55 Berry Street (Berry Street Lofts)

The lot runs roughly 100 feet by 155 feet, with frontage on both Berry Street and North 11th Street, and the building covers effectively all of it: about 57,000 square feet of building area across six stories and a cellar. Construction is existing reinforced poured-in-place concrete walls and columns, refinished during the conversion with insulated metal-stud furring and gypsum board behind repaired infill brick. Windows above the ground floor were replaced with double-glazed thermopane units in aluminum frames, set into the existing concrete sills. Bandcourses run at the second and sixth floors, and a large red-brick smokestack survives against one flank — the most legible remnant of the manufacturing building.

Residences run from the ground floor to the sixth. The thirty-five apartments on floors two through six are one- and two-bathroom lofts of roughly 1,000 to 1,400 square feet as originally drawn, laid out as a single long living-and-kitchen volume — the plan sheets show living room/kitchen dimensions in the range of 33 to 36 feet — with a bedroom, a home office and one or two baths off it. Several ground-floor units were drawn with interior stairs down into the cellar; the seven sixth-floor units have spiral stairs up to private roof terraces of 851 to 1,278 square feet, which is by a wide margin the best outdoor space in the building.

Vertical circulation is a single 2,000-pound passenger elevator serving cellar through sixth, two enclosed concrete egress stairs, and a stair lift at the lobby. The cellar holds the mechanical, meter and electrical rooms, the storage lots, and nineteen parking spaces reached by a car elevator on Berry Street.

The building was designed to run lean and largely still does. The plan's amenity set is practical rather than promotional: a monitored virtual doorman with electronic package handling, a gym, a bicycle room, deeded storage, a common roof terrace of roughly 2,519 square feet over part of the first floor, and a second-floor common terrace. Later building records describe on-site staffing in addition to the monitoring contract; get the current payroll line out of the budget rather than assuming either model.

Capital posture is the more important question, and the record shows a building that has been spending. A façade and roof restoration was filed in August 2018 alongside a boiler replacement and associated gas piping; a make-up air unit was replaced in 2019; sidewalk sheds, scaffolding and overhead protection ran from February 2019 through 2021, and architectural records describe a whole-building and mechanical-systems rehabilitation completed in 2021. A new heavy-duty sidewalk shed and a supported scaffold were filed in August 2026, which means exterior work is live on the building right now. Any buyer should ask directly what that scope is, what it costs, whether it is funded from reserves or an assessment, and where the current Local Law 11 cycle stands.

The other operating items to price are the single elevator — one cab for forty-five units, at twenty years of service since the conversion — and the rooftop telecommunications license, which has been in place in some form since 2000 and produces income that offsets common charges. Both belong in the diligence list.

Ownership form: Condominium. Resales are governed by the declaration and by-laws and, as is standard, a board right of first refusal rather than a cooperative approval — which produces a thirty- to forty-five-day closing pace. Confirm the waiver procedure and its timing with the managing agent.

Pets, subletting, pied-à-terre, LLC and trust purchasers: Not documented in the plan materials on file in The Roebling Research Library. Read the current declaration, by-laws and house rules rather than relying on a listing description.

Terms of sale at original offering: The Third Amendment raised the purchaser down payment to 20% of the total purchase price, with the sponsor entitled to retain 10% as liquidated damages on an uncured default. That governs the original sellout only, not resales.

Title exceptions: The plan conveyed units subject to the easements and rights of the roof tenants operating and maintaining utility cables over the roof and parapets. That is a live encumbrance, not a historical footnote.

Real estate taxes: No building-wide exemption or abatement on the FY2027 roll. J-51 ran fourteen years from 2009 and expired after fiscal 2023. Underwrite full taxes on the specific unit.

Ground-floor use: The §72-21 variance permits residential Use Group 2 on floors two through six and conforming commercial use at the ground floor and cellar, with the Board's conditions required to appear on the certificate of occupancy. Confirm the certificated use of any ground-floor unit before you contract.

Recent sales

Recent closings at this building, curated by The Roebling Team research desk. Prices are the transfer amounts recorded with the NYC Department of Finance; apartment-level detail is checked against the building’s own file in The Roebling Research Library before publishing.

Market read. Most recent trades (2026) cleared a median $1,521/sf across 1 sale. Median listing discount 0.2% from the last ask — a recurring negotiation gap worth pricing into any offer or listing strategy.

Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 3-02297-7501) 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; square footage from recorded condo declarations and offering plans.

Read the variance, not just the offering plan. BSA 214-02-BZ governs what may legally happen on which floor of this building, and its conditions run with the certificate of occupancy. On a ground-floor unit this is the first document to request.

Ask what the August 2026 shed and scaffold are for. Scope, cost, funding source, and the current Local Law 11 filing status. A live exterior job is the most consequential unpriced item in any building.

Price the elevator. One 2,000-pound cab, twenty years into service, forty-five units. Ask for the service history and any reserve earmarked against a modernization.

Confirm the parking. Nineteen cellar spaces and a car elevator were built. Whether they are available to buy or rent today, at what price, and who controls the allocation, is a question for the managing agent — and the car elevator is itself a maintained asset.

Verify the staffing model. The plan bought a monitoring contract, not a doorman. Later records describe on-site staff. The budget will tell you which is true now.

Underwrite full taxes. J-51 is gone. Nothing about the tax line is going to improve.

Lead with the tax position. In a market where a great many Brooklyn condominiums have a 421-a cliff coming, "the abatement expired in 2023 and this is the real number" is a genuine, verifiable advantage. Put it in front of buyers early.

Tell the variance story accurately. Converted by BSA variance in 2003, permitted in 2004, two years ahead of the rezoning that produced everything around it. That provenance is documented and it is not repeatable.

Photograph the section and the terrace. Twelve-and-a-half-foot ceilings and a thousand square feet of private roof do not read on a floor plan. Wide shots and a plan that shows the depth of the loft.

Document the build-out. In a twenty-year-old conversion, permits, invoices and dates convert buyer skepticism into price.

Get ahead of the shed. Buyers will see it. Have the scope, the cost and the funding answer in writing before the first showing.

If you're considering Berry Street Lofts, also evaluate:

• 125 North 10th Street — the 85-residence condominium on the same tax block, built new in 2007; the clearest side-by-side test of conversion versus new construction at one address
• Warehouse 11 (214 North 11th Street) — the Northside condominium a block west; new construction answering a loft brief
• The Mill Building (85 North 3rd Street) — a non-eviction conversion of a 1910 industrial loft building; the closest peer in product and generation
• The Esquire Building (330 Wythe Avenue) — the 75-residence Southside conversion carried out by variance in 2000–02; the same regulatory path, a year or two earlier
• The Gretsch (60 Broadway) — the 1916 instrument factory converted in 2003, with two floors added; the marquee Brooklyn loft conversion of the same moment
• 161 Grand Street (The Solita) — the boutique conversion alternative a few blocks south
• Austin Nichols House (184 Kent Avenue) — the 1915 warehouse converted in 2016; loft conversion at far greater scale and a much later basis
• 49 North 8th Street (North8) — post-rezoning Northside new construction with parking; the amenity-first contemporary alternative
• The Edge (22 North 6th Street) — the waterfront tower generation; views and services against volume and character