55 Hicks Street
55 Hicks Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn
BBL 3002160003 · BIN 3001588
- Year built
- 1914
- Type
- Cooperative
- Units
- 30
- Floors
- 5
- Landmark
- Designated
- Flip tax
- Corporation transfer fee of $3.00 per share payable to 55 Hicks Street Corp. at closing, plus a separate $250 co-op transfer fee, transfer-agent fee, and NYS stock transfer stamps ($.05/share); documented in the co-op's transfer-of-shares instructions and purchase application package (rev. May 2001) - confirm current
- Financing
- Total financing (all mortgages and equity financing combined) may not exceed 85% of purchase price - effectively 15% minimum down (transfer instructions, rev. May 2001)
- Subletting
- Board approval under the proprietary lease; no published term cap or surcharge in documents reviewed
- Pets
- House rules require the Lessor's express written permission for any bird, reptile or animal, revocable at any time; dogs carried or leashed in public portions
Compiled by The Roebling Research Desk from the building’s offering plan, amendments, and related building documents (primary source dated 2001 (transfer package); 1985-86 (plan)). Reported and subject to confirmation. Board policies can change by amendment — confirm at the offer stage.
55 Hicks Street is a 1914 masonry apartment house on the Fruit Streets, five stories and thirty apartments, that converted to cooperative ownership in the winter of 1986 and has traded quietly ever since. It is the kind of building that gives the northern Heights its scale — bigger than a brownstone, smaller than the Montague Street elevator co-ops, close enough to the Brooklyn Bridge approach that the walk to Manhattan is a real option rather than a talking point.
The architectural record here is thinner than at the district's marquee addresses, and it is worth stating plainly. The LPC's Brooklyn Heights files carry Frederick J. Dassan as architect and 1914 as the date, and leave the style field undetermined. Dassan does not appear in the standard published accounts of Brooklyn Heights architecture, and no meaningful body of scholarship attaches to the name. Buyers who want a pedigree line will find it at 15 Clark Street or 187 Hicks Street; what 55 Hicks offers instead is a well-proportioned early-1910s brick apartment house on one of the most desirable residential blocks in the borough, inside the protections of the city's first historic district.
The conversion paperwork is where this building gets interesting. 55 Hicks Street Associates filed a non-eviction plan on August 1, 1985 and presented it three weeks later. Four months on, the sponsor had signed up two bona fide tenants in occupancy and three outside purchasers intending to occupy — five apartments out of thirty, or 16.66 percent — and declared the plan effective in February 1986 on that basis, just over the statutory 15 percent floor. The practical consequence was a co-op that began life with a very large sponsor position and worked its way toward shareholder control over the following years. That history is now four decades old and matters mainly as context for the building's financial trajectory, which is the correct thing to read closely in diligence.
Two features of the current-era policy framework deserve a buyer's attention because they cut in opposite directions. The financing standard is unusually accommodating: the transfer package permits total financing up to 85 percent of purchase price, where the district's prewar norm is 20 to 25 percent down and some boards demand more. Against that, the corporation charges a per-share transfer fee at closing that is a real number on a building with 24,426 shares spread over thirty apartments. A seller pricing the apartment and a buyer modeling the deal should both put that fee on the page early.
Architecture and unit composition
The building is five stories of masonry on the east side of Hicks Street, mid-block between Cranberry and Orange — the Fruit Streets, three blocks north of Clark. The offering plan's share schedule allocated 24,426 shares across thirty apartments running from one-bedroom scale through four-room and larger layouts, with per-apartment share blocks in the 700 to 950 range for the typical unit. That distribution describes a building of real one- and two-bedroom apartments rather than studios, which is the correct expectation walking in.
The Department of Finance classes 55 Hicks C6 — the walk-up cooperative code — and the building's five-story height is consistent with that. The house rules adopted with the proprietary lease carry the standard form's elevator and service-entrance clauses, which in a building of this class read as boilerplate rather than description; access arrangements should be confirmed directly. Exterior work, windows included, runs through the Landmarks Preservation Commission under the 1965 district designation, and the 80 percent floor-covering rule in the house rules is the practical constraint on renovation acoustics.
Building operations
55 Hicks Street Corp. has operated the building since the 1986 closing. The conversion-year budget is a useful baseline: gas heat and hot water, roughly $2,500 of annual public-area electricity, and a single part-time non-union visiting superintendent — a lean operating model appropriate to a thirty-unit walk-up and a meaningful part of why maintenance in buildings of this type runs below the full-service Montague and Clark Street corridor. The co-op's audited financial statements in The Roebling Research Library run from the late 1990s forward, which supports trend-level review of maintenance growth, reserve practice, and assessment history.
For a 1914 masonry building inside the historic district, the recurring capital items to review are the FISP/Local Law 11 façade cycle, roof and parapet work, and the age of the gas heating plant. Ask for the last two façade filings and any assessment history alongside the financials.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Feb 13, 2026 | 2 | $510,000 |
| Jul 8, 2025 | 42 | $915,406.75 |
| Sep 10, 2021 | 4 | $593,000 |
| Sep 8, 2021 | 33 | $520,000 |
| Sep 11, 2020 | 4 | $599,000 |
| Jun 4, 2020 | 44 | $590,000 |
Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 3-00216-0003) 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
The financing term is the headline. An 85 percent total-financing ceiling is meaningfully more accommodating than the district's prewar norm, and it widens the buyer pool on resale as well.
Budget the per-share transfer fee. On a building with 24,426 shares over thirty apartments, a $3.00-per-share corporation fee is a four-figure closing item on a typical unit. Get the specific apartment's share count early and run True Monthly Carrying Cost with it.
Ask how the pet rule is actually administered. The written rule is the restrictive standard form. Boards vary widely in how they apply it, and the answer should be in writing before you sign.
Confirm staffing and services. The conversion budget funded a part-time visiting superintendent, not a resident one. Current arrangements may differ, and they materially affect daily life in a thirty-unit building.
What to know if you’re selling
Lead with location and carrying cost. Fruit Streets, historic district, walking distance to the Bridge and Cadman Plaza, with the maintenance profile of a low-rise co-op — that combination is the building's market case.
Put the financing policy in the marketing. A board that permits up to 85 percent financing reaches buyers that neighboring 20-percent-down prewars do not. Say so plainly.
Be straight about the architectural record. The LPC names an architect about whom little is published. Overselling a thin attribution invites a correction; the honest version — a 1914 apartment house inside New York's first historic district — sells fine on its own.
Disclose transfer costs up front. Sophisticated buyers and their attorneys will find the per-share fee. Surfacing it early keeps it from becoming a late-stage renegotiation.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering 55 Hicks Street, also evaluate:
- 54 Orange Street — Fruit Streets prewar co-op one block south; the closest peer in scale and register
- 72 Orange Street — moderate-scale Fruit Streets co-op with a comparable service model
- 59 Pineapple Street — Slee & Bryson's 1926 elevator co-op two blocks south
- 60 Pineapple Street — loft-style conversion co-op on the same Fruit Streets grid; open plans against 55 Hicks's prewar rooms
- 130 Hicks Street — Hicks Street co-op peer south of Clark, postwar rather than prewar
- 35 Clark Street — prewar co-op on the Clark Street corridor, closer to the 2/3 express
- 20 Henry Street — condominium alternative in the northern Heights, at Middagh Street
- 55 Poplar Street — condominium on the northernmost Heights block, for buyers weighing tenure form
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 55 Hicks Street?
Request a private building brief with the relevant comparable sales, current and off-market availability, and an apartment-specific view of value.
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A Private Pricing Opinion — what your apartment at 55 Hicks Street 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.