13 Bleecker Street | apartment building

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3-story Federal (with Italianate alterations) residential building originally completed in about 1825 as a 2-story house. The building was acquired in 1832 by George Wheeler, who added the third story and up-to-date ornament in 1869-70, including its bracketed wood roof cornice with paneled frieze. Wheeler occupied the building from 1832 through at least 1851, and retained ownership until 1875.

The building was purchased by Henry Bohler in 1876; that year, he hired architects B. Schlaaf & Sons to convert the basement and first story to commercial use and to install storefronts. However, Bohler lost the building through foreclosure to Catherine E. Stewart the following year, and for the remainder of the century the building was rented to immigrants from eastern Europe. By 1905, the building had been converted to manufacturing lofts, and through much of the early-and mid-twentieth century, was occupied mainly by the fur industry. In the 1960s, loft dwellers began to move into the building's vacant upper floors.

The facade is clad in red brick, with the upper floors laid in conventional Flemish bond, but the ground floor has a more whimsical pattern of alternating vertical and horizontal bricks. The upper floors each have three windows, with projecting sandstone sills and lintels. A wrought-iron fire escape covers the facade, which is topped by a bracketed wood roof cornice with paneled frieze.