282 Henry Street

A Greek Revival row house of 1839, four and a half stories on the Department of Finance count, inside the Brooklyn Heights Historic District. The exterior — stoop, ironwork, cornice, window openings — is protected district fabric, and any change to it runs through the Landmarks Preservation Commission.

The apartment mix is unusually uniform and unusually well documented for a building this old. The plan's Schedule A footnotes set out the full stack: one studio of two and a half rooms on the main floor, and nine apartments of three and a half rooms each — living room, bedroom and kitchen — across the garden level, the main floor and the four floors above. One of the two garden apartments carries an enclosed porch. The ten apartments total 34 rooms and 1,000 shares, with individual allocations running from 88 shares at the small end to 120 at the large.

That uniformity is the practical point. This is a building of one-bedrooms with a single studio, not a building with a range. Line-to-line comparison means little here; floor position, light, garden or roof access and renovation state are what separate one apartment from another.

Features to review in diligence:

• Rear garden allocated exclusively to the two garden apartments; not common space
• Roof deck and roof garden created at conversion with stair access from the top floor, held in common
• A party wall agreement of record affects the property
• Conversion-era title exceptions for stoop, areaway, cellar-step, trim and cornice encroachments — routine for a row house of this date, but worth reading in the title report

282 Henry Street Owners Corp. has run the building since the 1985–86 closing. The model is minimal by design: a part-time non-resident superintendent, a central plant, no on-site staff, and a corporation small enough that the board and the shareholders are effectively the same group. Audited financial statements in The Roebling Research Library run from 1998 forward, giving more than two decades of trend data on maintenance, reserves and capital spending — a real underwriting advantage at this size.

The capital profile is what an 1839 masonry row house implies. Façade, stoop, cornice and parapet work runs under FISP/LL11 with Landmarks review attaching, and on a Greek Revival house that review is not a formality. The roof carries a deck and plantings and is therefore both amenity and maintenance item. Party-wall condition, the garden retaining structures and the age of the mechanical systems round out the list. Across ten apartments any one of those is financed by assessment rather than by scale — so the reserve balance, assessment history and most recent engineer's report should be read before the maintenance figure is.

The conversion-era house rules, carried in the proprietary lease, are the printed form of their period and include provisions describing an older Brooklyn Heights: a rule that patients of any doctor with offices in the building may not wait in the lobby; an 80 percent floor-covering requirement in every room but kitchens, pantries, bathrooms and closets; a prohibition on window air conditioners and ventilators without approval; a bar on group tours and auctions in apartments. The floor-covering and air-conditioner rules are live and enforceable; the rest is history.

Recent sales

Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 3-00262-0055) 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.

Confirm exactly what outdoor space comes with the apartment. The rear garden belongs to the two garden apartments and is not common; the roof deck is common. Get both in writing against the specific unit.

Ten apartments means concentrated capital exposure. An 1839 façade under Landmarks review, a party wall and a planted roof are all real capital items on a ten-share corporation. Read the reserves and assessment history first.

Understand the service model. A part-time, non-resident superintendent shared with other buildings in the area was the model in 1985 and remains typical for this stock. There is no on-site staff.

Reconcile the count. Ten apartments in the plan, eleven units in city records. Your attorney should verify the specific unit's shares and how the eleventh is carried.

Lead with 1839. A documented Greek Revival house of the district's founding generation, with a builder attribution in the LPC records, is a pedigree line most Heights listings cannot write.

Name the roof deck. Among ten-unit houses in the district, a common roof deck and roof garden is a genuine competitive advantage. Say it early.

Price against the district's small-house co-ops. The comparables are the Heights' converted row houses south of Joralemon, not the full-service apartment buildings — the maintenance differential is the whole argument.

Sell condition. In a building of nine near-identical one-bedrooms, renovation quality and Landmarks-clean alteration files set the spread. Document both before you list.

If you're considering 282 Henry Street, also evaluate:

• 299 Henry Street — small cooperative a block south on the same street
• 301 Henry Street — ten-unit cooperative peer at the Atlantic Avenue end of Henry Street
• 245 Henry Street — Cohn & Cohn's postwar elevator cooperative; the full-service contrast nearby
• 161 Henry Street — Schneider & Herter's 1905 prewar elevator cooperative on the same street
• 153 Henry Street — Mortimer E. Freehof's 1928 apartment house; the larger prewar alternative
• 160 Henry Street — built-as-a-co-op prewar building, organized 1923
• 277 Hicks Street — eighteen-apartment cooperative one block west; the closest peer in scale
• 200 Hicks Street (Casino Mansions) — William A. Boring's 1911 cooperative; the prewar elevator comparison
• 151 Joralemon Street — small prewar walk-up cooperative around the corner; the closest operating-model match