492 Ninth Avenue

 apartment building  Add category

5-story residential building completed in 1869. It is clad in red-orange brick above a wood and glass ground-floor storefront. There are eight windows per floor, each with bracketed stone sills and metal cornices. An iron fire escape runs down both halves of the facade, and each half is crowned by a black metal roof cornice with brackets, modillions and panels. The ground floor was formely occupied by Manganaro's Foods & Restaurant, which originally opened here in 1893 and operated for 119 years, helping to introduce the hero sandwich to Americans. The family closed the business and put the property up for sale in 2012 (they bought the building in 1927), but the deli portion of the business is still in operation here.