Ahrens Building (New York City, New York)

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7-story Romanesque-revival office building completed in 1895. Designed by George H. Griebel for liquor merchant Herman F. Ahrens, it is clad in buff-colored brick above a rusticated sandstone base, trimmed with with rock-faced brown brick and terra-cotta details. The building is two bays wide on Franklin Street; the main facade, on Lafayette Street, is six bays wide. The ground floor has rusticated sandstone piers with delicately carved foliate capitals that support a wide masonry beltcourse. The brick above the base is highlighted with brown rock-faced keyed corners and earth-toned terra-cotta.

The entrance to the building is through a massive, richly carved portal in the northern end bay of the Lafayette Street facade, embellished with rock-faced grids in the spandrels, foliate carving, and a frieze bearing an interlaced pattern. Above the base, the windows are organized into pairs; all of the openings have curved bull-nose brick reveals, and those which are square-headed have inset stone lintels. The most dominant feature of the Lafayette Street side is a 3-bay arcade, with the openings framed by rock-faced brown brick keys. The arcade contains 3-sided metal oriel windows at the 2nd-4th floors, set below large round-arched windows with arched mullions at the 5th floor. The slender colonnettes of the oriels terminate in finials, and the spandrel panels are ornamented with lattices (between the 2nd & 3rd floors) and shields and bezants (between the 3rd & 4th).

The 2-bay arcade on Franklin Street is filled with double square-headed windows separated by metal mullions. A fire escape, which breaks the cornice, spans the facade. The arched windows at the 5th floor are unified on both facades by a terra-cotta sill course and trim at the imposts and archivolts. The imposts serve as the bases for bartizan-like forms which extend through the molded sill course of the 6th floor and terminate at the sill course of the top floor. The paired and tripled arched windows at the top floor are also outlined with terra-cotta moldings. The building is crowned by a metal cornice with modillions and a decorated fascia.

The building was owned by the Ahrens family until 1968. When 80 Lafayette was built, it was forced to do around the existing Ahrens Building which resulted in an L-shape design. The Ahrens saloon was the first of several bars and restaurant to occupy the ground floor. In the 1940s the upper floors were being used for storage and manufacturing. After the Moskowitz company bought the building in 1968, it was renovated, and the 3rd-7th floors were converted back to office space from commercial lofts. The ground floor was renovated again in 2014.

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