417 Hicks Street
417 Hicks Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Cobble Hill, Brooklyn
BBL 3003057501 · BIN 3398747
- Year built
- 1878
- Type
- Condominium
- Units
- 116
- Floors
- 6
- Landmark
- Designated
- Pets
- Not documented in the plan materials reviewed — confirm the current rules and regulations at offer stage
- Flip tax
- 1% minimum seller-paid transfer fee to the association based on purchase price; purchasers of sponsor units contribute 2 months' common charges to working capital
- Financing
- Fannie Mae approved 2014-12-04; Wells Fargo, Chase and Mortgage Master approved at <=80% LTV; FHA eligibility contingent on owner-occupancy threshold
- Subletting
- standard condominium right of first refusal; lease-term minimums not documented in materials reviewed
Compiled by The Roebling Research Desk from the building’s offering plan, amendments, and related building documents (primary source dated 2018-2019 (Amendment 39 reporting date)). Reported and subject to confirmation. Board policies can change by amendment — confirm at the offer stage.
The Tower Buildings are the reason the phrase "model housing" entered the American vocabulary, and they are still standing on the east side of Hicks Street between Warren and Baltic, still full of people, still working. Alfred Tredway White built them in 1878–79 to William Field & Son's designs, one year after the Home Buildings a block south, and the innovation is legible from the sidewalk: rather than a dark interior stair serving a deep, airless tenement plan, Field pushed the vertical circulation into projecting brick towers pierced with openings and hung perforated iron balconies across the façade to reach the apartment doors. Every apartment got outside air on two sides, its own water closet, and daylight. Nothing about that arrangement was normal in 1878, when the New York tenement standard was the dumbbell plan and the airshaft.
The economics were the argument. White's formulation — philanthropy plus five percent — held that housing built to a decent standard could return five percent to its developer without subsidy, and that proving it would move the market faster than charity would. He proved it here and repeated it at Warren Place, where he built two facing rows of workingmen's cottages around a shared garden mews, and at Riverside on Columbia Place. Today the nine buildings are protected inside the Cobble Hill Historic District and carry a preservation obligation as strict as any brownstone on Kane Street.
The ownership history matters to a buyer more than the architectural history does. The White family held the property into the twentieth century; it was sold in the 1940s and renamed Cobble Hill Towers; it passed to Frank Farella in 1975 and went through a long restoration running to the mid-1980s. Hudson Cobble Hill Towers LLC and Cobble Hill Towers Associates filed a non-eviction condominium plan accepted March 15, 2010 and declared it effective in October 2011, having reached the fifteen percent threshold with 28 qualifying purchasers out of 186 units offered. That is a low bar by design, and the plan said so explicitly: the sponsor reserved an unconditional right to rent rather than sell any unsold unit, and warned purchasers that owner-occupants might never gain control of the board.
They did. By the thirty-ninth amendment the sponsor had closed on 118 units with four more in contract — about 63 percent of the condominium — with 101 units sold or in contract to primary homeowners, and the sponsor no longer controlled the board. Fannie Mae approved the building for its lending programs in December 2014, and conventional lenders have cleared it at 80 percent loan-to-value. Sixty-eight units remained unsold and occupied by rent-regulated tenants at that reporting date. A buyer here is buying into a genuinely mixed building: owner-occupants, investor owners, and long-tenured stabilized tenants who use the same courtyards and stairs and who have every reason to care about the place, but whose economic interests in capital spending differ from an owner's. That is the central fact of the building, and it is the thing to underwrite.
For the right buyer, what the mix buys is scarcity at an accessible price: a landmarked, nationally significant 1878 building on a quiet Cobble Hill block, one block from Court Street, at entry-tier condominium pricing with no doorman overhead in the budget.
Architecture and unit composition
The Tower Buildings group occupies the Hicks Street frontage between Warren and Baltic and wraps onto both cross streets. Field's plan is a courtyard plan: the buildings enclose landscaped interior courts, and the stair towers and iron balconies face inward as well as outward, producing what has been described as among the first semi-public communal space in New York housing. The elevations are red brick with the polychrome and cut-brick detail of the late 1870s, and the roofline carries the spires that give the complex its silhouette.
Apartments run small by contemporary standards and honest by 1878 standards. The plan's Schedule A records units clustering in the 370-to-900-square-foot range across one-bedroom, two-bedroom and three-bedroom-with-one-and-a-half-bath configurations, with a scattering of studios. Original fireplaces survive in some apartments and are a recurring feature in the building's resale inventory. The apartments were designed for cross-ventilation, and that remains their strongest interior quality: light and air on more than one exposure in a six-story building with no tower shadow anywhere near it.
The conversion carried an explicit capital program: masonry re-pointing across all nine buildings, fire escape survey and repainting, bluestone stair treads, new parapet copings throughout, the rebuilt second-floor exterior corridor at 140 Warren Street, and a master Landmarks approval for window replacement — with new sash required to be set back into the original frames to satisfy the Commission. Courtyard paving, gates, exterior lighting, intercom and camera systems and hallway renovation followed. That work is now more than a decade old and forms the baseline for the reserve study a buyer should read.
Building operations
The condominium operates nine buildings as a single association with a shared staff, a modest amenity set and no doorman. Income lines beyond common charges include laundry, storage — the association runs a seasonal air-conditioner storage program — and transfer fees. The 2018 operating budget for the full nine-building association ran to roughly $1.18 million in total cash requirement against about $1.28 million of income, with a required reserve contribution set at a percentage of income; a professional reserve study with a January 2013 analysis date drives the capital plan, and the reserve fund stood at roughly $457,000 at the end of 2017.
Two operating features are specific to a sponsor-heavy conversion and worth understanding. The sponsor's original obligation to contribute three percent of each sale price to the association's capital reserve was fully satisfied — $1,293,948 in total — and expired in January 2017, so that funding source is gone. And because association employees have historically done work on sponsor-owned rental units, the sponsor reimburses the association a declining percentage of labor cost that steps down with each unit sold; that percentage stood at 25 percent at the end of 2017 and the board may terminate the arrangement on thirty days' notice. Both items belong in a carrying-cost model. 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Jul 2, 2025 | 4A | $680,000 |
| Jul 22, 2024 | 5D | $650,000 |
| Mar 29, 2017 | 4A | $587,000 |
| Sep 29, 2015 | 3D | $570,000 |
Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 3-00305-7501) 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
Read the sponsor position first. Ask for the current schedule of unsold units, the owner-occupancy percentage and the association's most recent financials. The plan permitted the sponsor to rent indefinitely; the trajectory has run toward owner control, but the number you underwrite is today's number, not 2019's.
Confirm your lender before you write an offer. Fannie Mae approval dates from 2014 and FHA eligibility depends on an owner-occupancy test. Both need re-confirming at application, and a financing surprise late in contract is the most common way a deal here goes sideways.
It is a walk-up. The capital documents record no elevator. Assess the specific stair and floor honestly, particularly for a resale horizon.
The reserve is modest for nine buildings. The sponsor's 3 percent capital contribution ended in January 2017. Read the reserve study, the assessment history and the board minutes before you price the apartment.
The architecture is the asset — and the constraint. Landmarks review governs windows, façade and courtyard work. That protects the building's value and it lengthens and prices any alteration you contemplate.
What to know if you’re selling
Name the building properly. "Alfred Tredway White's 1878 Tower Buildings, William Field & Son, inside the Cobble Hill Historic District" is a sentence almost no competing listing in the price band can write. Lead with it.
Sell the light. Field designed these apartments for cross-ventilation and daylight in an era when neither was standard. Photograph in season, from the courtyard side, and let the exposure do the work.
Get ahead of the financing question. Have the current Fannie Mae standing, owner-occupancy percentage and association financials assembled before the first showing. Buyers' lenders will ask, and the seller who answers first controls the timeline.
Anchor to same-complex comparables. Recent sales inside Cobble Hill Towers — matched on floor, exposure and condition — are the defensible anchors, and surviving original detail and Landmarks-compliant windows are the quantifiable differentiators between them. Neighborhood-wide condominium averages are not a substitute.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering 417 Hicks Street, also evaluate:
- 439 Hicks Street (Cobble Hill Towers) — the Home Buildings group of the same condominium, one block south; the direct in-complex comparison
- 401 Hicks Street (The Arches at Cobble Hill) — the church-and-academy conversion immediately north; the amenity-and-elevator alternative on the same street
- 58 Strong Place (The Landmark at Strong Place) — 1851 church conversion; the boutique-conversion tier of the Cobble Hill condo market
- 501 Hicks Street — former school conversion at the neighborhood's southern edge; institutional-stock peer
- 200 Congress Street — the district's large elevator co-op; the accessible-tier alternative in cooperative form
- 174 Pacific Street — 28-unit Cobble Hill co-op at the district's northern edge
- 344 Degraw Street — boutique Carroll Gardens condominium a short walk south
- 71 Smith Street — Boerum Hill condominium on the eastern commercial spine; a different format at overlapping price points
Considering a move at the Tower Buildings?
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 the Tower Buildings 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.