87 Columbia Heights
87 Columbia Heights, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn
BBL 3002190005 · BIN 3326021
- Year built
- 1916
- Type
- Cooperative
- Units
- 56
- Floors
- 5
- Landmark
- Designated
- Subletting
- Reported as permitted subject to board approval with an annual fee; reported only, not document-verified — page hedges and directs confirmation at offer stage
- Pets
- Reported as cats only, dogs not permitted; reported only, not document-verified — page flags this as a materially restrictive rule to confirm in writing
Compiled by The Roebling Research Desk from the building’s offering plan, amendments, and related building documents. Reported and subject to confirmation. Board policies can change by amendment — confirm at the offer stage.
Columbia Heights is the street that gave Brooklyn Heights its reputation. It runs along the top of the bluff, its western frontage looks over the harbor, and its houses were the addresses that persuaded nineteenth-century Manhattan merchants that Brooklyn was worth the ferry. 87 Columbia Heights holds the Cranberry Street corner in the district's northern reach, on the walk between the Promenade and Fulton Ferry, with Brooklyn Bridge Park at the foot of the slope.
The building is a Slee & Bryson apartment house of 1916, per the LPC's district records, and that attribution is why this address rewards a closer look. John B. Slee and Robert H. Bryson formed their partnership in 1905 and spent three decades setting the standard for Colonial Revival Brooklyn — the landmarked Albemarle-Kenmore Terraces in Flatbush, rows through Lefferts Manor and Crown Heights, the Appellate Division courthouse on Monroe Place, and a run of Brooklyn Heights apartment houses including 115 Willow Street, 128 Willow Street, 59 Pineapple Street, and 15 Clark Street, where Bryson himself lived until his death in 1938. Most of that Heights apartment work belongs to the mid-1920s. At 1916, 87 Columbia Heights stands near the front of the sequence — an early essay in the building type the firm spent the following decade perfecting.
The second defining fact is structural: this is a walk-up. The Department of Finance classifies the property as a walk-up cooperative, and building coverage describes a non-elevator house. In a district where the standard prewar co-op is a six-story elevator building, that absence sets 87 Columbia Heights apart in every direction that matters. Floor-by-floor pricing spreads more sharply than in elevator stock, the operating budget is lighter without elevator maintenance and modernization cycles, and the buyer pool narrows on the upper floors while the entry price there improves. Buyers who can live with stairs are frequently rewarded; buyers who cannot should read the floor number before anything else.
Third, the corporation holds a paired property. 81-87 Owners Corp. takes its name from the two connected buildings it owns, and apartments surface variously as 81, 85, and 87 Columbia Heights. That is how the property is addressed, and it means comparable-sales work has to be run across all three numbers and the financial statements read as a two-building enterprise.
Architecture and unit composition
DOF records five stories and 56 residential units, and the building presents as a red-brick prewar apartment house of the pre-1920s generation — the moment when the Heights first began converting its bluff-top blocks from single-family use to purpose-built flats. LPC's district records assign no formal style designation, which is common for the district's utilitarian apartment stock; Slee & Bryson's Heights work of this period runs to restrained brick with quiet classical detailing, and the building reads in that register.
The apartment mix runs to one-, two-, and three-bedroom prewar layouts, with the interior vocabulary of the period — separated kitchens, defined rooms, generous ceiling heights, and the deep window reveals that come with masonry bearing walls. Public unit counts range from 53 to 60 against DOF's 56, the ordinary drift of a century-old building with combinations behind it. Two features carry outsized weight in valuation: the reported double roof deck, which is how a five-story building on the bluff delivers harbor and skyline outlook to every shareholder rather than only to the top-floor west lines, and floor level, for the reason above. Exposure, floor, and renovation condition — in that order — separate apartments here more than line position does. All exterior work runs under LPC jurisdiction.
Building operations
81-87 Owners Corp. operates a walk-up prewar of moderate size, and the profile follows from the building type: a live-in superintendent, a central laundry, bike and resident storage, and no elevator plant to maintain, modernize, or insure. Lobbies and hallways are reported to have been fully restored in 2023 — the kind of discretionary capital spending that signals reserves and a functioning board, worth verifying in the financial statements rather than taking on report.
No managing agent for the corporation is publicly documented to our standard, and we do not name one on report. Because the offering plan is not held in The Roebling Research Library, the document set here is thinner than at most Heights co-ops we cover, and the diligence sequence matters: obtain the offering plan and amendments, the current by-laws and proprietary lease, the house rules, and the last several years of audited financial statements before you get deep into an offer. Those documents settle the unit count, the pet and sublet rules, any flip tax, and the financing minimum — every one of which is reported rather than verified on this page. For a 1916 masonry building inside the historic district, FISP/LL11 façade cycles, roof condition beneath the deck, and the state of the original window openings are the recurring capital items.
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 27, 2026 | 6 | $1,300,000 |
| Dec 16, 2025 | 31 | $735,000 |
| Jul 8, 2025 | 43 | $635,000 |
| Feb 25, 2025 | 10 | $577,000 |
| Jan 27, 2025 | 46 | $710,000 |
| Jun 12, 2024 | 51 | $750,000 |
Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 3-00219-0005) 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
Read the floor number first. There is no elevator. That single fact governs pricing, resale liquidity, and whether the apartment suits you in ten years.
Get the plan and the house rules before you bid. The offering plan is not in our library, and the pet, sublet, financing, and flip-tax positions are all reported rather than verified. The reported cats-only pet rule in particular is a deal-breaker for some buyers.
Underwrite the corporation across both buildings. Read the financials, reserve position, and any assessment history at the scale of the paired property.
Verify the roof deck and the 2023 lobby work. Both are the building's stronger selling points and both are reported; financial statements and board minutes will confirm scope, cost, and funding.
Confirm the unit and share allocation. DOF says 56; references run 53 to 60.
What to know if you’re selling
Name the architects. Most Heights walk-ups are anonymous. A documented Slee & Bryson attribution from the LPC's district records — with the Appellate Division courthouse and the Willow Street co-ops as neighbors-in-portfolio — is a pedigree line competing listings on the block cannot copy.
Lead with the address and the outlook. Columbia Heights, the bluff, the roof deck, Brooklyn Bridge Park below, two subway lines close: the strongest geographic case in the northern Heights.
Meet the walk-up objection directly. Publish the floor, the stair count, and the carrying cost. Buyers comfortable with stairs are also the buyers who understand the value they are getting; ambiguity only costs showings.
Assemble the corporate file. Plan, amendments, by-laws, house rules, and current financials — where the public document trail is thin, the seller who arrives with the paperwork controls the timeline.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering 87 Columbia Heights, also evaluate:
- 129 Columbia Heights — Frank L. Lowe's 1907 Beaux-Arts co-op at the Clark Street corner; the bluff street's other early apartment house
- 160 Columbia Heights — A. Rollin Caughey's Art Moderne co-op on the bluff; the full-service, harbor-view alternative
- 115 Willow Street — Slee & Bryson in a Gothic register, two blocks east; the direct pedigree comparable
- 128 Willow Street — Slee & Bryson's 1925 co-op across Willow Street; boutique prewar peer
- 15 Clark Street — Slee & Bryson's Heights apartment house where Bryson himself lived
- 59 Pineapple Street — Slee & Bryson's 1926 elevator co-op in the Fruit Streets; the elevator alternative at similar scale
- 60 Pineapple Street — loft-style conversion co-op nearby; open plans against prewar rooms
- 72 Orange Street — 1937 elevator co-op on the Fruit Streets; moderate-scale prewar peer
- 70 Clark Street — postwar co-op on the Clark Street corridor; the value alternative with an elevator
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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