A once-glorious Brooklyn hotel – where the Dodgers celebrated their only World Series win before heading west – is on the market in the borough’s priciest ZIP code, the building’s owner announced yesterday.
The 14-story Hotel Bossert, which in its heyday was called the “Waldorf Astoria of Brooklyn,” is being sold by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, the publishing arm of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, as part of an ongoing effort to move its operations upstate to Wallkill.
Built in 1909, the former hotel at 98 Montague St. in Brooklyn Heights is a developer’s dream. It’s located in one of the Big Apple’s priciest neighborhoods, and includes panoramic views of New York Harbor and the Manhattan skyline.
“It’s one of the premier real-estate holdings in New York City,” said Richard Devine, Watchtower’s property manager. “You can’t beat the location, and it’s an historic building that has been beautifully restored.”
Besides hosting the gala World Series party in 1955, the hotel served as home to many Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1950s before the team moved to Los Angeles after the 1957 season. Pitcher Johnny Podres won the deciding seventh game against the rival Yankees in the 1955 fall classic.
Most of the 224 rooms are currently residences for Jehovah’s Witness volunteers but six are still rented to rent-stabilized tenants that the religious group inherited when it bought the building in 1988.
Devine said previous rent-stabilized tenants living in other buildings sold by the Witnesses stayed on and he doesn’t expect anything different in this sale. He expects the 200,000-square-foot property to attract developers interested in converting the interior to either luxury condos, co-ops or rentals.
Judi Stanton, president of the Brooklyn Heights Association, praised the Witnesses for taking “meticulous” care of its 18 properties in the Heights over the years and said she hopes whoever buys the Bossert puts in the same effort.
She expects a residential conversion to produce larger rooms than the mostly one-bedroom and studio apartments now offered.
The Witnesses say they are not using an outside agent and haven’t set asking prices.
But in December, Boston-based Taurus Investment Holdings agreed to buy the 12-story former Standish Arms Hotel at 169 Columbia Heights from the Watchtower for $50 million and plans to convert it into 100 rental apartments.
The Watchtower owns 29 buildings and three lots in pricey Brooklyn Heights and DUMBO worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses have been a mainstay in Brooklyn Heights since setting up their world headquarters there in 1909. With a need to house its growing membership, the sect began gobbling up properties, both in the Heights and neighboring DUMBO, in the 1980s and early ’90s, when real-estate prices were relatively cheap.
Only nine months ago, the Witnesses put six other Brooklyn Heights properties on the market.