160 Front Street Apartments

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10-story residential building completed in 1918 as a 7-story office building. Designed by Henry J. Hardenbergh for the New Jersey Zinc Company, it was his last-designed building. It was converted to rental apartments in 1978 with 56 units, including a new facade facing toward Water Street, and a 3-level recessed penthouse on top.

The original facades, as seen on the Maiden Lane, Front & Fletcher Street elevations, consists of a raised limestone basement, with narrow windows guarded by iron grilles at the sidewalk level. The 1st & 2nd floors are divided into 2-story bays of zinc and glass infill, separated by wide piers clad in red brick and fronted by double stone columns and horizontal limestone banding. The outer bay on each facade projects slightly forward. At the center bay of the Front Street elevation, the main entrance breaks through the raised basement level to meet the sidewalk. The doorway, with its glass transom, is slightly recessed, behind a single stone step. It has a carved stone enframement topped by a triangular pediment. The carved horse head medallion below the pediment was adopted as the trademark of to the New Jersey Zinc Company in 1855. A stone cornice (with dentils on Front Street and Maiden Lane) caps the base.

The floors above are clad in red brick. The Front Street facade is symmetrical, with five bays of paired windows, the outer two bays slightly projecting. On Maiden Lane, the left projecting outer bay is only one window wide. On Fletcher Street, only the right outer bay (with paired windows) projects. The rest of the facade has three bays of paired windows flanked by two bays of single windows. Every window or window pair has stone sills and brick headers with keystones.

The 7th floor has recessed bays, divided into triple windows by zinc mullions. The short piers between bays have inset stone panels. A simple stone cornice runs below the floor, and above is a projecting, bracketed and dentiled roof cornice (it only projects on the Maiden Lane and Front Street elevations).

The new northwest-facing wall from the 1978 alteration is clad in dark-red brick. In the center is a projecting section with a 6-pane band of windows at each floor, rising all the way up to the new 9th floor of the new penthouses. Up to the 7th floor (the main roof), there are projecting brick balconies on either side. Above the roof cornice, the 7th floor roof deck is surrounded by a brick parapet with stone balustrades. The penthouse is clad in the same dark-red brick as the northwestern wall.

It is now apartments.

www.beyondthegildedage.com/2013/01/the-new-jersey-zinc-...