The Gene Frankel Theatre

 theatre, apartment building

6-story Renaissance-revival residential building completed in 1893, housing the Gene Frankel Theatre on the ground floor. Designed by Buchman & Deisler as a store-and-loft building, it is four bays wide, with rock-faced stone banded brick piers on the lower two floors. The piers have foliate terra-cotta plaques at the 2nd floor, and support a stone lintel. The outer two windows on the 2nd floor are round-arched. On this floor begins a gilded gold sculpture of slender human-form figures that crosses the 2nd floor, and ascends up the western pier to the 5th floor.

The 3rd-5th floors are grouped together, with windows separated by guilloche-decorated cast-iron columns and galvanized-iron spandrels that are decorated with foliation. There is a decorative terra-cotta molding above 5th floor. The 6th floor has terra-cotta window surrounds, below an iron roof cornice with brackets and blocks. The front facade has a green wrought-iron fire escape over the western three bays.

The building has been occupied by a paper box company, photo engraving company, and artificial flower company, among others. Among the artists who moved in around the 1970s was Robert Maplethorpe, who lived here from 1972 until his death from AIDS in 1989.

The Gene Frankel Theatre opened here in 1986, but has operated since Gene Frankel founded the theatre in 1949, finding and cultivating an audience that can share the discovery and excitement of theater. The Gene Frankel Theatre is one of Off-Off-Broadway's most historic theaters.