44 Pineapple Street (St. George Tower)
44 Pineapple Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn
BBL 3002310019 · BIN 3001726
- Year built
- 1929
- Type
- Cooperative
- Units
- 275
- Floors
- 30
- Landmark
- Designated
The St. George Tower is the Brooklyn Heights skyline's grandest artifact — the 30-story crown of what was, when it opened, the largest hotel in New York City. The Hotel St. George began in 1885 as Captain William Tumbridge's 10-story house on Clark Street and grew addition by addition until Bing & Bing bought it in 1922 and hired Emery Roth, then entering the most productive decade of his career, to take it to metropolitan scale. Roth's tower at Hicks and Pineapple Streets — steel-framed, glazed-brick, terra-cotta-ornamented, finished in 1930 — brought the complex to 2,632 rooms, past the New Yorker Hotel for the citywide title. A 480-million-candlepower beacon on the roof was visible ten miles out to sea until it was switched off in 1931. Below decks, the hotel ran a famous salt-water pool lined in gold mirrors by designer Willy Pogany and the block-long Colorama Ballroom by Winold Reiss — the interiors that made the St. George Brooklyn's default setting for banquets, weddings, and mid-century celebrity visits.
The hotel's slow decline after 1950 ended in bankruptcy and dispersal, and the complex broke into separate ownerships — which is why the St. George name today attaches to several distinct buildings on the block. The Tower and the adjoining Grill building were renovated to apartments in the early 1980s at a reported cost of $15 million and organized as the St. George Tower & Grill Owners Corp.; neighboring sections became a separate cooperative and, from 1996, student housing operated by Educational Housing Services. The 1995 sixteen-alarm fire that destroyed the complex's Clark Building — the city's largest fire in over two decades — damaged dozens of Tower co-op units but spared the tower itself, and the rebuilt block has been stable since. Buyers should understand the geography: this profile concerns the 275-unit tower cooperative at 44 Pineapple Street / 111 Hicks Street, and only that entity.
What the cooperative owns is, by any measure, the best high-rise fabric in the historic district. Emery Roth is the signature name of prewar apartment New York, and this is his only tower at this scale in Brooklyn Heights; the banded glazed brick, Egyptian-figure terra cotta, and projecting eagles were restored in a $2.8 million campaign completed around 2020 under LPC oversight, including new monumental windows at the 25th and 30th floors. And because the tower predates the 1965 historic district that now caps the neighborhood at rowhouse scale, its upper floors hold a grandfathered vantage — harbor, bridges, and lower Manhattan from the 27th-floor roof deck — that no new building in the district will ever replicate.
Architecture and unit composition
The tower's 275 apartments stack from studios and one-bedrooms through larger combined layouts, on floor plates that follow the hotel's original room-and-corridor logic. As with most hotel conversions, line-by-line generalization fails: apartments were assembled from hotel rooms in varying combinations, so layout quality, closet depth, and kitchen placement differ meaningfully between similar-sized units, and renovation vintage drives value within each size class. Ceiling heights and window scale are prewar-hotel in character, and the upper floors — where the massing steps back — carry the exposures the building is known for: open harbor and skyline views above the protected low-rise district.
The exterior is the district's tallest Art Deco statement: a buff glazed-brick base rising to bands of black and white glazed brick, with glazed terra-cotta ornament — the six-foot Egyptian-motif figures and eagles — marking the setbacks, all restored in the recent façade campaign. Local Law 11 cycles on a 30-story ornamented tower are a permanent capital-planning feature, and the completed restoration is a genuine diligence positive: the major envelope work of this generation is behind the building rather than ahead of it.
Building operations
St. George Tower & Grill Owners Corp. operates the tower with an attended lobby and building staff, and maintains the 27th-floor roof deck that serves as the building's signature amenity. The cooperative's recent capital record — led by the LPC-supervised façade restoration — is documented in trade and preservation press; current financial statements, house rules, and the offering plan with amendments are maintained in The Roebling Research Library and shared with clients during diligence. The complex's lower levels and neighboring buildings carry separate owners and uses, including student housing and, per recent reporting, a large wellness facility; shared-wall and complex-level arrangements are ordinary diligence items for a building with this history.
Transit is a defining operational fact: the Clark Street 2/3 station entrance sits within the former hotel complex at Clark and Henry Streets, effectively giving the building an in-house subway — one stop from Wall Street.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Apr 10, 2026 | 16D | $1,250,000 |
| Mar 30, 2026 | 22G | $665,000 |
| Mar 2, 2026 | 4A | $870,000 |
| Feb 17, 2026 | 5BC | $1,250,000 |
| Dec 24, 2025 | 16H | $700,000 |
| Nov 12, 2025 | 27B | $1,770,000 |
Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 3-00231-0019) 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
Buy the apartment, then the line. Hotel-conversion layouts vary unit by unit; walk the specific apartment's plan against others in its size class and review its alteration history before anchoring to building averages.
The views are grandfathered and protected. The 1965 historic district caps everything around the tower at rowhouse scale; high-floor exposures here are among the most stable view envelopes in Brooklyn.
The façade work is done — verify the rest. The completed restoration is a capital-planning positive; review current financials, reserve levels, and any active projects in diligence as with any landmarked prewar co-op.
Confirm the policy file early. Sublet terms, pet policy, financing limits, and any flip tax are board matters and are not publicly documented; get the current house rules and two years of financials before offer.
Understand the complex. The St. George name spans several separately owned buildings, including student housing; know which entity you are buying into (this cooperative is the tower at 44 Pineapple / 111 Hicks) and how complex-level arrangements are handled.
What to know if you’re selling
Sell the provenance. Emery Roth, Bing & Bing, the largest hotel in New York, the beacon, the Pogany pool — this building's story outruns every comparable in the district; use it in positioning.
Lead with the view and the roof deck. High-floor open exposure is the scarcest asset in the Heights co-op market; the 27th-floor deck extends that asset to every shareholder.
Document your renovation. In a conversion building, a board-approved renovation with a clean alteration file is a direct pricing lever.
Price per room against tower peers. The right comparable set is the Heights' tower and conversion cooperatives, with same-building trades anchoring; the brownstone-scale co-ops west of Hicks are a different market.
Prepare buyers for co-op pacing. Board package, interview, and conventional cooperative timelines apply.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering the St. George Tower, also evaluate:
- 75 Henry Street (Whitman Close) — the postwar tower cooperative one block east; the same high-floor view thesis in postwar form at volume scale
- 75 Livingston Street — 1926 neo-Gothic office conversion cooperative; the Heights' other great prewar tower silhouette
- Hamilton House (45 Pineapple Street) — full-service postwar cooperative directly across Pineapple Street
- 60 Pineapple Street — prewar Heights cooperative on the same block
- 59 Pineapple Street — prewar cooperative neighbor
- 135 Willow Street — substantial prewar cooperative in the central Heights
- 70 Clark Street — prewar cooperative steps from the Clark Street station
- 160 Columbia Heights — prewar cooperative toward the Promenade; the westward alternative
- The Breukelen (57 Montague Street) — prewar cooperative on the Montague spine
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 St. George Tower?
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 St. George Tower 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.