99 Clinton Street (Spencer Mews)
99 Clinton Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn
BBL 3002550025 · BIN 3002246
- Year built
- 1850
- Type
- Cooperative
- Units
- 10
- Floors
- 3
- Landmark
- Designated
Every other building on this tax block is downtown. The Temple Bar Building, the Central Building, the Franklin Building and 32 Court Street all sit in the Borough Hall Skyscraper Historic District; Frank Freeman's 1914 Brooklyn Union Gas Company Building next door on Remsen is an individual New York City landmark. Spencer Mews is the only building on the block that belongs to the Brooklyn Heights Historic District — the last residential holdout on the seam where the brownstone plateau runs into Brooklyn's civic core. When the Landmarks Preservation Commission drew the district in 1965 it wrote the line around this parcel by hand, naming the property twice in the boundary description. That is why a Gothic Revival church survives on a block of office towers, and why it will keep surviving.
The building went up in 1850 for a congregation founded in 1838 as a conservative alternative to Brooklyn's First Presbyterian Church; it took the Spencer Memorial name in 1911. Its architect has never been established — the LPC leaves the field open and no attribution has surfaced since — so the building is known by its congregation rather than its designer.
What happened inside it in the 1960s and 1970s is documented history worth stating plainly. From 1955 the church was led by William Glenesk, a minister who brought artists into worship and made the sanctuary a performance space; in 1968 he sponsored a service addressing homosexuality that included cast members from The Boys in the Band. In late 1970 the House of David and Jonathan, reported as the country's first gay synagogue, held services here. The Gay Alliance of Brooklyn — among the first gay civil-rights organizations in New York City outside Manhattan — was organized at the church in 1971 and held its meetings and monthly dances here. The congregation closed in 1974.
The conversion followed almost immediately, and it was early enough to be genuinely novel: the Department of Finance records the alteration in 1979, and architectural histories place the work in 1978–79 and describe Spencer Mews as one of the first religious buildings in New York converted to apartments — a decade before church conversions became a recognizable product type. The name records what the conversion did: ten residences fitted into a single ecclesiastical volume, addressed off the corner.
For a buyer the practical meaning is arithmetic. Ten apartments in roughly 19,400 gross square feet averages close to 2,000 square feet — scale no ten-unit brownstone co-op in the district can offer, in a building whose ceiling heights, stained glass and clerestory light come from its original purpose rather than a renovation budget.
Architecture and unit composition
The lot runs 132 feet along one frontage and 75 along the other, with the building covering roughly 114 by 69 feet — a footprint several times the size of the 22- and 25-foot row-house lots that make up the rest of the district's co-op stock. The three-story count is a tax classification, not a description: the apartments were cut from the nave and its galleries, and published accounts of individual residences here describe ceilings in the twenty-foot-plus range, original stained glass, skylights, working fireplaces, private terraces and multi-level layouts running to roughly 2,500 square feet across three levels.
That produces a building with almost no internal consistency, and buyers should expect it. In a converted church there is no "line." One apartment may occupy a former gallery with clerestory glazing, another the old chancel end with a terrace cut into the roof, another a comparatively conventional flat. Square footage, ceiling height, glazing and outdoor space vary unit to unit in ways that make building-average pricing meaningless. The diligence that matters is a floor plan, a measured survey, and a careful look at where each unit's windows actually face on a corner site bounded by a landmarked office building.
The envelope carries the maintenance profile of brownstone plus that of a nineteenth-century church roof — a long-span structure never designed for residential loads or modern insulation — plus stained glass, a specialist restoration item with no economy of scale in a ten-unit corporation. Exterior work of any kind, glazing included, runs through the Landmarks Preservation Commission.
Building operations
Spencer Mews Owners, Inc. holds the property per Department of Finance records. The Roebling Research Library does not hold this building's offering plan, and this page does not assert conversion terms, share allocations, staffing or house rules we have not read. What can be said with confidence is structural: ten shareholders carry roughly 19,400 gross square feet, an unusually high square-footage burden per shareholder for a Brooklyn Heights cooperative and the defining operating fact of the corporation.
The diligence list follows. Request the audited financial statements and current budget, the reserve balance and assessment history, the underlying mortgage terms, the FISP/Local Law 11 cycle and roof history, the condition and maintenance record of the stained glass, and the current house rules and purchase application. In a corporation this small a single capital event divides ten ways, and the reserve position matters more than it would in a fifty-unit building.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Aug 15, 2023 | 8 | $1,765,000 |
| Jul 11, 2022 | 1 | $1,725,000 |
| Oct 13, 2021 | 9 | $1,750,000 |
| May 4, 2021 | 10 | $2,100,000 |
| Aug 28, 2019 | 5 | $2,100,000 |
| May 17, 2019 | 3 | $1,250,000 |
Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 3-00255-0025) 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
Diligence the corporation, not just the apartment. The offering plan is not in general circulation. Get the plan, house rules, purchase application and financials in writing before contract, and do not assume standard prewar terms.
Ten shareholders carry a church. Roof, stained glass, masonry and heating in a long-span nineteenth-century structure, divided ten ways. Reserve balance and assessment history come first.
Every apartment is different. There is no line-to-line comparison. Measure the unit, map its exposures against the landmarked office building next door, and price the volume rather than the room count.
Landmarks governs the glass. Exterior work, windows and stained glass included, requires LPC approval — a cost and schedule item on any envelope renovation.
What to know if you’re selling
Sell the history, because it is genuinely rare. An 1850 Gothic Revival church — one of fewer than fifty the Brooklyn Heights Association counted in the whole district in 1965 — converted in 1978–79, among the first church-to-residence conversions in New York City.
Lead with volume, not rooms. Ceiling height, original glazing and square footage are what this building has that no comparable co-op has. Marketing bedrooms markets the wrong asset.
Name the block's oddity. The only Brooklyn Heights Historic District building on a block of Borough Hall Skyscraper District towers — a preservation guarantee and a story in one line.
Assemble documents in advance. Buyers' attorneys will ask more questions here. Having the plan, financials and rules ready before the first offer shortens the deal materially.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering 99 Clinton Street, also evaluate:
- 8 Old Fulton Street (Brooklyn City Railroad Company Building) — an eleven-unit cooperative inside a landmarked nineteenth-century non-residential building; the closest structural analogue in the Heights
- 1 Main Street (The Clock Tower) — the borough's headline adaptive reuse and the reference point for volume-driven pricing
- 30 Main Street (The Sweeney Building) — industrial conversion with the ceiling heights and irregular plates that behave like this building's
- 37 Bridge Street (Kirkman Lofts) — boutique loft conversion drawing a comparable buyer pool
- 130 Clinton Street — the corridor's larger prewar cooperative, for services against singularity
- 40 Clinton Street — Clinton Street co-op peer closer to Montague
- 138 Remsen Street — converted brownstone co-op two blocks west on the same street; the conventional alternative at similar unit count
- 100 Remsen Street — postwar apartment-house co-op nearby, for a full-service comparison
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 Spencer Mews?
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 Spencer Mews 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.