River Lofts Tribeca

 store / shop, condominium

13-story residential building completed in 2005 (92 Laight), combined with a 6-story (originally 5) renovated warehouse (at 416 Washington) built in 1882. The former warehouse building at the southwest corner of Washington and Vestry was designed by Thomas R. Jackson. The austerely utilitarian design is enriched with Romanesque-revival elements. As mandated by the building code, the building was constructed with several interior brick partition walls, which divide it into three sections facing Washington Street and a narrow rear section which forms the two western bays of the Vestry Street facade; both interior and rear walls may incorporate portions of the earlier buildings on the site. The red brick facades are dominated by 3-story arcades with segmental-arches which frame recessed wall planes; the paired window openings (tripled in one bay) have segmental-arched heads and originally had fireproof iron shutters. The evenly-spaced round-arched windows of the 5th floor are topped with a corbelled brick cornice. At the 1-story base of the building, green cast-iron elements frame the bay openings which originally had folding iron shutters. The sheet-metal awnings, suspended from the 4th floor by cables, remain along both facades.

In 1883 the building was sold to John Castree, a local grocery merchant who expanded into real estate, and was immediately leased to Frederick Line Company, a general storage business with several warehouses in the area. In the early twentieth century George L. Hartford operated a bonded tea warehouse in the 63 Vestry Street portion of the building. Around 1959 the northeast corner of the building was rebuilt, at which time one vertical bay of windows on each facade was eliminated. The building was vacant for many years around the turn of the century, until the renovation project and the new adjoining construction on the opposite end of the block was begun. A recessed penthouse floor was constructed atop the existing building.

The design of the new building (at the northeast corner of Laight and West) and renovation of the existing one was carried out by Ismael Leyva Architects. The new, 13-story building has a 2-story base of grey stone, with a suspended metal awning over the ground floor. The upper floors are clad in pale red brick, with a grid of windows framed in light-grey stone, and continuous sill and lintel courses. On the southern facade, the center grid of seven windows per floor is separated from double outer bays by areas of plain red brick, crossed by the stone sill and lintel courses. The top floor is faced in beige pre-cast concrete, with vertical grooves on the southern elevation, and capped by a stone parapet. There is an underground parking garage with an entrance on Laight Street.