Brooklyn’s Most Expensive Penthouse Condo Hits The Market

The most expensive home in Brooklyn is going on the market today. High atop Olympia, a dramatic new 33-story residential building located at 30 Front Street in Dumbo, is a 4,928 square foot, five bedroom, four and one-half bath penthouse with 552 square feet of outdoor space. Penthouse B is listed at $19.5 million.

Dumbo is an acronym for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass. The name for the neighborhood was coined in 1978, when new residents thought that such an unattractive name would help deter developers. In fact, Dumbo today is a supremely desirable place to live, a hotbed of dining, recreation and shopping, with a vibrant urban community, highly regarded public schools, and New York City’s highest concentration of technology firms by neighborhood. An added bonus: Dumbo’s spectacular views of the lower Manhattan skyline. 

Olympia has been rising for several years atop a high point between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges. Designed by Hill West Architects, it torques like a sail atop a simple, rectangular base. The building will offer 76 homes, many with terraces oriented toward the view. 

“We expect to see buildings like this is in Manhattan,” says Fredrik Eklund of Douglas Elliman. Eklund, a Swedish New York City-based real estate broker, TV reality star and the author of The Sell, represents the project’s sales and marketing in collaboration with The Heyman Team at Sotheby’s International Realty and Douglas Elliman Development Marketing. 

“When we think of luxury high-rises, we think of Manhattan. Before Olympia was built, we never saw anything like this in Brooklyn.” 

Included in the building’s 38,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor amenities are three swimming pools, including several lap pools, treatment rooms, spas, a two-lane bowling alley and a regulation-sized tennis court overlooking the Brooklyn Bridge. A children’s playground is designed around a nautical theme, as befits the neighborhood’s history. The building’s fitness center, which is close to the playground, includes a spin studio, workout rooms, boxing gym and lounge. 

Penthouse B is the crown jewel of the building, one of only two units with direct, private elevator access. 

“And, unlike most large New York City homes, this is all located on one single floor,” says Karen Heyman, a director of sales and leader of the Heyman Team at Sotheby’s International Realty. “Many large units in the city are duplexes and triplexes, and, although there is nothing wrong with flights of stairs, it is so convenient and easy to have all the rooms on one level.” 

The interior designed by the AD100 firm Workstead features seven and 3/4″ wide plank light ash wood flooring. Top-of-the-line Gaggenau appliances share the kitchen with white maple cabinets with satin nickel hardware. Bathrooms boast soaking tubs, stone counters, maple vanities and signature Workstead elements like chamfered edges along countertops.

In the city, private outdoor space is always at a premium, a fact that has increased exponentially during Covid lockdowns. The wide terrace is spacious enough for an outdoor dining room, lounge chairs, sofas and garden plants, all against the incomparable backdrop of the Mahattan skyline.