66 Montague Street
66 Montague Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn
BBL 3002470027 · BIN 3002034
- Year built
- 1877
- Type
- Cooperative
- Units
- 11
- Floors
- 4
- Landmark
- Designated
- Flip tax
- 2% of the gross selling price, payable to the Apartment Corporation on transfer of the shares allocated to an apartment and credited to the corporation's Reserve Fund (Summary of Principal Terms of Proprietary Lease, 1982 plan). Current rate and payer unverified
- Subletting
- Board resolution, written consent of a majority of directors, or written consent or vote of shareholders owning at least 66-2/3% of outstanding shares (proprietary lease as filed, 1982); current policy unverified
- Pets
- House rules as filed: no bird or animal without the Lessor's express written permission, revocable at any time; dogs carried or leashed in public areas. Current practice unverified
Compiled by The Roebling Research Desk from the building’s offering plan, amendments, and related building documents (primary source dated 1982 plan as filed). Reported and subject to confirmation. Board policies can change by amendment — confirm at the offer stage.
66 Montague Street is eleven apartments in a nineteenth-century house at the end of the block where Montague Street runs out at the Promenade. It is the smallest kind of Brooklyn Heights cooperative — no elevator recorded, no doorman, a part-time superintendent, a single central boiler and everything else on the shareholder's own meter — sitting on one of the best-located pieces of ground in the district.
The building's age is genuinely unsettled, and the honest answer is more interesting than a single date. The sponsor's engineer, pulling the Department of Buildings index cards in 1982, found the house was built under New Building Application 29 of 1877. The Landmarks Preservation Commission's district record dates it only to "before 1900." Department of Finance carries 1899; the LPC's own building-level date field reads 1850. Those four figures cannot all be right, and no page should pretend otherwise. The 1877 application is the most specific evidence anyone has produced, and it is what we work from — while noting that a mid-century house substantially rebuilt in the 1870s would produce exactly this pattern of records.
How the building became what it is, though, is fully documented. The DOB index the engineer transcribed reads as a compact history of a nineteenth-century house pushed into the twentieth: plumbing in 1935, alterations in 1937 and 1941, a sprinkler in 1942, another alteration in 1949. Two matter. Alteration 5345 of 1941 rearranged interior partitions from basement to fourth floor, created a new entrance foyer and bathrooms — and removed the front stoop, moving the entrance to the basement level, which is why the LPC record notes the missing stoop and why the front door sits where it does. Before that work the building held a four-room apartment and a store in the basement, a seven-room apartment on the first floor, two eight-room apartments on the second, an eight-room on the third and a nine-room on the fourth; afterward, two six-room apartments in the basement and two seven-room apartments on each floor above. Alteration 3193 of 1949 then took the basement from two apartments to three, producing the eleven-apartment configuration recorded on the 1960 certificate of occupancy and still in place.
The cooperative conversion came in the 1982 wave, through a name worth knowing. The four owners contracted to sell to Time Equities Associates, the partnership in which Francis Greenburger was managing partner, which assigned the contract to Cooperative Equities Group II, the sponsor of record, with Time Equities, Inc. as selling agent. The plan went out April 23, 1982 as a non-eviction plan with the statutory senior-citizen and handicapped-person protections, offering 7,911 shares at $125 per share across eleven apartments.
Two features of that conversion still shape transactions. The first is a 2 percent flip tax on the gross selling price, written into the proprietary lease and directed to the Reserve Fund — a real number to model on the sell side and, for a building this small, the mechanism that has capitalized four decades of capital work. The second is scale: eleven apartments means every shareholder is a meaningful fraction of the budget and a single capital project lands hard. Look at the reserve position and assessment history, not the maintenance number alone.
Architecture and unit composition
Twenty-five feet wide on the full width of the lot, roughly 98 feet deep on a 100-foot lot, about 56 feet to the roof — a four-story-plus-basement building at row-house scale, non-fireproof, with an internal light court on the west side running the full height and measuring roughly four feet by fourteen.
The ceiling heights are the building's quiet advantage and are documented rather than claimed: twelve feet on the first floor, eleven on the second and third, ten and a half on the fourth, nine and a half in the basement. Those are dimensions the district's interwar elevator co-ops cannot match, and they are why the apartments read larger than their footprints.
Eleven apartments across five levels: three in the basement, created in 1949 out of the two the 1941 alteration had made, and two on each of the first through fourth floors. The 1941 configuration set those upper apartments at seven rooms apiece, which after four decades of cooperative renovation should be verified apartment by apartment rather than assumed. Entry is through the basement level, a consequence of the 1941 stoop removal.
The conversion documents record no elevator. The proprietary lease's house rules — a standard printed form of the period — refer to passenger and service elevators, incinerator flues, service entrances and maid's rooms; none of that describes a twenty-five-foot-wide four-story house, and it should not be read as such. Anyone buying above the second floor should confirm vertical access directly.
Building operations
66 Montague St. Owners Corp. has operated the building since August 1982, on the district's small-building model from the start: a part-time, non-resident superintendent, with the corporation carrying insurance, fuel, water and sewer, boiler maintenance, exterminating and a modest repairs line. Heat runs through a central gas plant; each apartment has its own gas and electric meters and pays those bills directly.
The corporate record goes back to the beginning. The 1987 audited statements are in the file alongside the sponsor's ninth amendment of May 24, 1988, which discloses that the sponsor still held unsold shares appurtenant to four apartments and represented 40 percent of the board six years after closing — and which also discloses, at length, the partnership dispute then running between Francis Greenburger and Philip Rudd. That was a sponsor-level matter, represented not to affect purchasers, and is now four decades past; it is recorded here because it explains why the unsold-share position took as long as it did to unwind.
For a masonry building of this age inside the historic district, the recurring capital items are façade and parapet under FISP/LL11 with Landmarks review attaching, the roof, the light court and the boiler. In an eleven-share corporation those projects are financed by assessment or by the flip-tax-fed reserve rather than by scale. The reserve balance, the assessment history and the most recent engineer's report are the three documents to read first.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Mar 27, 2026 | 6 | $1,300,000 |
| Jul 29, 2021 | 10 | $859,000 |
| Feb 14, 2018 | 5 | $815,000 |
| Jun 2, 2015 | 6 | $985,500 |
| Jun 5, 2014 | 4 | $887,500 |
| Sep 27, 2011 | 6 | $652,000 |
Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 3-00247-0027) 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 vertical access before anything else. The conversion file records no elevator, and the printed house rules that mention one are a form document. This is the most consequential physical question about the building.
The ceilings are documented, and they are the product. Twelve feet on the first floor and eleven on the second and third are engineer-measured figures, not marketing.
Model the 2 percent flip tax now. It is written into the proprietary lease and comes off your proceeds when you sell.
Eleven shares means concentration risk. A façade cycle or a boiler replacement lands on eleven apartments. Read the reserve balance, assessment history and latest engineer's report.
What to know if you’re selling
Lead with the block. Montague between Hicks and Montague Terrace, steps from the Promenade, is a location argument that needs no adjective.
Sell the volume. Twelve- and eleven-foot ceilings and seven-room floor plates are the building's edge over the interwar elevator co-ops, and the engineer's measurements back it.
Be straightforward about access and services. Buyers find out. A listing that states the walk-up condition and the part-time superintendent up front reaches the right pool and closes faster.
Prepare the corporate file. Financial statements, reserve position, assessment history, the flip-tax provision and the sublet rule assembled before market shortens the board package cycle materially in a self-administered building.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering 66 Montague Street, also evaluate:
- 62 Montague Street (The Arlington) — Montrose W. Morris's 1887–88 apartment house next door; the block's landmark
- 65 Montague Street — Kavy & Kavovitt's 1934 interwar elevator cooperative across the street
- 103 Montague Street — cooperative peer further east on the retail stretch
- The Breukelen (57 Montague Street) — A. Rollin Caughey's postwar cooperative; the full-service alternative on the same street
- 2 Montague Terrace — 1927 cooperative around the corner, organized as a co-op at construction
- 10 Montague Terrace — nineteenth-century mansion converted to apartments; the closest peer in scale and conversion type
- 68 Remsen Street (The Remsen) — H. I. Feldman's 1929 cooperative one block south
- 60 Remsen Street — Caughey's 1955 cooperative; the postwar contrast nearby
- 87 Columbia Heights — Slee & Bryson prewar walk-up cooperative; the closest operating-model comparison in the district
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.
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