144 Duane Street

 condominium  Add category

5.5-story Italianate residential building completed in 1860 as a headquarters for dry goods firm Benkard & Hutton, who also erected to buildings on either side as rental properties. The building was sold in 1882. 144 Duane Street is a half-story taller and projects slightly beyond the flanking buildings at 142 and 146 Duane Street. Faced in marble, stories two through five have four bays of square-headed windows per story. The 2nd floor has segmental pediments, the 3rd floor has triangular pediments, the 4th floor has unusual half-scale triangular pediments, and the 5th floor has flat molded lintels. Quoins and bracketed sills further enhance the design. The facade is crowned by rectangular attic-story windows, a dentiled and modillioned stone cornice with paired brackets at the ends, and a stone parapet.

The ground floor was occupied by the Goodwear Shoe Company from the 1940s to the '90s. In the late 1990s, the upper floors were converted from offices to condominiums, and then in 2011 to a single-family mansion. The ground floor is currently occupied by Drom Fragances.