640 Broadway (New York City, New York)

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9-story neo-Classical residential building completed in 1897. Designed by DeLemos & Cordes as a stores, offices and lofts building, originally named the Empire State Bank Building, as it replaced an earlier building that had housed the Empire State Bank. It has a 2-story base, with rusticated buff-colored brick, except for the Broadway facade and corner, which is green-painted cast-iron with 2nd-story show windows. On the right side of this facade is a limestone-framed entrance with an oval transom, denticulated hood, and damaged ornamentation. Above is an interesting mix of windows. They are paired on the 3rd & 4th floors, with a single rounded-arch above a cornice on the 5th floor, which is topped by a cartouche. The 6th floor has three windows below a band of short, decorative vertical bands. On the 7th-8th floors, two small round-arched windows are combined within a single opening, set below a broken pediment and a round-arched opening above. The top floor has another group of three windows, with Corinthian capitals at the outer piers.

The Crosby side is much simpler, with four windows on each floor; a segmental-arch encompasses those on the rusticated 2nd floor, the rest of square-headed. A dentiled string course caps the 6th floor, and the outer piers also terminate in Corinthian capitals at the top. The longer Bleecker Street elevation has 13 bays of paired windows, all of which are segmental-arched on the 2nd floor except for the aforementioned Broadway corner. Dentiled string courses continue across the 2nd and 6th floors, and Corinthian capitals terminate the piers just under the modillioned metal roof cornice that wraps around all three facades. In the middle bays, the 8th-floor windows are segmental-arched, and there are two iron fire escapes - one near the center and one near the west end. The two outer bays match the design of the Broadway facade's upper floors.

The building was in mixed use until 1976, when its tenants included on offset printer, a food and vitamin distributer, an importer, and an interior design firm. At that time the building was converted to joint living/working spaces on the upper floors. The ground floor is currently occupied by Swatch, Two Boots Pizza, Cafe Angelique, Bleecker Digital Solutions, and Organic Avenue restaurant.