459 Washington Street

 condominium  Add category

 Upload a photo

7-story Renaissance-revival residential building completed in 1897. Designed by Louis Korn as a warehouse, it is clad in yellow brick with stone and terra-cotta trim above a dark-grey cast-iron ground floor with modern glass and metal infill. The upper floors have four bays of windows set in pairs. Each of the intermediate piers separating the paired windows has three vertical grooved lines; at the 4th & 5th floors, the primary piers each have five such vertical grooves. Carved foliate terra-cotta spandrel panels separate the bays between the 3rd & 4th floors. There is a small stone cornice above the 2nd floor, with a larger one above the 5th floor. The top-floor windows are round-arched; the piers here also have the vertical grooves, and culminate in simple stone capitals supporting a broad cream-colored roof cornice with large modillions.

The building was used by the Independent Warehouse Company until 1924, when it was taken over by the Lehigh Valley Railroad for use as an inland freight station. In the mid-1900s it served as offices, and by the 1970s was occupied by a number of artist's lofts. The building was converted to condominiums in 2002.