Cast & Curious: Cast Iron Architecture, South of Union Square Part I
The area south of Union Square is one of New York’s great centers of cast iron architecture. This neighborhood includes some of the city’s earliest surviving fully cast-iron buildings as well as predominantly masonry buildings with distinctive and elaborate cast iron ground floors or ornament. Our South Of Union Square Cast Iron Tour includes 32 examples of cast iron architecture. Today we look at a few of them:
806-808 Broadway

This loft building runs the full block from Broadway to Fourth Avenue behind Grace Church. It was designed in 1887 by James Renwick and the partners in his successor firm — James Lawrence Aspinwall and William Hamilton Russell, Renwick’s grand-nephew. Both sides of the building maintain beautifully intact cast-iron storefronts.
836 Broadway

This landmarked six-story brick store and loft building was designed by Stephen Decatur Hatch in 1876. Its cast-iron facade features neo-Grec, Second Empire, and Renaissance Revival–style elements. Workers at the clothing manufacturer Freigat & Keim here participated in the historic shirtwaist strike of 1909-10. Judge James Roosevelt, the noted Supreme Court justice and relative of Theodore and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, resided here.
47 East 12th Street

47 East 12th Street was built in 1866 and designed by Griffith Thomas. It was built with and connects to 827-831 Broadway (see below) at the rears of the buildings. Somewhat more austere than the Broadway buildings, it is four stories in height and three bays wide, utilizing a mix of masonry and cast iron elements. At the second and third floors are cast iron rusticated piers at either side of the façade.
827-831 Broadway

These buildings were landmarked in 2017 following a Village Preservation advocacy campaign to save them from demolition. Designed by Griffith Thomas in the Italianate style with neo-Grec elements, 827-831 Broadway were built as twin loft buildings in 1866 as a speculative investment for tobacco heir Pierre Lorillard III. Their facades are clad in marble with cast iron elements. Thomas was a prolific designer utilizing cast iron. This building represents Thomas’ transition from marble with cast iron elements to all-cast iron structures.
The Wheeler & Wilson Company, which revolutionized clothing manufacturing, was headquartered here, and the buildings were later the center of New York’s antique district. Several leading abstract expressionist painters and art world figures including Willem de Kooning established their homes or studios in the buildings. Pop star Cyndi Lauper lived here and tryouts for Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue also took place here.
Many of these buildings South of Union Square are at risk of alteration or demolition, but Village Preservation has been working to protect these properties with our campaign for historic district designation. You can help by sending a letter to city officials calling for the enactment of such protections HERE, and by supporting Village Preservation HERE. You can find out more about the campaign to protect this area HERE. And don’t forget to take the full South Of Union Square Cast Iron Tour, which is part of our South of Union Square Interactive Map + Tours, with the stories behind more than 200 buildings and more than forty tours covering subjects from Women’s History to Writers and Authors, Great Artists to the Civil War, and more.