Architectural Finds, 06/24/2023
My walk today was a brief 20 minutes, I was meeting up with a friend from upstate for some chai who had come down the night before to stay with some other friends. We met up at the Chai Spot on Mott St. (which I definitely now recommend) and we relaxed in their backroom lounge with our chai's for 45 min or so. She eventually had to leave to catch her bus back upstate & I walked her to the subway stairs hugged her and said goodbye. Feeling the warm weather on my skin and the caffeine in my veins I decided to walk up Broadway, here were some of the architectural highlights.
This cute turret room on the top of the building on the NE corner of Bleecker & Broadway. Doing the smallest ammount of googling I am finding out this was Peter Venkman's (Bill Murray) apartment in Ghostbusters 2???? ok.
It just looks like it would be such a whimsical little tower to hang your hair from, idk.
Building Facts: Built in 1891 as the Manhattan Savings Institution, also known as Bleecker Tower. Architect Stephen Decatur Hatch.
Built in the Romanesque Revival style with arches and ornaments, as well as the red sandstone and signature rough cut stone of this style on the base of the building (definitely why it caught my eye, I love Richardson Romanesque/romanesque revival).
The tower on top eludes my brief internet search, but if anyone has pictures of the inside please direct them to me.
Next up we have this lil copper cutie who looks like it just got a face lift judging by the shiny copper facade on top. It is currently a FootLocker so hopefully they're treating her nice.
Building Facts: (obv) Built in 1889 by Architect Alfred Zucker.
The menacing gargoyles are cute.
(maybe more of an opinion than a fact, but) there used to be a bookstore called Shakepeare's on the bottom floor and the top floors were 1-per-floor studio spaces for artists to live/work in, & I wish that was the case today, not footlocker and high rent.
MOVING ON, we've got this pair of cuties. Don't they look like the best of friends holding hands ready to face the world side by side? These guys are 734 (left) and 732 (right) Broadway.
734: Built in 1872 by Architects David & John Jardine in Cast-Iron Neo-Grec style. Until ~2015, the facade had become a rusted brown/black mess until they cleaned and repainted it.
732: Built in 1854 by unknown.
This little building has a complicated past but ill try and summarize the small dig I just did on it. Originally it was a 3.5 peaked-roof building as a set of 3 houses for wealthy sisters (daughters of John Mason) from 732-736 designed by an undocumented architect. It underwent large renovations twice in its life, and one small renovation adding the Treffurth's sign on the roof cornice. The first renovation happened in 1885 by Henry Janeway Hardenbergh (god write a romance novel already would you) and allowed the introduction of E. A. Mac's bookstore to take the place of the earlier saloon on the bottom floor. It was then renovated in 1900 by Bruno W. Berger to the Cast-Iron more or less Renaissance Revival facade we see today.
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Im going to keep these next ones brief because I'm beginning to lose steam :)
1 Astor Place
Built in 1883 by Architects Starkweather & Gibbs (they also designed the Potter Building). Brick & Terracotta above Cast-Iron ground floor facade.
Originally it was used as a hotel and boarding house with ground floor stores. The harsh vertical motifs on the exterior caught my eye, and I was drawn in even more by the harmony of the design elements and color choices.
10 Astor Place aka 444 Lafayette St
Built in 1876 by Architect Griffith Thomas to the same owner as the above building, Orlando B. Potter, who seemed to have impeccable taste in architecture.
I love the ornate implementation of the painted white Cast-Iron in the arches and pillar ornaments on this one. As well as the eye-popping contrast of the white paint on dark red brick, kind of a juxtaposed take on themes seen in the building above with the way the red and black elements seem to blend in together in harmony.
21 Astor Place aka Clinton Hall
Built in 1891 by George E. Harney.
Originally a Library for the New York Mercantile Library. I love the classic industrial look its such a strong look while they still tried to give elements of the facade some artistic nuance like in the arched windows and dark banding.
Only Caught the side of this Collonade building but doing more research on it, it's owned by the Blue Man Group????
Built 1831 by Seth Greer and historically home to family member's of the Astor & Vanderbilt families, it is the oldest building I took note of today.
And of course, how could I not be drawn into the Cooper Union Foundation building's charm. It stands seemingly so alone in the heart of Manhattan, close to a modern miracle.
Built in 1859 by Frederick A. Peterson in the (what I'm finding now to be called) Rundbogenstil German neo-Romanesque style.
I didn't realize it at the time but this picture also seems to be the back of the building. Still just such ornate and well-balanced design!
HONORABLE MENTIONS: This house on top of this building and the cute lil mansard moment next to it, which I searched and searched for but I cant seem to remember where it is.
Edit: I found it, there were street signs in the picture whoops. The one with the cottage is 203 E 13th Street also known as Pear Tree Place. And the little guy with the mansard roof is 109 3rd ave, both of them resting above Kiehls 3rd ave.
DISHONORABLE MENTIONS: This NYU Alumni building. Who designed you, they should be ashamed. What is going on with your offset, unbalanced terraces in the back? Awful. What was the point of all of these different colored brick patches?? Uncomfortable, awful. It looks like a neutral-toned Duplo set.
Built in 1986 and I cant even find the architect so you know they weren't very proud of it.
