66 Orange Street
66 Orange Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn
BBL 3002260013 · BIN 3001693
- Year built
- 1912
- Type
- Cooperative
- Units
- 21
- Floors
- 5
- Landmark
- Designated
- Subletting
- Consent by resolution of the Board of Directors, or in writing by a majority of directors, or by written consent/vote of shareholders owning at least 50% of outstanding shares (plan as filed, 1977)
- Pets
- House rules as filed: no bird or animal kept without express written, revocable permission of the corporation; 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 1977 plan documents; undated purchase application). Reported and subject to confirmation. Board policies can change by amendment — confirm at the offer stage.
66 Orange Street began as a hotel. The LPC's district records date it to 1912, attribute it to Woodruff Leeming, and identify the Franklin Arms Hotel as the entity behind it — and the engineering report bound into the building's 1977 offering plan confirms the point from the other direction, noting that the property "was originally constructed as a Hotel and is now planned as a residence." That single sentence explains most of what a buyer notices inside: a five-story building with a penthouse, a room count far higher than its footprint suggests, duplex apartments carved where hotel floors allowed, and garden units opening onto interior courtyards rather than a rear yard.
The conversion itself is early. Most Brooklyn Heights co-ops trace to the 1980s wave; 66 Orange's plan was first offered on November 4, 1977, and it converted a building that had been bought vacant and had sat empty for about a year. There were no tenants in occupancy, no rent-controlled or rent-stabilized carve-outs, and none of the eviction / non-eviction machinery that dominates the district's later plans. The sponsor bought an empty hotel, gut-renovated it, and sold twenty apartments and a professional office.
The name on the plan is worth noting. 66 Orange Street Associates was signed by Ian Bruce Eichner, described in the plan's own identity-of-parties section as "an attorney and a participant in real estate ventures" living at 170 Columbia Heights, a few blocks west; Eichner went on to a substantial Manhattan development career. His partner in the venture, Hal Einhorn, was an architect. This was a small, local, hands-on conversion by people who lived in the neighborhood, executed at the moment the Heights was turning from a rental district into an ownership one.
What survives is a well-proportioned masonry building on one of the Fruit Streets, one block from the Clark Street express and two from the Promenade, with a scale and a courtyard condition very few Heights buildings can offer.
Architecture and unit composition
The building is a fireproof steel and masonry bearing-wall structure, five stories over a cellar with a penthouse and roof stair, standing roughly fifty feet to the roof beams. The 1977 renovation kept the hotel's bones and redistributed them: the plan's apartment schedule runs from a garden floor up through a penthouse level, with a mix that at conversion was weighted toward two-, five- and six-room apartments, most with one and a half or two baths.
Four apartments are duplexes with interior stairs, and the plan specifies them distinctly — the D-line duplexes received a steel spiral stair roughly four and a half feet in diameter with oak treads, open risers and a steel pipe handrail; the E-line duplexes got straight steel stairs with wood treads, closed risers, steel balustrades and an oak handrail. Four garden apartments open directly onto the two landscaped interior courtyards at the first-floor level, the western of which is enclosed by a curved brick garden wall. The laundry room shares that courtyard access, which is an unusually pleasant arrangement for a building this size.
One apartment was set up as a professional office at conversion, and the house rules still carry the tell: a standing rule that no patient of any doctor with offices in the building may wait in the lobby. Buyers should confirm the current certificate of occupancy and the present use of that unit.
Building operations
66 Orange St. Housing Corp. has run the building since the 1977–78 closing. The service model is scaled to twenty-one units — elevator, laundry, courtyards, intercom entry — and the operating economics are correspondingly lean. The co-op's audited financial statements in The Roebling Research Library run in a continuous series from the early 2000s forward, supporting trend-level diligence on maintenance growth, reserve practice and capital pacing rather than a single-year snapshot.
For a 1912 masonry building inside the historic district, the recurring capital items are the façade under the FISP/LL11 cycle, the elevator (last documented modernization was at conversion), the roof and penthouse, and the courtyard drainage. Ask for the last three years of board minutes 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Mar 14, 2022 | 3A | $2,700,000 |
| Dec 7, 2021 | 1C | $1,950,000 |
| Aug 11, 2021 | 3C | $1,625,000 |
| Jul 26, 2021 | 5A | $2,475,000 |
| Jun 13, 2019 | 4C | $1,400,000 |
| Nov 26, 2018 | 2E | $2,275,000 |
Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 3-00226-0013) 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
Understand what you are buying into. A 1912 hotel converted in 1977 by a small local partnership. There are no rent-regulated legacy tenancies and no sponsor overhang from the plan, which simplifies diligence considerably relative to the district's 1980s conversions.
The courtyard and duplex units are genuinely different products. If a garden apartment or a duplex is on your list, price it against its own history rather than the building average.
Get the policy answers in writing. Flip tax, financing minimums, pied-à-terre use and in-unit washer-dryer are not settled in the filed documents. Management's current answers control.
Model taxes at full assessment. The conversion-era J51 benefit is long expired. Pull the current tax bill for the specific unit.
Confirm the professional-office unit's status. One unit was offered as a professional office in 1977. Its present legal use and any commercial tenancy are worth verifying.
What to know if you’re selling
Name the building's origin. Woodruff Leeming, 1912, built for the Franklin Arms Hotel — a documented architect and a documented original use is a differentiator on a street where most buildings are described only by their brick.
Lead with the courtyards. Two landscaped interior courtyards with direct apartment access is a rare condition in the district and does not photograph itself. Make sure it is in the first three images.
Position against the Fruit Streets set, not the Montague corridor. The right comparables are the district's moderate-scale prewar co-ops with lean staffing and correspondingly lean maintenance.
Have the financial record ready. A continuous run of audited statements is an underwriting asset with buyers' lenders and attorneys alike. Put it in the deal room before the first offer.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering 66 Orange Street, also evaluate:
- 54 Orange Street — prewar co-op on the same block; the most direct street comparable
- 72 Orange Street — moderate-scale Fruit Streets co-op peer
- 59 Pineapple Street — Slee & Bryson's 1926 elevator co-op one street south
- 60 Pineapple Street — loft-style conversion co-op in the same pocket; open plans against 66 Orange's rooms
- 45 Pineapple Street (Hamilton House) — the neighborhood's postwar full-service alternative
- 15 Clark Street — prewar co-op at the Clark Street express corner
- 35 Clark Street — prewar elevator co-op peer on the Clark Street corridor
- 87 Hicks Street — small 1889 walk-up co-op one block west, at the same intimate scale
- 130 Hicks Street — small prewar co-op further down Hicks
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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