The Arches at Cobble Hill (401 Hicks Street)
401 Hicks Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Cobble Hill, Brooklyn
BBL 3003007501 · BIN 3335989
- Year built
- 1866
- Type
- Condominium
- Units
- 59
- Floors
- 4
- Landmark
- Designated
- Flip tax
- none disclosed in the offering plan; confirm current board fee schedules at offer stage
- Financing
- purchase agreements could be conditioned on an institutional first mortgage commitment up to 75% of purchase price (sponsor-era term); current lender standards not documented
- Subletting
- no board approval of purchasers or tenants; board holds a right of first refusal on any sale or lease
- Pied-à-terre
- permitted (standard condominium; plan states no limit on the number of owners purchasing for investment)
- Washer / dryer
- washer/dryer connections in a closet or utility room in every unit; there is no common laundry room
- Pets
- dogs, cats and household pets permitted; maximum ONE dog and TWO pets total per unit; anything else requires revocable written board/managing-agent consent; pets carried or leashed in common portions
Compiled by The Roebling Research Desk from the building’s offering plan, amendments, and related building documents (primary source dated house rules as amended, undated in the copy reviewed). Reported and subject to confirmation. Board policies can change by amendment — confirm at the offer stage.
Cobble Hill's institutional buildings are the neighborhood's rarest housing stock, and The Arches is the largest of them. The parish complex at Hicks and Warren — St. Peter's church, its rectory, and a four-story academy building that had served as a school of nursing — occupied a 34,264-square-foot corner in the middle of a landmarked row-house district, exactly the kind of site that stops producing new housing the moment a historic district is drawn around it. Between November 2002 and 2005, Hicks & Warren LLC converted it into 59 condominium apartments to designs by Scarano & Associates, keeping the load-bearing walls and columns in place, inserting floors, and extending the academy building at the rear. The Society of American Registered Architects gave the project a first prize in its 2004 professional design awards.
The conversion method is why the apartments feel the way they do. Because the masonry shell was retained and floors were threaded through it, the building's window openings are institutional in scale and rhythm, and the floor plates that resulted are irregular — which is how a 59-unit building in a four-story envelope ended up with a large inventory of duplexes. The original Schedule A reads as a catalogue of two-storey layouts: two-bedroom duplexes around 1,420 to 1,516 square feet, two-bedroom-plus-home-office duplexes near 1,900, three-bedroom duplexes past 2,300. Add front yards, rear yards, terraces, balconies and private walled courtyards assigned as limited common elements, and the building produces something Cobble Hill's brownstone stock and its walk-up condominiums both struggle to supply: family-scale, single-key, elevator-served apartments with private outdoor space, in the historic district.
The trade-offs are equally specific and were disclosed in the plan. There is no on-site parking and no common laundry room — every unit was delivered plumbed for its own washer and dryer. Three passenger elevators serve the complex, but a handful of top-floor apartments in the rectory building (A-2A, 4A, 4B and 5A) are reachable only by stair from the floor below, a quirk of fitting apartments into a rectory roof. Heat and cooking gas run as common expenses and the cooling plant is central, with in-unit fan coil units — an operating model that shifts cost from the individual electric bill into common charges and needs to be modelled properly rather than compared line-for-line against a metered building.
The tax history is the other thing a buyer must handle correctly. The plan projected first-year real estate taxes in two columns, with and without J-51 benefits, and made the sponsor's obligation contingent on obtaining a Certificate of Reasonable Cost from HPD. J-51 is a rehabilitation exemption and abatement with a defined schedule, and a plan-era projection from 2003 is not a description of a 2026 tax bill. The correct approach is to pull the current bill for the specific unit and run True Monthly Carrying Cost against it.
Architecture and unit composition
The condominium reads as two connected buildings on one corner parcel. The church-and-rectory portion, roughly 39,500 square feet, holds 24 apartments; the academy building with its rear extension, roughly 45,195 square feet, holds 35. Both retain their original masonry and their institutional fenestration; the extension is where the plan's newer floor plates and the more regular layouts sit.
Apartments were delivered with plumbing fixtures and kitchen cabinetry, range, refrigerator, dishwasher and electric hood, pre-wiring for telephone, cable and internet, hard-wired smoke detection, and a washer/dryer closet or utility room in every unit. Bathrooms run to water closet and lavatory — some with double basins — and most with a bathtub. Cooling is served from three air-cooled chillers with a combined 180 tons of capacity; heating and domestic hot water run off six gas-fired boilers, with a handicapped lift in addition to the two main elevator machines noted in the energy budget.
Outdoor space is the differentiating asset and it is unit-specific. Front yards, rear yards, terraces, balconies and private courtyards are limited common elements appurtenant to particular apartments, and their maintenance falls to the unit owner. Two apartments in this building are rarely the same asset; comparables have to match on layout type, level count and outdoor allocation, not just bedroom count.
Building operations
The Arches runs a boutique service model: a resident superintendent, a porter, three passenger elevators in 24-hour service, and a video intercom system at each unit rather than an attended desk. The board of managers purchased the basement superintendent's unit at conversion for $464,500 under a five-year purchase-money note at 8 percent, an item the plan disclosed as a future refinancing or assessment risk to unit owners; four decades of Cobble Hill co-op and condo experience says this is the sort of legacy obligation that resolves quietly but should still be traced through the association's current balance sheet.
Because heating gas, cooking gas, common electricity, water and sewer, and the cooling plant's electricity all run as common expenses, common charges at The Arches carry more of the building's energy cost than they do in a submetered building. Individual apartment electricity is separately metered and billed. The board's house rules have been amended over time — a bed-bug reporting protocol was added, with inspection costs split between the association and the affected unit owner — and current rules, fee schedules and assessment history should be requested in writing. Management history and current agent details are maintained in The Roebling Research Library and confirmed with clients during diligence.
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 closings 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Feb 24, 2026 | B-3E | $1,650,000 |
| Jul 31, 2025 | B-1A | $1,975,000 |
| Feb 13, 2025 | B-1B | $2,135,000 |
| Jul 25, 2024 | B-6D | $1,490,000 |
| Jan 9, 2024 | B-3E | $1,464,000 |
| May 17, 2023 | B-1D | $2,125,000 |
Full closing history with price-per-square-foot over time, the complete retrade record, and every line that has traded.
Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 3-00300-7501) 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
Pull the current tax bill. The plan's J-51 projections are 2003 documents. Underwrite the unit's actual current assessment and run True Monthly Carrying Cost against it before you set a price.
Match the comparable to the layout. Duplex versus simplex, level count, and the size and type of the limited common element outdoor space drive value more than bedroom count does.
Check the vertical access on the specific unit. Three elevators serve the complex, but several top-floor rectory apartments are reached only by stair from the floor below. Confirm which you are buying.
Model the common charge honestly. Heating gas, cooking gas, common electricity, water and the central cooling plant are common expenses here. A per-square-foot common charge comparison against a submetered building is not apples to apples.
No parking, no laundry room. Both were disclosed at conversion and neither has an on-site fix. Every apartment has its own washer/dryer connection, which is the compensating fact worth stating.
What to know if you’re selling
Lead with the format. A family-scale duplex with private outdoor space and elevator access, inside the Cobble Hill Historic District, is a listing sentence with almost no competition in the neighborhood.
Stage the outdoor space as a room. Courtyards, terraces and yards are the assets that separate this building from the district's row-house floor-throughs. Photograph them furnished and in season.
Explain the conversion. The retained masonry shell, the inserted floors and the Scarano design — including the project's 2004 SARA design award — give the building a provenance line that generic 2000s infill cannot match.
Be precise about carrying costs. Buyers who understand that heating and cooling sit inside the common charge underwrite the number correctly. Buyers who do not will re-trade at diligence.
Anchor to in-building comparables. Same layout type, same outdoor allocation, from 2025 forward. Neighborhood-average per-square-foot figures will misprice this building in both directions.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering The Arches at Cobble Hill, also evaluate:
- 58 Strong Place (The Landmark at Strong Place) — the 1851 Strong Place church conversion; the closest conceptual peer in the neighborhood
- 501 Hicks Street — former school conversion further south on the same street; institutional stock, boutique scale
- 417 Hicks Street — the Tower Buildings of Cobble Hill Towers, immediately south; landmark model housing at the accessible end of the condo market
- 439 Hicks Street (Cobble Hill Towers) — the Home Buildings group of the same complex
- 291 Union Street (Sackett Union) — boutique Carroll Gardens condominium with outdoor space; the newer-vintage alternative
- 345 Carroll Street — small-format Carroll Gardens condominium with family-scale layouts
- 509 Pacific Street (The Hendrik) — boutique Boerum Hill condominium; the design-led comparison a few blocks east
- 556 State Street (Boerum Heights) — Boerum Hill condominium of similar scale
- 199 State Street (The Lookout Hill Condominium) — boutique condominium north of Atlantic Avenue; comparable unit count, different context
Considering a move at The Arches at Cobble Hill?
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