Remodeling a house in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn

What this page covers

This page is for owners of single-family and two-family houses, including attached row houses, in Bay Ridge who are planning a kitchen, bathroom or interior renovation. Bay Ridge is a Brooklyn neighborhood, so building permits come from the NYC Department of Buildings (DOB). If you own an apartment in a co-op or condominium building, the building's own alteration rules come first, and this page is not written for that case. Structural alterations, additions and new construction are not planned services. Availability and service-area approval have not been established.

What the lot data shows

Houses and apartment buildings side by side

About 72% of the 9,674 lots with homes are one- or two-family houses. Yet about 35% of the area's 37,472 homes are on the few lots with elevator buildings. So most Bay Ridge buildings are houses, but many Bay Ridge households live in apartments. Advice written for a co-op kitchen and advice for a row-house kitchen are different jobs. Know which one you are planning before you compare proposals.

About nine in ten of these lots have a PLUTO year-built value before 1940. DCP says the field is generally accurate to the decade, not the exact year. Treat the house as older construction until records show otherwise, and read renovating an older home. The Brooklyn page covers lead-paint and asbestos rules that apply to older buildings. NTAs are statistical areas built from census tracts, not official neighborhood boundaries.

Landmark status

Doctors' Row: Bay Ridge's one historic district

LPC designated the Bay Ridge Parkway - Doctors' Row Historic District on June 25, 2019, as Bay Ridge's first historic district. Its designation report covers 54 row houses on Bay Ridge Parkway between Fourth and Fifth avenues. They are two-story-and-basement houses, mostly limestone-fronted, built in segments between 1906 and 1913. LPC's historic-district dataset, accessed 2026-11-08, lists no other historic district in this NTA. Individual landmarks are a separate designation, so still search the exact address on LPC's Discover NYC Landmarks map.

In PLUTO, 24 of the district's 54 lots are classed as primarily one-family with one store or office. On this block, a house is often also a workplace. If a project touches the office part of the house, or changes how a floor is used, check the Certificate of Occupancy before scoping and ask a qualified professional what applies.

For a designated house, LPC says an LPC permit is required for interior work that needs a DOB permit and for interior work that affects the outside, such as vents. Exterior work needs an LPC permit even when it needs no DOB permit. If a property is designated, the LPC permit must come before DOB can act on the DOB application.

Row-house kitchens and baths: settle these first

For scope examples, see bathroom remodeling and kitchen remodeling. The kitchen ventilation guide explains exhaust routes.

Flood maps

In PLUTO, none of the lots with homes in the Bay Ridge NTA is flagged as touching the 1% annual chance floodplain. That holds on both FEMA's 2007 effective map and its 2015 preliminary map. That is an area-level reading, not an answer for one house. It also says nothing about water problems that floodplain maps do not show. Look up the address on FEMA's Flood Map Service Center before finishing a basement anyway.