8 Remsen Street
8 Remsen Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn
BBL 3002510006 · BIN 3002110
- Year built
- 1923
- Type
- Cooperative
- Units
- 3
- Floors
- 66
- Landmark
- Designated
- Pets
- Not documented in the conversion file — confirm current house rules
- Subletting
- Sale, assignment and sublet require board resolution or written consent of a majority of directors, or written consent/vote of shareholders owning at least 75% of outstanding shares (1974 plan, proprietary lease and by-laws)
Compiled by The Roebling Research Desk from the building’s offering plan, amendments, and related building documents (primary source dated 1974 plan as filed). Reported and subject to confirmation. Board policies can change by amendment — confirm at the offer stage.
Remsen Street runs four blocks, from Court Street down to a turnaround at the Promenade. 8 Remsen is the last building on it — the westernmost address, at the lip of the Heights above the harbor. The sponsor's architect described the site in 1974 in plain terms: the lot faces the turnaround that forms the western terminus of Remsen Street, and it looks out over the East River and Upper New York Bay. Slee & Bryson gave the west elevation the feature that follows from that — a narrow ornamental iron balcony at every one of the six floors, opening from the room behind through doors, with several of those west openings later replaced by casements, French doors, and picture windows. In a district where harbor exposure is the scarcest commodity, this is a building where every floor has it.
The second distinction is chronological. Brooklyn Heights co-op stock was overwhelmingly created between 1978 and 1988; 8 Remsen Street Housing Corporation was formed under a plan first offered on April 25, 1974, before the wave. The sponsor was not an outside converter but Acker & Bosworth — Joseph Acker and John Bosworth, partners who both lived in the building. Their plan carried a rent-controlled tenant in the first-floor front and a rent-stabilized tenant on the fifth, both protected in possession, and offered the rest between $8,000 and $48,000, later restruck between $15,000 and $68,000 when the First Amendment split the full-floor second unit and raised the offering to $370,000.
That lineage produces a building governed like a small partnership rather than an institution: board consent or the approval of holders of 75 percent of shares to sell, assign, or sublet. There is no doorman, and at conversion there was no laundry room at all. What keeps buyers coming is the apartments. Forty-seven rooms across seven original units is an average of nearly seven rooms each, and the plan's schedules bear it out — living rooms of 13 by 21 feet and 15 by 21 feet 8 inches, bedrooms of 12 by 17 feet, and, on the front apartments, sun rooms, one of them 9 feet 10 inches by 17 feet 2 inches. These are large prewar layouts of a kind the district's later six-story elevator buildings did not attempt.
Architecture and unit composition
The structure is non-fireproof masonry: brick bearing walls 16 inches thick to the second tier of beams and 12 inches above, rubble-masonry foundations two feet thick, steel framing and a five-inch reinforced cinder-concrete slab at the first floor and part of the second, wood joists above. The single interior stair runs from the entrance hall to the roof in metal-pan construction with marble treads, lit by a window at each landing and a skylight at the top; one exterior fire escape serves the rear wall.
The elevator is part of the building's character and part of its capital story: an Otis cab installed in 1924, roughly four feet square inside, converted to automatic push-button control. The roof is essentially flat except for a peaked northern portion in standing-seam copper, with four skylights over the stair, the elevator shaft, the dumbwaiter, and a sixth-floor bedroom. The BQE was built after the building; a high ashlar masonry wall now screens the site from the highway, and service steps along the north lot line drop from the sidewalk to the highway's upper level.
Building operations
8 Remsen Street Housing Corporation has operated the building since the 1974–75 closing. It is a shareholder-run house at the smallest workable scale, and the diligence items follow from that. Confirm what has been done to the 1924 elevator, a cab of that vintage being the largest predictable capital item in a building this size. Confirm whether a laundry room was ever installed or whether in-unit machines are permitted, since the plan recorded neither. Ask about the electrical service: the 1974 report noted 400-amp three-phase service with 30-amp fuses in most apartments but 15-amp fuses in two, and warned that unmodernized branch panels would need replacement if usage rose. For a 1920s masonry building this exposed, façade and parapet cycles are the recurring exterior obligation, with the LPC holding jurisdiction over the result. The corporation's financial statements in The Roebling Research Library run from 1999 forward.
Recent sales
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Jun 18, 2026 | 4/5 | $5,100,000 |
Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 3-00251-0006) 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 75 percent consent standard is the defining term. It governs sale, assignment, and sublet. Confirm in writing how the board applies it and what the current package requires before you commit.
Ask about the elevator and the electrical service. A 1924 Otis cab and 1970s-era branch panels are the two documented systems most likely to drive assessments; get the corporation's upgrade history.
West line versus rear line is the real choice. The balconies, the harbor, and the light are all on the west; rear apartments look over the block interior and price differently. And the fireplaces are decorative — the sponsor's report is explicit that the flues do not work.
What to know if you’re selling
Lead with the terminus. Westernmost building on Remsen Street, at the turnaround, above the Upper Bay, with an iron balcony on every floor — no other building on the street can say it.
Name the architects. Slee & Bryson attribution ties 8 Remsen to 76 Remsen Street and 15 Clark Street and gives a small building a pedigree line most Heights sixes cannot claim.
Sell the room sizes. Twenty-one-foot living rooms and sun rooms are documented in the conversion schedule. Publish the dimensions; they beat photographs.
Surface the consent standard early. The 75 percent provision surprises purchasers late in the process; raising it in the first conversation protects the deal.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering 8 Remsen Street, also evaluate:
- 76 Remsen Street — Slee & Bryson's other Remsen Street elevator house, converted in 1963; the closest peer on both counts
- 15 Clark Street — Slee & Bryson apartment house where Bryson himself lived
- 59 Pineapple Street — Slee & Bryson elevator co-op in the Fruit Streets
- 2 Montague Terrace — Promenade-front boutique co-op with the same harbor exposure
- 10 Montague Terrace — mansion-to-apartments co-op, same view corridor
- 142 Hicks Street — small prewar elevator co-op of comparable scale
- 200 Hicks Street — 17-unit prewar elevator house, cooperative from the outset
- 58 Remsen Street — the 1844 corner house converted in the same 1974 season
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 8 Remsen 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 8 Remsen 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.