185 Lafayette Street

 apartment building  Add category

3-story Queen Anne-style residential building completed in 1887. Designed by Napoleon LeBrun & Son as a fire house for Engine Co. 55, the ground floor is painted red and framed in cast-iron. The upper floors are clad in orange brick, with some horizontal limestone banding and patterned brickwork spandrels. The 3-bay facade is topped by a red metal roof cornice with modillions and pointed end caps, above a row of terra-cotta rosettes.

The fire company relocated to a new firehouse at 363 Broome Street (a designated New York City Landmark) in 1898-99, but this building appears to have continued to serve in some unknown municipal capacity for the next several years. It was sold by the City and converted to a store-and-loft building in 1917, and by 1923 housed an automotive repair shop on the first story. It was converted to residential use in 2005.