New York City
The last unbuilt lot in Brooklyn is on top of your home.
Modern Rooftop maps under-used urban rooftops against zoning and structural load margins using public city data, then walks you from a first render to permitted plans to firm contractor bids.
From idea to firm bids
- 01Free
Your Dream
A 3D render of your actual roof at its real dimensions, plus an automated zoning and Landmarks screen. About a week.
Start free → - 02
Our Permits
A licensed architect and engineer stamp your drawings and file them in DOB NOW. You own the approved plans.
See if my roof qualifies → - 03
We Build
Permitted specs go to vetted general contractors and come back as real bids. A contractor bidding off stamped plans competes. One bidding off a sketch pads the number.
Get contractor bids →
Modern Rooftop is free for homeowners. Building is not.
We never charge you. In Phase 2 you pay a licensed architect directly for your stamped drawings — we don’t mark it up and we don’t take a cut. In Phase 3 you pay your contractor. We’re paid by the contractor, after you’ve signed.
Where we work
All neighborhoods →
Prospect Lefferts Gardens
Brooklyn
Limestone and brownstone rowhouses east of Prospect Park, much of it inside a historic district, with flat roofs that were never designed as living space.
Park Slope
Brooklyn
Dense brownstone blocks where outdoor space carries a measurable premium and rear yards are already spoken for.
Fort Greene
Brooklyn
Italianate brownstone and brick rowhouses around Fort Greene Park, on some of the most intact 19th-century blocks in the borough.
Clinton Hill
Brooklyn
Mansion-scale rowhouses and mid-century apartment buildings on wide, tree-lined blocks.
Crown Heights
Brooklyn
Deep rowhouse blocks and pre-war apartment buildings with unusually generous footprints for their floor counts.
Bedford-Stuyvesant
Brooklyn
One of the largest concentrations of intact 19th-century rowhouses in the United States, and one of the largest concentrations of unused flat roof.
Work with us
Why I started Modern Rooftop
I grew up in Philly and have lived in Brooklyn since 2008. What kept me here is the tree-lined blocks, and how close everything is to a park. I have always lived near one.
- Park SlopeThe west side of Prospect Park, the Picnic House and the Bandshell
- Crown HeightsBrower Park and the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, then Eastern Parkway and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden
- Prospect Park SouthThe Parade Ground and the south side of Prospect Park
- Bed-StuyHerbert Von King Park
- Fort GreeneCuyler Gore and Fort Greene Park
- Prospect Lefferts GardensThe east side of Prospect Park: the LeFrak Center at Lakeside, Lincoln Road Playground and the Imagination Playground
Every morning, I’m greeted by the sunrise. I see the trees and a sea of opportunity: roof after unfinished roof. Brooklyn’s parks are full. Its rooftops are empty.
Modern Rooftop exists to turn that unused level of the neighborhood into green space people live in: to show every owner what their roof could become, and to help bring that dream to life.
Sarah Sautner
Founder
Get started
Check your block, or your address.
Modern Rooftop is free for homeowners.
Check your block
Not ready to share your address? Pick your street and see what your stretch of the block is made of, straight from the city’s building records.
Find my street