131 Watts Street

 condominium  Add category

6-story Renaissance-revival residential building completed in 1900. Designed by Franklin Baylies as a store-and-loft building for coffee and tea merchant Samuel Crooks. This building is the last of four buildings constructed for the Crooks business on this block. This corner building is more imposing than the adjacent structures; the red brick facades have brownstone keystones and imposts similar to those of the earlier buildings, while the additional sixth floor is treated as an attic arcade topped by a modillioned terra-cotta roof cornice and a brick parapet. Strong horizontal lines are created by the window heads, pier bands at the base and 2nd-floor continuous sill courses, and the frieze below the attic story. 3-story pilasters divide the facades into vertical bays. The top floor has round-arched windows with molded archivolt trim. At the ground floor, brick piers, with brownstone bands and capitals, and secondary cast-iron piers frame bay openings and support a lintel enriched with a sheet-metal cornice. At the center of the Watts Street base, banded brick piers alternate with window openings.

In the 1910s and 1920s the Samuel Wilde Sons Company, another coffee importing and roasting firm, was located in the building. Until recently the Galvanoni & Nevi Brothers importing firm was located in the building. It was converted to residential around 2000. The ground floor is occupied by Agatha Ruiz de la Prada boutique.