Dezer Building West 21st

 office building  Add category

150-foot, 12-story Renaissance-revival office building completed in 1908. Designed by Schwartz & Gross as a store-and-loft building, its 3-story rusticated stone base features a large, 2nd-story, segmental-arched, tripartite show window topped by a scrolled keystone and voussoirs. The western entrance bay has a double wood door with a glazed transom set into a hooded stone surround highlighted with
classical ornament. The eastern entrance bay retains the hood of the stone surround; below is a glass door with a metal transom.

Brick piers above the 3rd-floor modillioned cornice rise to the 9th floor and divide the facade into a 1-4-1 arrangement, with a central bay of four windows and single bays at the ends, and culminate at the n9th floor in a segmental-arch. The end bays have ornamented terra-cotta spandrels between the windows, which culminate at the 9th floor in round arches. The 10th floor is six bays wide and is capped by a modillioned cornice. The 11th & 12th floors are five bays wide, and separated by terra-cotta spandrels, and the top floor is topped by keystones supporting a metal cornice topped with oval acroteria, one of which is missing.

Early tenants in the Mercantile Building included S. Bernstein, a cloak and suit merchant, as well as button, shirtwaist and embroidery businesses. The building was converted to offices in the mid-1900s. The ground floor is occupied by Taj Lounge, with the Natural Gourmet Cookery School on the second floor.