40 Remsen Street
40 Remsen Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn
BBL 3002510026 · BIN 3326035
- Year built
- 1880
- Type
- Cooperative
- Units
- 10
- Floors
- 4
- Landmark
- Designated
Read the Landmarks Preservation Commission's file for this block and 40 Remsen Street stands out immediately: it is the newcomer. Numbers 42 through 58, running east toward Hicks Street, are Greek Revival houses of 1844 to 1846, each recorded with its original builder — Brazilla Ransom at 42, Augustus Moore at 44, A. C. Richards at 46, William Priest at 48, John Slade at 50, Samuel Morgan at 58. Numbers 26 through 36, running west toward Montague Terrace, are Eclectic brownstones of 1861 to 1879. No. 40 is dated 1880 to 1899, with no builder recorded — a house inserted into a completed row a generation or more after its neighbors, when the block was fully built and the only way to add was to fill a gap.
That origin explains everything else. City records show the building occupying essentially the entire 25-by-100-foot lot — roughly 9,800 gross square feet on four floors, with no rear yard. Nothing else on the row does this. The 1840s houses on either side sit on the front half of their lots with gardens behind. No. 40 has neither garden nor setback. It is, in effect, a small flats building dressed in brownstone, and the fourth story the Commission records as added took it to its present height.
The practical translation is unusually favorable. Ten apartments across roughly 9,800 square feet is close to a thousand gross square feet per unit — substantially more generous than the district's converted row houses, where ten units are typically squeezed into six or seven thousand feet. On a floor plate running the full hundred-foot depth of the lot, apartments here can be through-and-through or genuinely deep, rather than the shallow parlor subdivisions common in converted single-family houses. That is a physical fact rather than a marketing claim, and it is the building's core proposition.
The location is the other half of the case. This is the last block of Remsen Street before the bluff: the Promenade entrance sits at the end of the street past Montague Terrace, and the Grace Court cul-de-sac — among the quietest addresses in the Heights, closed at its western end above Brooklyn Bridge Park — runs behind the block. A resident here is a minute from the harbor view and two blocks from Montague Street, on a stretch of Remsen with almost no through traffic.
Architecture and unit composition
Four floors, ten apartments, brownstone front, no elevator. The LPC classifies the building as a row house of Eclectic style, which in the Commission's usage means a late-century house borrowing from more than one idiom rather than presenting a single coherent one — typically an Italianate or neo-Grec massing with Queen Anne or Romanesque incident in the lintels, cornice and entrance.
The added fourth story is the alteration the district file singles out, and it matters twice over: it is why the building reads taller than the 1840s houses beside it, and it is why the top-floor apartments differ structurally from those below — a later-built floor under a later-built roof, with its own thermal and leak history. Ask specifically about roof age and top-floor ceiling condition.
The full-lot footprint is the other item to verify with your own eyes and your attorney's survey. A building running the full depth of its lot has no rear yard — which removes an amenity and a maintenance liability at once — and rear-facing apartments look across the interior of the block toward the backs of the Grace Court houses rather than into a garden of their own. Light on the rear elevation is therefore a unit-by-unit question; confirm exposures at the showing, not from the floor plan. Exterior work runs through Landmarks, where the recurring questions on a brownstone front are window replacement and masonry or cornice repair.
Building operations
40 Remsen Street Owners Corp. holds the property. The Department of Finance records the building alteration in 1980, placing the conversion in the same early-1980s wave that produced most of the district's small-building cooperative stock. This page does not state the conversion terms: the copy of the offering plan in The Roebling Research Library is an archival image scan with no recoverable text. Obtain the plan from the corporation or its counsel.
That gap defines the diligence list, and at this size the list is short and specific. Request reviewed or audited financial statements for at least three years, the current budget, the reserve balance and full assessment history, the underlying mortgage terms and maturity, FISP/Local Law 11 status and any open violations, roof and boiler ages, the current house rules, the purchase application with its full fee schedule, and the managing agent's name in writing. Ten shareholders carry a nineteenth-century masonry envelope with an added top floor; the reserve position and assessment record will tell you more than any single year's budget. One structural note to carry into that conversation: the unusually large floor area per unit means per-square-foot operating cost should compare well against smaller-unit peers, while the per-apartment share of any capital event is correspondingly larger.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Dec 30, 2025 | 7 | $1,250,000 |
| Feb 21, 2025 | 9 | $620,000 |
| Mar 26, 2024 | 4 | $1,218,000 |
| Mar 21, 2023 | 8 | $1,860,000 |
| Sep 18, 2019 | 9 | $585,000 |
| Jul 11, 2018 | 3 | $618,000 |
Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 3-00251-0026) 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
Get the offering plan and house rules before you offer. They are not in general circulation. Sublet policy, financing minimums and any transfer fee are the three terms most likely to change your math.
Verify the footprint and the yard. City records show the building covering essentially the full lot. Confirm on the survey what that means for the specific apartment's rear exposure and light.
Treat the added fourth story as its own building. It postdates the rest of the house. Roof age, leak history and top-floor insulation are the questions.
Ten shareholders, one masonry envelope. Request the assessment history and reserve balance first, the budget second.
What to know if you’re selling
Lead with square footage. Roughly 9,800 gross feet across ten apartments is the building's strongest defensible claim, and almost no ten-unit co-op in the district matches it. Put the measured number in the listing.
Sell the block, precisely. The Promenade at the end of the street, Grace Court behind, no through traffic — a materially different address from the Remsen blocks east of Hicks.
Have the documents ready. With the plan and rules not publicly available, assembling them before launch removes the largest source of delay in small-co-op deals.
Comp against walk-ups, not elevator buildings. The right set is the district's moderate-scale brownstone-front cooperatives, not the staffed prewar buildings on Montague and Clinton.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering 40 Remsen Street, also evaluate:
- 44 Remsen Street — the 1844 Greek Revival house two doors east on the same row; the direct block comparable
- 58 Remsen Street — 1844 Greek Revival co-op at the Hicks Street end of the same block
- 8 Remsen Street — Slee & Bryson's 1923 apartment house at the Promenade end of the block; the purpose-built alternative
- 1 Grace Court — 1925 boutique co-op on the cul-de-sac directly behind
- 19 Grace Court — Sugarman & Berger's 1925 building on the same block, off Hicks
- 2 Grace Court — the large 1916 cooperative across Grace Court, for scale and services
- 10 Montague Terrace — small co-op on the Promenade terrace at the end of the street
- 76 Remsen Street — Slee & Bryson's 1922 elevator co-op one block east across Hicks
- 60 Remsen Street — the corridor's larger prewar elevator building
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 40 Remsen Street?
Request a private building brief with the relevant comparable sales, current and off-market availability, and an apartment-specific view of value.
Own an apartment here? See what it would sell for.
A Private Pricing Opinion — what your apartment at 40 Remsen Street 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.