 1986 — 8,036 shares against 22 apartments, $500 per share to outsiders and $280 to sitting tenants, for a total offering of $4,018,000, with nearly every apartment rent-controlled or rent-stabilized. The same principal was simultaneously converting 38 Livingston Street across the district under a plan dated four months earlier, using the same selling agent, and each building's Attorney General filings disclose the other. Where 38 Livingston went out as a non-eviction plan, 205 Hicks was filed as an eviction plan — the harder-edged form of the era, carrying statutory carve-outs for senior and disabled tenants, which New York effectively retired soon afterward.
One structural fact deserves attention up front. City tax records carry 205 Hicks on a condominium billing lot — Brooklyn condominium No. 196, apportioned in November 1988 — with 22 residential units and roughly 2,826 square feet of ground-floor commercial space, so some public data describes the building as a condominium. Its own governing documents are cooperative: an apartment corporation, shares, a proprietary lease. Anyone transacting here should have their attorney confirm how the residential and commercial portions are held and separately assessed, because the answer affects the corporation's tax line and its commercial income.
Architecture and unit composition
The building is six stories of prewar brick on a wide, shallow lot — roughly 100 feet of frontage on Hicks Street against about 52 feet of depth, carrying just under 25,000 square feet of building. That geometry produces an apartment house that is broad rather than deep, with most units reaching a street or rear exposure rather than an interior shaft, consistent with the light-and-air discipline Andrew J. Thomas built his reputation on a few years later.
The 1986 share schedule describes the stock: twenty-two apartments running four lines across the upper floors, with share allocations from roughly 251 to 464 and total cash prices to outside purchasers ranging from about $125,500 to $232,000 at conversion. The smaller line ran three-room configurations; the larger lines ran four- and five-room layouts. The superintendent's apartment is in the basement and carried no shares. Three ground-floor stores occupy the commercial frontage and were leased to the sponsor at conversion, producing rental income to the corporation. Apartments trade on floor, exposure and condition, and exterior work — windows and storefronts included — runs through the LPC under the district designation.
Building operations
205 Hicks Street Apartment Corporation has operated the building since the 1986 closings. The conversion budget describes an operation that was small but unionized: a union agreement covering the resident working superintendent, elevator and exterminating service contracts, and management by Gam Holding Corp. Projected first-year maintenance was $14.60 per share against 8,036 shares, with commercial rent from the three stores supplementing shareholder maintenance — a structure that still matters, because commercial income remains part of how a 22-unit building funds a six-story plant.
The Roebling Research Library holds the 1986 offering plan, the proprietary lease and house rules, the by-laws, the purchase application, and audited financial statements from 2007–08 through 2011–12; current financials, the underlying mortgage, the reserve position, the commercial lease terms and any open assessment are reviewed with clients during diligence. The recurring capital items are FISP/LL11 façade cycles, elevator modernization, roof and boiler life, with the commercial frontage adding storefront and sidewalk-vault exposure a purely residential building does not carry.
What to know if you’re buying
Confirm the tenure structure in writing. City records carry the property on a condominium billing lot; the building's governing documents are cooperative. Have your attorney establish exactly what you are buying, how the commercial units are held, and how the tax assessment is split.
Understand the commercial component. Three ground-floor stores sit under the apartments and contribute income to the corporation. Ask for the current leases, their expirations, and what share of the budget they carry.
Read the sublet clause, then ask the board. The two-thirds-of-shares override is a 1986 artifact. What matters is the board's current written policy, including any residency requirement and fee.
A 22-unit building carries its capital alone. Façade cycles, elevator, roof and boiler land on a small denominator. Ask for the assessment history, the reserve balance and the status of the underlying mortgage. The eviction-plan filing, by contrast, is history: it appears in the 1986 paperwork and occasionally in title work, and has no bearing on a purchase today.
What to know if you’re selling
Name the architect. An LPC attribution to Andrew Thomas puts this building in the orbit of one of the most consequential American housing architects of the 1920s. Most Hicks Street prewars are marketed without any attribution at all.
Get ahead of the tenure question. Buyers running public data will see a condominium tax lot and a cooperative building and will ask. A one-paragraph answer with the plan documents attached keeps the deal on schedule.
Lead with condition. In a building where renovation state sets the spread, documented work and clean alteration files are the price-makers. Where the kitchen and bath are original, price to that rather than to the best sale in the building.
Price against the central-Heights prewar set, and surface the corporation's record. The right comps are Hicks, Remsen and Montague-adjacent co-ops of similar scale. A long, steady financial history and a stable commercial tenancy are underwriting assets with lenders; put them in the deal room early.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering 205 Hicks Street, also evaluate:
- 130 Hicks Street — boutique prewar co-op on the same street; the closest scale comparable
- 145 Hicks Street — the larger north-Heights prewar co-op on Hicks
- 76 Remsen Street — Slee & Bryson prewar co-op one block south, converted in 1963
- 60 Remsen Street — prewar elevator co-op peer on Remsen Street
- 68 Remsen Street — mid-size prewar co-op nearby
- 62 Montague Street (The Arlington) — Montrose Morris's 1887 apartment house around the corner
- 65 Montague Street — interwar elevator co-op at the Promenade end of Montague
- 38 Livingston Street (The Colonial) — the same sponsor principal's other 1986 Brooklyn Heights conversion
- 20 Pierrepont Street — interwar co-op one block north; the entry-tier alternative
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