Hoyt Building (New York City, New York)

 office building, condominiums, 1860s construction, Second Empire (architecture)

6-story Second Empire-style multi-use (condominium/office/retail) building completed in 1868. Designed by Griffith Thomas as a store-and-loft building for merchant Edwin Hoyt, it is faced in rose-colored marble over a brick and cast-iron structure. The building was extended in 1888 by architects DeLemos & Cordes. In 1905, the original building received a 1-story rooftop addition designed by Thomas Styles, and decorative iron balconies were added on the Broadway side.

The Broadway facade is a composition of stacked arch orders with a slightly projecting central pavilion, all faced in rose-colored marble. The ground floor has been extensively remodeled and the top floor is a simply detailed brick addition. The facade is twelve bays wide framed by rusticated corner piers. Ornamentation is derived from Renaissance and Baroque sources. The main building entry, with its massive frame and simple cornice, appears to date from 1910-1940.

The 2nd-4th floors are designed in a series of modified Doric arch orders with segmental-arches and pilasters. A 6-bay central pavilion is articulated at each floor by engaged Corinthian columns supporting a balcony that is most prominent in the four central bays. The 5th floor is a round-arched arch order with tall pilasters in two sections, paneled below the impost and embellished with a vegetal motif above it. These pilasters carry a bracketed cornice, slightly projecting in the central six bays where there was originally a pediment. The top floor is a plain brick wall in running bond, slightly lower in height than the floors below, with square windows and two simply detailed projecting cornices. The balustrades in the two central bays of the 2nd floor have been removed. At the two central bays of the 3rd through 6th floors are decorative iron balustrades of a different design at each level.

The East 18th Street facade is in a stacked composition with a decorated flat central pavilion and differentiated end bays, all in marble. The top floor is a simply detailed brick addition except at the western end bay which continues upward in marble with an attic story surmounted by a 2-story arch order. The end bays are miniatures of the Broadway facade, three windows wide at the eastern end, framed by rusticated piers, and two groups of three windows at the western end. Between the end bays, the 2nd through 5th stories consist of tiers of ten windows with decorative architraves in a lightly scored stone wall. The windows have segmental-arches to the 4th floor and round arches in the 5th. The central pavilion is articulated by closely paired central windows with a triangular pediment, a segmental pediment, and a prominent lintel respectively over the 2nd, 3rd & 4th floors. At the 5th floor, smooth pilasters carry a projecting section of the cornice above which was originally a pediment. Above the western end bay, the additional stories are framed at the sides and in the middle with smooth pilaster orders. These are superimposed over smaller orders at the attic level and the upper arcade level. Arcade spandrels are embellished with a floral design and the order is surmounted by a frieze of sways.

In 1923, the seventh and eighth floors of the 1888 extensions were converted from storage to factory use. The Hoyt Building has housed numerous small dry-goods dealers and department stores. Between 1920 and 1951 a bank occupied the corner space on the ground level. In the late 1900s, the building was converted to residential condominiums and office space, with ground-level retail - occupied by a Duane Reade pharmacy, G-Star Raw apparel, New Andy's Deli, Sit Down New York home furnishing, and Tarallucci E Vino.

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