501 Hicks Street (Cobble Hill School Condominium)
501 Hicks Street, Brooklyn, NY 11231
Cobble Hill, Brooklyn
BBL 3003217501 · BIN 3003731
- Year built
- 1922
- Type
- Condominium
- Units
- 34
- Floors
- 5
- Landmark
- No
- Flip tax
- none documented; the board's resale package requires a $150 move-in fee and a $150 move-out fee payable to the condominium, plus a $75 policy-violation fee for moves outside the superintendent's 9-5 weekday working hours
- Financing
- no board approval or down-payment minimum; lender requirements govern
- Subletting
- permitted; the board's sale package asks the purchaser to state at the outset whether the intent is to reside or to lease. Current leasing policy, registration requirement and minimum term not documented
- Pied-à-terre
- permitted (standard condominium)
- Pets
- permitted; the purchase information sheet asks purchasers to declare pets and the parking-lot guidelines require owners to curb and clean up after animals. Specific restrictions not documented
Compiled by The Roebling Research Desk from the building’s offering plan, amendments, and related building documents (primary source dated 2005-08-20 (policies); resale guideline undated). Reported and subject to confirmation. Board policies can change by amendment — confirm at the offer stage.
The Landmarks Preservation Commission's 1969 designation report is unusually candid about this building. Describing the east side of Hicks Street between Degraw and Kane, it notes that "near the center of the street a five-story parochial school, built in 1922, rises above its three and four-story older neighbors," and then adds a warning: "In the event of re-development a block front such as this should properly be under architectural controls because it relates so critically to its surroundings." The Commission was not praising the school. It was protecting the block from what might replace it.
Fifteen years later, the answer turned out to be adaptive reuse rather than demolition. Thylan Associates, Inc. acquired the property in 1984 and converted roughly 50,000 square feet of school building into 34 condominium apartments, with on-site parking for about 29 cars and a project structured to qualify for historic rehabilitation tax credits. Department of Finance carries the alteration date as 1986, and the first individual unit deeds were recorded in 1985 and 1986 — 28 of them in those two years, a fast and complete initial sellout.
What the conversion produced is a building that does several things no row house in Cobble Hill can. It has an elevator. It has a superintendent and a building manager. It has a laundry room, storage bins and a bicycle room. And it has gated off-street parking on a through-block lot running from Hicks Street to Cheever Place — in a landmarked low-rise district where structured parking essentially cannot be built, and where the 1969 report itself notes that the rest of the block is filled with "charming houses with original ironwork."
The apartments carry the school's geometry, and that is the second reason to pay attention. School buildings were built for daylight: tall floor-to-floor heights, large window openings, deep plates. The 34 residences inherited that, and the result is a stock that reads more like a loft conversion than like the district's brownstone floor-throughs — but at a scale and a price point well below the Brooklyn waterfront loft market.
The third fact is the mechanical system, and it is genuinely unusual. A boiler and a cooling tower on the roof condition water that circulates to every apartment, where individual radiator units carry a compressor, thermostat and fan. Residents control temperature room by room, but the building performs a seasonal changeover between heating and cooling in spring and fall. Between changeovers, you get what the building is supplying. A buyer used to independent through-wall or split systems should understand that before signing.
Architecture and unit composition
The building occupies a 21,388-square-foot through-block lot with 121 feet of Hicks Street frontage and entrances on both Hicks Street and Cheever Place, and carries roughly 36,339 square feet of residential building area across five stories over a basement. Both stairwells run the full height of the building and connect to the roof and to both street exits; the north stairwell also reaches the basement and the street-level recycling area.
Unit numbering follows the school's corridor logic — 101 through 107 on the first level, then by floor above — and the plates are deep. What that produces in practice is apartments with substantial original window openings and ceiling heights that a 1980s conversion had every reason to preserve, since the tax-credit structure rewarded retaining the building's character. Floor, exposure and which side of the through-block plate a unit sits on are the variables that matter: the Hicks Street elevation and the Cheever Place elevation face two very different streets, one a through street and one of the district's quietest.
Because the building is inside the Cobble Hill Historic District, every element of the exterior — windows above all, in a building whose defining feature is its window openings — runs through the Landmarks Preservation Commission. That is a cost and a schedule item for any capital project and, for an individual owner, a hard constraint on unit-level exterior changes. It is also the reason the block around the building still looks the way the 1969 report describes it.
Building operations
This is a self-contained small condominium with a real service base. A resident superintendent works standard weekday hours and a building manager handles administration; a camera and intercom system covers the south Hicks Street entrance and feeds to residents' televisions, while the Cheever Place side has no equivalent — which is why the building's own policies direct all deliveries through the Hicks Street entrance. The laundry room in the basement carries three washers and four dryers on a coin system with a bill changer. Some units are assigned basement storage bins; Fire Department rules bar furniture and flammable materials from the storage rooms, and nothing may be stored in open common areas.
The capital agenda in a 1922 masonry building converted forty years ago is legible. The façade sits in the Local Law 11 cycle and every element of it is under Landmarks jurisdiction. The elevator is a single cab serving 34 apartments. The roof carries both the boiler and the cooling tower, which means the roof assembly and the mechanical plant have coupled replacement schedules. The parking lot surface, the gate and the gate door are their own maintenance line. Ask for the last three years of audited statements, the current assessment schedule, the FISP filing history and the board minutes — and ask specifically when the boiler and tower were last replaced.
Management is publicly documented in the condominium's own resale package as Adventure Properties, Inc., of 70 Clark Street, Brooklyn; confirm the current agent directly. Management history and unit-level records 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Jun 13, 2023 | 301 | $1,100,000 |
| Oct 12, 2022 | 403 | $1,550,000 |
| Aug 10, 2022 | 402 | $1,630,000 |
| Jun 30, 2022 | 401 | $1,501,000 |
| May 4, 2022 | 201 | $1,495,000 |
| Feb 4, 2021 | 403 | $1,255,000 |
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 3-00321-7501) 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
Confirm the parking in writing. Roughly 29 spaces against 34 apartments, administered by board registration rather than by deed. Availability, cost and the registration process should be confirmed with management before you assign the space any value — and in this district, it carries real value.
Understand the seasonal changeover. A roof-mounted boiler and cooling tower feed in-unit fan-coil radiators, and the building switches between heating and cooling in spring and fall. You control temperature; you do not control the mode.
Budget the resale process. Five copies, a two-week board review, move-in and move-out fees, and a right-of-first-refusal waiver that issues only when the unit's charges are current. It is not a co-op interview, but it is not instantaneous either.
Price the Landmarks constraint. Every exterior element, windows first among them, runs through the Commission. In a converted school whose best feature is its window openings, that is a live capital item.
Ask about the boiler and the tower. They sit on the roof together, which couples their replacement schedules to the roof's. In a 1922 building converted in the mid-1980s, that is the question to lead with.
What to know if you’re selling
Lead with what the district cannot reproduce. Elevator, superintendent, laundry, storage, bike room and gated off-street parking, on a landmarked Cobble Hill block. No row house on Cheever Place or Strong Place offers that combination.
Photograph the windows and the ceiling height. The school geometry is the product. Buyers comparing against brownstone floor-throughs need to see the difference immediately.
Document the parking space. If the unit carries one, put the registration and the guidelines in the package. If it does not, be clear about that too — buyers discount ambiguity harder than absence.
Prepare the board package early. The two-week review window and the five-copy requirement are real scheduling constraints. Assemble the letter of intent, the information sheet, the fees and the executed letters before you are under contract.
Anchor to the same elevation. Hicks Street and Cheever Place are two different streets. Comparables should match the side of the building, the floor and the parking status.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering 501 Hicks Street, also evaluate:
- 200 Congress Street — the largest cooperative in Cobble Hill, with a cellar garage; the closest parallel on scale plus parking
- 58 Strong Place (The Landmark at Strong) — the other institutional-to-residential conversion in the same corner of the district, one block east
- 439 Hicks Street (Cobble Hill Towers) — Alfred Tredway White's model-housing complex a few blocks north on the same street
- 417 Hicks Street — the Tower Buildings group of the Cobble Hill Towers condominium; landmark model housing at the accessible end of the market
- 401 Hicks Street (The Arches at Cobble Hill) — condominium conversion of White's Home Buildings, on the same corridor
- 174 Pacific Street — the district's other converted school, at its northern edge, in cooperative form
- 450 Clinton Street — 36-unit Carroll Gardens cooperative just south of the district line
- 214 Clinton Street — small Cobble Hill cooperative; the walk-up alternative inside the same district
- 344 Degraw Street — boutique condominium on the same cross street, just outside the district
Considering a move at Cobble Hill School Condominium?
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