Astor Building (New York City, New York)

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158-foot, 12-story Neo-classical/Beaux-arts residential building completed in 1897. Designed by Cleverdon & Putzel as a store-and-loft building with a facade of Indiana limestone, brick and terra-cotta, extending through the block to Mercer Street. The ground floor at the main Broadway facade has three large round-arches. The 2nd & 3rd floors have three bays of angled windows with intricate terra-cotta detailing, flanked by four large fluted Corinthian columns and topped by a foliate cornice. The windows of the 4th, 8th and top floors are round-arched, with elaborate terra-cotta detailing. A band course crosses above the 6th floor, with a pair of stone cartouches, and two detailed cornices frame the 9th floor. The windows of the 10th & 11th floors are separated by round columns. The building is crowned by a prominently projecting roof cornice.

On the Mercer side, the design is more subdued. The tall, 2-story base is capped by a large stone cornice with rustications and carvings, and the beige brick piers have stone banding, and ornate capitals. The upper floors are mostly clad in plain brick, with decoration provided by dentiled band courses, and the round-arched windows at the top floor, which has a much more modest roof cornice than on the other side of the building.

John Jacob Astor, the wealthiest man in America at the time, lived in a previous building at this address; he died in 1848. The new building erected in 1897 was named in honor of the property's original owner, and housed apparel and hat manufacturers. Although in 1942 the ground floor store became home to an office furniture and equipment store, the upper floors continued to house garment and hat factories through the 1950s.

In the 1970s The Astor Building sat vacant and neglected. In 1983, the ground floor became the home of the New Museum of Contemporary Art - which built a new home on The Bowery and moved out in 2004 - but the upper floors remained empty. Finally, in 1995, Platt Byard Dovell Architects was commissioned to renovate the upper floors into 19 loft condominiums. The ground floor is occupied by Under Armour on Broadway, and Vera Wang on Mercer.