41 Bleecker Street

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4-story Art-Deco cooperative-apartment building completed in 1924. Designed by Whinston & Hurwit as a factory, the building used the frame of an 1830 Federal-era residence. The front facade has two bays of three windows each, and is clad in variegated brown brick above a ground floor with brown fluted cast-iron piers. At the top is a gabled roof parapet with an central incised panel; the end piers extend up above the roof line, capped by stone copings. The eastern elevation is clad is a more reddish-brown brick, with three bays of windows that are divided by rather wide metal mullions on the 2nd & 3rd floors. A black metal fire escape runs down this wall.

The building, originally 2.5 floors tall, was raised to three full floors, with a 1-story extension at the rear, in 1869. By 1880 and into the
1890s, the building was occupied mainly by immigrants from Ireland, Germany, and Eastern Europe. The conversion to a factory took place around the turn of the century. In 1923, Hyman Kaufman acquired the building, and the following year hired architects Whinston
& Hurwit to design new facades for the building, which were installed in conjunction with the lowering the of the first story to ground level and the construction of a 4th floor. Kaufman maintained his fur business in part of this building until he sold it in 1931.

After 1931, the building was used by other furriers. In 1940, it was sold to a contracting firm who operated here into the 1960s. In the
1960s, when the post-war decline in the city's manufacturing base left much vacant commercial space, loft dwellers began to take over the upper stories of this building. It was converted to cooperative apartments in 1985.