160 South Street

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4-story residential building completed in 1807 as a counting-house for the prominent flour merchant David Lydig. At the ground floor facing South Street, massive unadorned granite piers supporting a deep lintel of granite remain from the early storefront. The single round cast-iron column at the corner was a later 19th-century addition. The upper floors of the main facade, and the entire east wall along Dover Street is clad in red brick. The windows have brownstone sills and lintels. Star-shaped tie-rod washers enliven the upper floors and a simple dentiled roof cornice crowns the building.

Lydig's flour business thrived until the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, when the shrewd merchant realized that the new waterway would enable the abundant supply of grain from the rural regions of the state to be shipped rapidly and cheaply to the city, thereby inflating by comparison the price of Lydig's flour. The building served as a factory in the mid-late 1800s, and then a seaport warehouse. It was later converted to through-block loft apartments.