38 Livingston Street (The Colonial)
38 Livingston Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn
BBL 3002680030 · BIN 3002625
- Year built
- 1914
- Type
- Cooperative
- Units
- 24
- Floors
- 6
- Landmark
- Designated
- Subletting
- Up to 24 months of sublet in any continuous five-year period, with at least one year elapsed before a new period begins; new shareholders must occupy for two years before applying; one-year terms renewable on 30 days' written notice; sublet fee 2 percent of annual maintenance in year one and 2 percent in year two, charged as additional rent; no sub-subleases; all sublets board-approved and subject to annual review
- Pets
- No bird or animal without the corporation's express written permission, revocable; dogs carried or leashed in public portions
Compiled by The Roebling Research Desk from the building’s offering plan, amendments, and related building documents (primary source dated 2005 sublet policy; undated house-rule amendments). Reported and subject to confirmation. Board policies can change by amendment — confirm at the offer stage.
The Colonial is the Brooklyn Heights co-op market at its most functional. A 1914 six-story elevator building of twenty-four apartments, all of them three or four rooms, on the block of Livingston Street between Clinton and Court — the last stretch of the historic district before it dissolves into Borough Hall, the courts and the Downtown Brooklyn office spine. The address buys landmark protection, prewar rooms and a commute measured in minutes rather than transfers.
The architecture is better credentialed than the block suggests. The LPC's district records name Robert Lyons and 1914. Robert T. Lyons was by then an established New York apartment-house designer — the St. Urban on Central Park West in 1906, later 903 Park Avenue, briefly the tallest apartment building in the world when it opened in 1916 — and in 1914 he was also at work on 11 Schermerhorn Street, five minutes east. The Colonial belongs to that moment: a developer-driven, middle-class apartment house in a competent Colonial Revival register, its name still lettered on the awning a century later. Apartments that escaped gut renovation still carry wainscoting, leaded glass and original subway tile.
The conversion is a period piece with an unusually clean paper trail. Fiat Realty Corporation, an entity of Abraham L. Poses operating through Gam Holding Corp. in the Bronx, filed a non-eviction plan dated February 24, 1986 — 4,630 shares against 24 apartments, $600 per share to the public and $420 to sitting tenants, with nearly every apartment rent-controlled or rent-stabilized at filing. The same sponsor principal was simultaneously converting 205 Hicks Street on the other side of the district, and each building's Attorney General filings disclose the other. Poses relinquished control of the board in November 1988; by the Eighth Amendment of June 1991 he still held 1,974 shares across eleven apartments, 42.63 percent of the corporation.
The value case for a buyer is legible. The unit count in city records matches the conversion schedule exactly — twenty-four apartments, no combinations to unwind. The sublet policy is written down. The building has an elevator, a live-in superintendent, a laundry room and storage, and nothing else that has to be paid for every month.
Architecture and unit composition
Six stories of brick in a restrained Colonial Revival manner, on a 5,927-square-foot lot carrying roughly 27,690 square feet of building — a dense, efficient plan for its date, with light courts at the flanks and rear that appear in the conversion-era engineering reports.
The apartment mix is narrow and easy to read from the share schedule. Two lines run four rooms with one bath, at share loads climbing from 206 on the first floor to 256 on the sixth; two lines run three rooms with one bath, from 143 to 181; and a single small unit of two rooms carries 110 shares. Nothing here is large. What varies is floor, exposure and condition: top-floor apartments pick up east and north light and Downtown Brooklyn views over the low-rise district, and the difference between an original prewar interior and a gut renovation sets the spread far more than line position does.
The 1986 sponsor's engineering re-inspection, filed in answer to Attorney General queries, is a useful record of the bones: exterior walls sound with localized brick cracking at the rear, most window lintels serviceable, fire escapes needing repair and paint, rear concrete decking to be replaced, dumbwaiter shafts to be sealed to code. Those items are history now, but they map the building's recurring capital vocabulary — parapet, lintels, rear yard, fire escapes.
Building operations
38 Livingston Street Apartment Corporation has run the building since the 1986 closings. The conversion budget describes a genuinely small operation: not subject to a union agreement, staffed by a resident superintendent, with management then performed by Gam Holding Corp. That basic shape — live-in super, elevator, laundry, storage — has held. The Roebling Research Library holds the offering plan and the first through eighth amendments, the bylaws, the proprietary lease, the house rules with their later amendments, the board-adopted sublet policy, the purchase application, and audited financial statements running from 1998–99 through 2013–14 — a long enough series to read maintenance growth, capital practice and reserve behavior at trend level rather than by snapshot. The sublet policy in the file was transmitted by Adventure Properties, Inc.; because agents change, the current agent should be confirmed rather than assumed. For a six-story 1914 masonry building the recurring capital items are predictable: FISP/LL11 façade cycles, parapet and lintel work, roof, elevator modernization and boiler life.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Mar 6, 2026 | 63 | $949,000 |
| May 28, 2025 | 23 | $955,000 |
| Feb 1, 2024 | 62 | $1,608,000 |
| Sep 7, 2022 | 54 | $825,000 |
| Mar 30, 2022 | 64 | $835,000 |
| Mar 23, 2021 | 42 | $1,250,000 |
Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 3-00268-0030) 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
The unit count is clean. City records and the 1986 conversion schedule both say 24 apartments — no combination history to untangle, and a share ledger your attorney can reconcile in an afternoon.
Read the sublet policy before assuming flexibility. Two years of owner-occupancy first, then a maximum of 24 months in any five-year window, at 2 percent of annual maintenance. This is a policy written for owner-occupants.
Ask what is undocumented. Flip tax, financing minimums and pied-à-terre practice do not appear in the papers on file. Management's current written answers control, and we obtain them as standard practice.
Expect a small building's economics, and a genuine locational trade. Twenty-four apartments carry the whole capital plan, so ask for the assessment history and the reserve balance and read the long financial series rather than a single year. And walk the block at 8:30 a.m.: landmark district on one side, Borough Hall on the other.
What to know if you’re selling
Name the building and the architect. "The Colonial" is on the awning and in common use; the Robert Lyons attribution in the LPC record gives a listing a pedigree line most Livingston Street prewars cannot claim.
Sell the commute honestly and hard. For buyers working in Downtown Brooklyn, the Financial District or Midtown, this address is a materially better daily proposition than the Promenade blocks at a materially lower price.
Lead with surviving period detail. Wainscoting, leaded glass and original tile photograph well and are increasingly scarce in the district's small co-ops.
Price against the district's small prewar set, and put the sublet policy in the deal room. The correct comps are Livingston, Schermerhorn and Clinton Street co-ops of similar scale, not the Montague corridor's heavily staffed buildings. Buyers' attorneys will ask about subletting; a copy of the board's written policy answers it before it becomes a delay.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering 38 Livingston Street, also evaluate:
- 11 Schermerhorn Street — Robert Lyons's other 1914 Brooklyn Heights apartment house, a few minutes east; the direct pedigree comparable
- 77 Livingston Street — prewar co-op peer on the same street
- 75 Livingston Street — the tower co-op at Court Street; the neighborhood's tall prewar alternative
- 130 Clinton Street — prewar elevator co-op two blocks west, closer to the district's core
- 40 Clinton Street — larger full-service Clinton Street co-op
- 96 Schermerhorn Street (Boerum Court) — service-heavy prewar co-op at the district's southern edge
- 76 Schermerhorn Street (The Symon) — the condominium alternative in the same submarket
- 110 Livingston Street — the McKim, Mead & White Board of Education building converted to condominiums, a block east
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.
Considering a move at The Colonial?
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A Private Pricing Opinion — what your apartment at The Colonial would likely sell for today, what it costs to sell, and what you’d walk away with — reviewed personally against condition, exposures, renovation quality, and the competition actually on the market.