Robbins & Appleton Building (New York City, New York)

 condominiums  Add category

6-story Second-Empire-style residential building completed in 1880. Designed by Stephen Decatur Hatch as a factory for the American Waltham Watch Company, the building has a cast-iron facade with a mansard roof and clock. The facade consists of a single window bay unit reproduced twelve times across each of the four upper floors in disciplined regularity. The bay unit is a deeply-recessed window flanked by smooth columns with simple necking and stylized capitals carrying a shouldered arch. Cornices divide each floor.

The main difference between the ground floor and the upper stories is that the lower part of the ground-floor columns is enhanced by an incised spiraling groove, and there is an entrance portico, similar in design to the window units, crowned with a broken pediment carried on modillions. The impressive mansard at the top, sheathed in slate, is pierced by Palladian-like dormers in the end towers over the shallow pavilions, and by a central, 4-bay wide dormer. At the center of this dormer are two round-arched windows with keystones that carry a decorative plaque bolted to the surface. Below the pediment is a round-clock face. To either side of the central section are square-headed windows with flanking columns that carry the ends of a pediment.

The building's original owner, the Waltham Watch Company, was owned by Henry A. Robbins and Daniel Fuller Appleton, who had both a factory and store on this site in an 1871 building. That earlier building was destroyed by fire in 1877, and the current structure was built as a replacement in 1880. Office space was also leased to Appleton's publishing firm. By 1897, space was also being leased to other firms, including A. Friedlander & Co. cloak manufacturers. By the later part of the 20th century the Robbins & Appleton Building had housed a variety of small businesses and manufacturers. In 1988 it was converted to residential use with four apartments on the second through fourth floors, two on the fifth and four on the sixth floor and in the mansard. The residences were converted to condominiums in 1998. The ground floor is occupied by Blick Art Materials.