The Breukelen (57 Montague Street)
57 Montague Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn
BBL 3002410012 · BIN 3001944
- Year built
- 1949
- Type
- Cooperative
- Units
- 128
- Floors
- 12
- Landmark
- Designated
- Subletting
- Permitted with board approval; sublet fee documented at $2.00 per share per month as of 2010 (offering plan amendments)
- Pets
- Pet-friendly per Brownstoner coverage; current house rules not on file
Compiled by The Roebling Research Desk from the building’s offering plan, amendments, and related building documents (primary source dated 2010-2016 (amendment record)). Reported and subject to confirmation. Board policies can change by amendment — confirm at the offer stage.
The Breukelen holds the best address on Brooklyn's most famous shopping street: the final block of Montague Street before it ends at the Promenade. When Samuel Ageloff built it in 1949 to A. Rollin Caughey's design, the site was one of the last soft parcels in the West Heights — a gated garden that the sisters Harriet H. and Frances E. White had maintained for decades, where neighborhood children played within sight of the harbor. The building that replaced the garden is the largest of Caughey's Heights apartment houses: twelve stories of streamlined pale brick, with angled bays flanking the Montague Street entrance and running down the side elevations to pull light and oblique water views into apartments deep in the plan. Alongside Caughey's 1937 Art Moderne building at 160 Columbia Heights, it bookends the architect's two-decade run as the neighborhood's apartment-house specialist.
The name is a deliberate piece of place-making — Breukelen, the Dutch town in Utrecht from which Brooklyn takes its name — and the building has grown into it. Since the November 23, 1965 designation of the Brooklyn Heights Historic District, the country's first, the Breukelen's block has been fixed in place: Montague Terrace and Pierrepont Place beside it, the Promenade at the end of the street, and the commercial energy of Montague Street beginning at its front door.
The cooperative conversion is a first-wave Heights story with an unusually well-documented paper trail. Orda Management Corp. presented the offering plan on June 23, 1980, allocating 35,997 shares across 127 units under the procedures of the Rent Stabilization Code and Section 352-eeee. Sponsor control of the board ended in 1984, and the plan's twenty-nine amendments — running into the mid-2010s as the last unsold shares worked through the market — record the corporation's maintenance history, assessments, and governance in detail. The Roebling Research Library holds the full set. For diligence purposes this is an asset: few Heights cooperatives offer as continuous a documentary record of how the building has been run.
For buyers, the Breukelen is the neighborhood's high-utility cooperative: doorman service, a roof deck over the harbor, elevator-building convenience, and a share-priced entry to the West Heights blocks — one of the few ways to buy the Promenade end of Montague Street without townhouse capital.
Architecture and unit composition
The building's roughly 128 apartments run from studios through family-scale layouts across twelve stories — postwar unit planning, which is to say efficient foyers, defined kitchens, and generous closets rather than the formal galleries of the 1920s stock. The angled bays are the signature: they give many line apartments a second orientation, and on the upper floors of the western exposures they catch the harbor. Parquet floors and casement-era window proportions survive in much of the stock, with unit-level condition varying by renovation history. The prized inventory sits high on the west and south, where light runs over the low historic-district fabric toward the water; the roof deck extends that view to every shareholder.
Capital stewardship is traceable through the amendment record: brickwork and pointing in the 1980s, elevator modernization, a waterproofing and roof program in the early 1990s, and a building-wide window project in the late 1990s — the ordinary lifecycle of a 1949 building, handled on schedule.
Building operations
Breukelen Owners Corp. operates the building with a doorman and live-in superintendent, a central laundry room, fitness room, storage, and bike room. The sublet regime is fee-based and board-administered, and the corporation has historically used per-share assessments alongside maintenance to fund capital work — a pattern documented across the offering plan amendments and financial statements in The Roebling Research Library. SMRC Management LLC appears as managing agent in the post-closing amendments filed with the Attorney General in the mid-2010s; the current agent should be confirmed at offer stage.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Jan 8, 2026 | 2A | $1,360,000 |
| Dec 16, 2025 | 12E | $540,000 |
| Aug 8, 2025 | 12C | $975,000 |
| Jun 13, 2025 | 3 H | $560,000 |
| Jun 4, 2025 | 6H | $550,000 |
| Jun 6, 2024 | 8-K | $520,000 |
Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 3-00241-0012) 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
Position is the durable asset. The Promenade is at the end of the block, Montague Street's retail begins at the door, and the 2, 3, 4, 5, R at Borough Hall / Court Street are a short walk. The location needs no forecast.
Understand the share economics. Maintenance, sublet fees, and assessments all run per share. Ask for the share allocation of the specific apartment and the current assessment schedule before modeling carrying cost.
Exposure drives value inside the building. West- and south-facing bay lines with harbor light are the building's premium stock; interior and low-floor east-facing units price meaningfully differently. Comp within the line.
Expect a standard Heights board process. Full board package and interview; the amendment record suggests a well-documented, conventionally governed corporation. Confirm flip tax and financing policy early.
Landmark rules apply. Window and façade work runs through LPC review as in every historic-district building; review the current LL11 and capital status in diligence.
What to know if you’re selling
Sell the block, then the building. The final-block-of-Montague position — Promenade, Montague Terrace, harbor — is the headline; the doorman, roof deck, and elevator service close the argument against walk-up and townhouse-coop alternatives.
Use the architecture. The Caughey attribution, the Ageloff provenance, and the White sisters' garden history give the building a narrative most postwar co-ops lack.
Price per room against West Heights comparables. The right peer set is the doorman co-op stock west of Hicks Street, not Montague Street's commercial-corridor buildings. Same-line trades anchor best.
Prepare the paper. Buyers' attorneys will find the long amendment record; get ahead of it with current financials, the assessment history, and the sublet policy in the deal file from day one.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering The Breukelen, also evaluate:
- 160 Columbia Heights — Caughey's 1930s Art Moderne building on the bluff; the closest architectural sibling, directly above the Promenade
- 62 Montague Street — prewar cooperative across the street on the same Promenade-end block
- 65 Montague Street — neighboring Montague Street cooperative
- 2 Montague Terrace — boutique co-op on the Promenade-front terrace around the corner
- 10 Montague Terrace — neighboring Montague Terrace cooperative
- 60 Remsen Street — postwar doorman cooperative one block south, with an LPC-recorded Caughey attribution
- 145 Hicks Street — larger prewar cooperative in the North Heights
- 35 Pierrepont Street — prewar co-op one block north
- 70 Clark Street — North Heights cooperative alternative near the St. George corner
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 The Breukelen?
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 The Breukelen 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.