68 Poplar Street
68 Poplar Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn
BBL 3002117502 · BIN 3001542
- Year built
- 1912
- Type
- Condominium
- Units
- 14
- Floors
- 5
- Landmark
- Designated
- Subletting
- Permitted under standard NYC condominium framework; board exercises right of first refusal. Minimum lease term not documented
- Pied-à-terre
- Permitted (standard condominium)
- Washer / dryer
- In-residence washer/dryer
Compiled by The Roebling Research Desk from the building’s offering plan, amendments, and related building documents (primary source dated 2014 conversion). Reported and subject to confirmation. Board policies can change by amendment — confirm at the offer stage.
The building was a police station. Beverly King and Harry Walker designed it for the City of New York's Police Department in 1912, and they designed it as a palazzo — a five-story masonry block with a heavy projecting cornice, sited on the south side of Poplar Street with a carriage house behind it for the horses. It served as the 84th Precinct's station house for most of the twentieth century, until the precinct moved to its current quarters near Gold Street in the 1990s. The letters POLICE DEPARTMENT CITY OF NEW YORK are still cut into the stone lintel over the entrance, and the 2014 conversion kept them there.
That is the whole argument for the building, and it is a strong one. Brooklyn Heights has plenty of prewar apartment houses and a small supply of new condominium construction; what it almost never produces is a landmarked civic building converted to housing. The nearest analogues are across the bridge approach in DUMBO, where the Gair Company's daylight factories became loft condominiums — and those are industrial rather than municipal. A station house is a different animal: heavier construction, taller floor-to-floor dimensions, wide casement openings, and a plan built around large rooms rather than a corridor grid.
The conversion history explains what exists today. An owner acquired the building in 2004 and proposed extending the fourth floor and adding a fifth story; the Landmarks Preservation Commission refused. The Daten Group bought the property in 2011 for a reported $7.5 million and worked approvals through the Commission and the Department of Buildings before delivering the conversion in 2014 — fourteen residences by Freyer Collaborative Architects, with interiors attributed in public reporting to Richard Mishaan, and the former carriage house finished separately by The Brooklyn Home Company as a single-family residence inside the condominium. That the LPC held the line on the addition is why the building still reads from Poplar Street as what it was.
The arithmetic is the second reason to pay attention: 30,720 square feet across fourteen residences is roughly 2,190 gross square feet per home — a family-scale condominium in a district whose ownership stock is overwhelmingly prewar cooperative apartments of half that size. The location is the north Heights rather than the Promenade blocks, two short blocks from the Squibb Park footbridge into Brooklyn Bridge Park, on a block that also holds an 1849 house at 64 Poplar, a small eight-unit co-op at 80 Poplar, and a 2012 condominium at 20 Henry Street on the same tax lot block.
Architecture and unit composition
The station house is Italian Renaissance Revival in the municipal manner of its date: symmetrical masonry, a rusticated base, regular window bays, and a deep cornice across the full 100-foot frontage. The conversion's exterior discipline was set by the LPC — façade, cornice and inscription survive, and the alterations were pushed to the rear and the roof.
Inside, the residences take their proportions from the original structure rather than a residential plan grid: high ceilings, wide casement openings at the original spacing, zoned central heating and cooling, in-residence laundry. Because the building was not laid out as apartments, the fourteen residences are not a stack of identical lines — value is set by a residence's own configuration, ceiling height, outdoor space and exposure rather than by a line letter. The carriage house is the outlier, a three-bedroom house with terraces, roof deck and garage owned as a condominium unit; underwrite it as a townhouse carrying common charges, not as an apartment.
Building operations
The building operates as a small condominium with a virtual doorman rather than an attended lobby, an on-site superintendent, and an amenity package generous for fourteen homes and correspondingly expensive per unit to carry. That is the boutique-condominium trade: the amenity set reads well and the common charges reflect a small denominator.
Two operating questions deserve early attention. The garage — capacity, assignment, and whether a space attaches to a unit or is licensed by the board. And the envelope: a 1912 masonry building inside a historic district carries a FISP/Local Law 11 façade cycle, and the 2014 conversion's warranties on roof, windows and mechanical systems are now more than a decade old. Ask for the reserve study, three years of financial statements, the budget, and board minutes covering any façade or roof work.
Recent sales
Recent closings 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Oct 5, 2005 | — | $9,580,000 |
Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 3-00211-7502) 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
You are buying a converted municipal building, not an apartment house. Large, idiosyncratic floor plates and real ceiling height — and every unit is its own product.
Model taxes and common charges together. Fourteen homes carrying a lounge, gym, garage and virtual doorman is a small denominator; the monthly number is where this building is won or lost against a townhouse.
Ask about the envelope and the reserve. A 1912 façade inside a historic district, a conversion more than a decade old, fourteen owners. The reserve study and façade cycle come first.
Confirm the two addresses. Title and tax records say 68 Poplar Street; the building says 72 Poplar. Know it before it surprises you at closing.
What to know if you’re selling
Lead with the inscription. "Police Department City of New York," cut in stone over the door of a landmarked 1912 palazzo, is an image no other Brooklyn Heights building has.
Sell square footage against the co-op market. At roughly 2,190 gross square feet per home, this answers a demand the district's prewar cooperatives cannot: family-scale space with condominium flexibility.
Name the team. Beverly King and Harry Walker in 1912, Freyer Collaborative Architects on the conversion, and the LPC's refusal of the added story as the reason the building still looks like itself.
Position against DUMBO, not against Montague Street. The buyer weighing this building is weighing loft conversions and townhouses. Price and market to that buyer.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering 68 Poplar Street, also evaluate:
- 20 Henry Street — contemporary condominium on the same tax block; the new-construction alternative next door
- 8 Old Fulton Street (Brooklyn City Railroad Company Building) — the district's other landmarked adaptive-reuse condominium, at the foot of the Heights
- 55 Poplar Street — condominium directly across Poplar Street
- 75 Poplar Street — the block's other condominium, at larger scale
- 70 Washington Street — DUMBO loft condominium; the closest register comparable across the bridge approach
- 30 Main Street (The Sweeney Building) — DUMBO industrial conversion with comparable ceiling heights and floor plates
Considering a move at The former 84th Precinct station house?
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 former 84th Precinct station house 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.