New Era Printing Co. Building (New York City, New York)

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116-foot, 8-story Art-Nouveau office building completed in 1893. Probably designed by Alfred Zucker, this is one of the few and possibly the earliest Art Nouveau building in Manhattan still standing. Eschewing the then-popular Beaux Arts style, it is topped with a 2-story copper fronted mansard roof, above a stone and terra-cotta facade. At the ground floor on Broadway, four squat rounded Doric columns seem to support five stories with three vertical rows of large windows separated by brickwork and iron ornamentation, culminating in three large arches at the 6th floor. Each of the three bays has double-windows, and the spandrels feature miniature paired columns and circles. The edges of the brick piers are lined with small, projecting flower buds. The windows themselves are multi-paned, with transoms above each pair. The 6th-floor arches are intricately detailed in white terra-cotta. Above, the mansard roof, now coated with verdigris, is reminiscent of Parisian architecture.

The rear elevation on Mercer Street is clad in red brick above a white-painted cast-iron ground floor. Most of the windows in the outer bays have either been filled in (for a shaftway on the north) or contain vents. A corbelled band course runs across the base of the 3rd floor, with smaller string courses across the bases of the 4th & 7th floors. A projecting white cornice sets off the top floor, which has round-arched windows.

Although originally intended for the New Era Printing Company, the building was soon occupied by an office of the Butler Brothers company, an early mail-order business. On December 29, 1927, a fire in the building caused one million dollars worth of damage. The ground floor is occupied by a Levi's store.