Updated Two-Bedroom With Vintage Bathroom in Borough Park Finnish Co-op Asks $495K

Like some other cooperatives of its era, the building was originally conceived as inexpensive housing for workers.

by Stephen Zacks

03/05/2019 0

This nicely updated two-bedroom co-op apartment is one of the original two dozen or so Brooklyn housing cooperatives built by Finnish immigrants in the early 20th century. Large numbers of Finnish migrated to the U.S. from the 1890s on, during a period when the Russian Czar was attempting to colonize the Duchy with Russian inhabitants. Though the residents of the co-ops would have been workers, unlike the Amalgamated Dwellings and other worker cooperatives on the Lower East Side built in the 1930s, the Finnish co-ops were built by ethnic associations rather than anarchist and worker’s unions.

Located at 4313 9th Avenue in Borough Park, the 30-unit walkup was built circa 1923 by the Broadview Associates Inc. and, like some other cooperatives of the era, was originally conceived as inexpensive housing for workers.

The entrance is framed by a grandiose gated entrance with an arched sunburst iron gate above, a neo-Classical pedimented door frame with columns, and an arched brick cornice above. Inside, apartment 3D is an attractive two-bedroom with a breakfast bar opening to a combined living and dining room, which has nice suspended built-in wood shelving along one wall.

The French doors to one of the bedrooms are consistent with typical designs of the period that offered an option to use one of the bedrooms as a regular living or dining room. The apartment has windows on three exposures — a common feature in apartment buildings then — and every room but the foyer has a window.

The vintage white-tiled bathroom is in seemingly excellent repair, with a pedestal sink and an opaque glass-paneled door.

Save this listing on Brownstoner Real Estate to get price, availability and open house updates as they happen >>

Finnish co-ops are known for their low maintenance and high down payment requirements, as high as 90 or 100 percent. The low maintenance tradition continues in this case, with this apartment’s share set at $554 a month, but the co-op has relaxed its financing rules and allows 10 percent down.

Listed by Peter Bracichowicz of Corcoran, it’s showing at an open house on Saturday, March 9. The unit last sold in 2015 for $420,000, according to public records. Now it’s asking $495,000. A good deal?

[Listing: 4313 9th Avenue, Apt 3D | Broker: Corcoran] GMAP