De Forest Building

 apartment building, Queen Anne style (architecture)

6-story Queen Anne-style residential building completed in 1884. Designed by Samuel A. Warner as a store and warehouse, it has red brick and green-painted cast-iron. The Broadway facade is divided into three sections - a 5-bay center section with Corinthian columns, and pilasters at the ground floor, and two 4-bay sections with pilasters on each floor. A pair of black iron fire escapes run down the brick piers separating the sections, which are decorated by terra-cotta ornament. Above a cornice at the top of the 5th floor, the top floor is recessed back and topped by a mansard roof with a large central triangular pediment flanked by two smaller ones.

The rear elevation on Mercer is more subdued, with a red brick facade over a dark-grey cast-iron ground floor with fluted Corinthian pilasters. It is also wider, with sixteeen bays of single windows. Stone bands connect the sills and lintels of the windows, and a very wide black iron fire escape covers the center of the wall. Only the two outer bays retain their metal fireproof shutters, but the hinges still exist at every bay. A modillioned cornice caps the roof line. An H&M store anchors the ground level retail on Broadway, with DC extreme sports apparel on Mercer.