Butler Plaza (44 Butler Place)
44 Butler Place, Brooklyn, NY 11238
Prospect Heights, Brooklyn
BBL 3011717501 · BIN 3251011
- Year built
- 1925
- Type
- Condominium
- Units
- 60
- Floors
- 6
- Landmark
- No
- Subletting
- Plan as filed (1986): a Unit Owner has the right to sell or lease the Unit to anyone without restriction or limitation, subject to the Board of Managers' right to acquire or lease the Unit, or to produce a third party to do so, on the same terms - i.e. a right of first refusal, not an approval power. Sponsor and holders of Unsold Units exempt from any consent requirement. Current board rental rules unverified.
Compiled by The Roebling Research Desk from the building’s offering plan, amendments, and related building documents (primary source dated 1986 plan as filed). Reported and subject to confirmation. Board policies can change by amendment — confirm at the offer stage.
A prewar condominium is rare in brownstone Brooklyn, and the reason is structural. The Brooklyn conversion wave of the 1980s ran through occupied rental buildings under General Business Law Section 352-eeee, which is a cooperative statute in practice: tenants get an exclusive purchase period at an insider price, sponsors get a percentage threshold to clear, and the vehicle at the end of it is an apartment corporation issuing shares. Almost every prewar apartment house within a mile of Grand Army Plaza went through that process and came out a cooperative. Butler Plaza did not, and the offering plan says why in a single sentence: the building was vacant.
Sterling Butler Associates bought a 1925 building with no tenants in it, began a gut renovation in January 1986, filed a condominium plan that October, and sold 60 finished apartments as new units with fee-simple deeds. There was no tenant body to convert, no insider discount, no rent-regulation schedule, and no 352-eeee threshold to clear. What a buyer gets today is a 1925 building with a 2026 tenure structure — deeded ownership, a board of managers with a right of first refusal rather than an approval power, and a common charge that excludes real estate taxes because each owner pays their own.
That difference is not cosmetic. It changes who can buy, how quickly, and on what terms. Condominium units accept pied-à-terre buyers, foreign buyers, trusts, LLCs and investors that a Prospect Heights cooperative board would decline or slow down; they finance with ordinary mortgages rather than share loans; and they resell without a board package. In a corridor where nearly every comparable building is a cooperative, that is the building's principal argument, and it is durable in a way that a renovation is not.
The renovation itself was a period product and reads that way in the paperwork. The plan's amenity list includes a cellar exercise room with machines, showers, toilets and lockers — genuinely early for a 60-unit Brooklyn building in 1986 — and the sponsor offered the first twenty purchasers a choice between six months of valet parking in a garage within ten blocks or six months of housekeeping service. The construction underneath is what it was in 1925: Class III non-fireproof, timber floors on steel beams and brick bearing walls, with concrete only in the public halls. Sound is a party-wall and floor-assembly question in a building like this, and it is worth asking about directly.
The tax structure at conversion deserves one careful paragraph, because it is the kind of thing that gets garbled in listing copy. The sponsor projected first-year real estate taxes of zero for the entire building on the strength of anticipated J-51 benefits earned by the renovation, and the plan itself warns that if the renovation expense documentation did not survive an HPD audit, the benefits would be lost and taxes would rise accordingly. That was 1986. J-51 benefits are finite by design and this program's are long behind the building. What matters in 2026 is the current tax bill on the specific unit, which a buyer should pull rather than infer.
Architecture and unit composition
Six stories of brick on a 21,000-square-foot lot with 150 feet of frontage, carrying about 52,300 square feet of building area across 60 apartments — roughly 870 gross square feet each, with a mix that runs from studios through three-bedrooms. The plan's own description of the common elements is a good picture of the building: cellar, front yard, front stoop, public halls and bulkhead, plus the exercise room and the superintendent's two-bedroom cellar apartment, all owned and maintained by the condominium.
The unit boundaries and common-interest percentages were set on floor area, adjusted for the substantially exclusive advantages some units enjoy in parts of the common elements — which is the plan's way of saying that apartments of identical square footage can carry different common interests, and therefore different monthly charges. Check the common-interest percentage on the specific unit against its square footage rather than assuming they track.
Bulk is worth a sentence. The building carries roughly 2.49 FAR on a lot zoned R8X at about 6.02, a gap of the sort that in a cooperative would prompt periodic conversations about air rights. In a condominium that conversation is far harder to have: a sale or transfer of development rights touches the declaration and the common elements and requires a level of unit-owner consent that most boards never assemble. Treat the gap as context, not as a plan.
Because the property is outside the Prospect Heights Historic District, exterior work here requires Department of Buildings permits and board approval and nothing further. On windows in particular that is a real saving against the district blocks a few streets north.
Building operations
The 1986 budget contemplated a lean operation: one live-in superintendent, a part-time doorman/porter, non-union, with an elevator service contract and a first-year common-charge budget of $129,240. Forty years of unit-owner governance have necessarily rewritten all of that. The condominium's Department of Housing Preservation and Development registration names EBMG LLC as managing agent, current for the 2025–26 cycle; the plan's original agent, North Gardens Management Corp., was controlled by a principal of the sponsor and is historical only.
In a Class III non-fireproof building of 1925 the recurring capital items are the roof, the Local Law 11 façade cycle, the elevator, the heating plant and the risers — plus, in a timber-framed structure, any water history in the floor assemblies. Request three years of financial statements, the reserve balance, the current common-charge schedule, the last two façade filings, minutes covering any assessment, and the building's insurance certificate. In a condominium, unlike a cooperative, there is no underlying mortgage to underwrite — which simplifies the analysis but also removes a cushion, since capital work here is funded from reserves, assessments or a condominium loan rather than from a refinancing.
Ask separately whether the exercise room described in the plan still operates. Cellar amenity rooms in small 1980s condominiums are frequently repurposed, and the plan's description is forty years old.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Apr 18, 2024 | 1D | $685,000 |
| Feb 21, 2024 | 5H | $2,100,000 |
| Oct 16, 2023 | 3H | $700,000 |
| Sep 25, 2023 | 4E | $1,575,000 |
| May 30, 2023 | 4G | $1,200,000 |
| Sep 14, 2021 | 2A | $1,100,000 |
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 3-01171-7501) 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
Understand what you are buying and why it is unusual. A deeded prewar apartment two blocks from Grand Army Plaza, in a corridor where nearly everything else is a cooperative. The tenure is the asset.
Check the common-interest percentage against the square footage. The plan set common interests on floor area adjusted for exclusive advantages in the common elements. Two similar apartments can carry different monthlies.
Ask about sound and the floor assemblies. Class III non-fireproof construction with timber floors on steel beams. It is a 1925 building; the 1986 renovation did not change the frame.
Pull the current tax bill on the unit. The 1986 plan's zero-tax projection rested on a J-51 program that is long behind the building. Model the actual number.
Read the reserve and assessment history. With no underlying mortgage, capital work here comes out of reserves, assessments or a condominium loan. Ask what the last major project cost and how it was funded.
What to know if you’re selling
Say "condominium" in the first line. It is the single most valuable fact about the listing and the one that most reliably widens the buyer pool in this neighborhood.
Explain the monthly correctly. Buyers coming from Prospect Heights cooperatives will read your common charge next to their maintenance and reach the wrong conclusion. Present the common charge and the real estate tax together.
Own the location precisely. Butler Place is a short, quiet street a block off the Grand Army Plaza arc, with the park, the library and the 2/3 within a few minutes' walk. Say it plainly rather than reaching for the Plaza Street address.
Have the condominium package ready. Financials, reserve balance, current budget, house rules, any assessment history, the waiver-of-first-refusal procedure, and the alteration approvals for work done to the unit.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering Butler Plaza, also evaluate:
- 50 Plaza Street East — the 1925 twelve-story cooperative one block west; the same vintage in the other tenure
- 34 Plaza Street East — the large postwar cooperative on the plaza arc
- 20 Plaza Street East — 1940 six-story co-op holding the curve of Grand Army Plaza
- 230 Park Place — the Art Deco elevator co-op inside the Prospect Heights Historic District
- 225 Park Place — Colonial Revival elevator co-op on the same landmarked blockfront
- 125 Eastern Parkway (The Theodore Roosevelt) — 1923 parkway co-op at comparable scale
- 1 Grand Army Plaza (Richard Meier on Prospect Park) — the neighborhood's marquee condominium, for buyers who want the same tenure in new construction
- 550 Vanderbilt Avenue — the Pacific Park condominium; the contemporary alternative in the same neighborhood
- 209 Lincoln Place — Park Slope prewar co-op inside that neighborhood's historic district; the landmarked comparison across Flatbush Avenue
Considering a move at Butler Plaza?
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 Butler Plaza 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.