401 Lafayette Street

 office building, 1893_construction

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7-story Renaissance-revival office building completed in 1893. Designed by Cleverdon & Putzel as a warehouse, it is four bays wide, with a 2-story base clad in tan brick around cream-colored cast-iron columns framing windows on the 2nd floor. There is a vehicular entrance on the ground floor, to the north of the pedestrian doorway. The base is capped by a brownstone molding with dentils. The upper floors have brick piers with corbelled caps, fluted cast-iron columns with bracketed caps, paneled spandrels, and brownstone moldings and panels. The 7th floor has five round-arched windows below an elaborate roof cornice featuring corbels, dentils, panels, fretwork, and coffering.

By the early 20th century, it was occupied by small manufacturing firms, and was later converted to a printing house, having been joined internally to the adjacent De Vinne Press Building in 1940. It served in that capacity until the 1960s, when it was converted to offices.