Home Depot - Manhattan (New York City, New York) | office building

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6-story Commercial Palace-style cast-iron office building originally completed in 1878. Designed by Henry Fernbach as a department store for the Stern Brothers, it extends through the block to 22nd Street, where the facade is four stories tall, and faced in brick above a cast-iron base. The store was built in five stages from 1878-1892. The later sections, designed by Hugo Kafka and William Schickel, present a unified design with Fernbach's original plan.

The white facade on West 23rd Street has a slightly projecting 7-story center pavilion with an arched 2-story entrance, flanked by similar 6-story, 3-bay wings. In the wings, at the ground floor, four white cast-iron pilasters separate three pairs of show windows under transoms, with decorated cast-iron surrounds and colonnettes as mullions. The main entrance to the upper floors is in the western bay; the eastern bay has a smaller service entrance, with the storefront entrance in the center.

Cornices separate the floors in each wing and pilasters create three bay divisions which are continued up to the roof line. In each wing, at the 2nd floor, is an arcade of seven arched windows; the 3rd floor has square-headed windows, flanked by pilasters; the 4th floor has segmental-arched windows. The 5th floor has two paired arched windows in the end bays of the western wing with single segmental windows in the center bay. The eastern wing is partially altered by a 2-story glass and steel greenhouse, but two pairs of arched windows remain in the western bay. The western wing has an arcaded 6th floor over a modillioned cornice.

The central pavilion has two 2-story pilasters supporting the cornice over the arched entrance. Two attached columns flank the recent glass doors and support a frieze surmounted by the arched transom. The 2nd floor has square-headed windows flanking the arch, creating three bays under the escutcheon-adorned cornice. The 3rd floor has square-headed windows in the end bays flanked by pilasters with raised decoration on the shafts. The center bay holds a tripartite window with attached columns separating the units. The 4th and 5th floors are treated as an arcade with 2-story pilasters and decorated spandrels between the stories. Over the 5th floor is a modillioned cornice with a garlanded frieze. The 6th floor has a Palladian window in the center bay and square-headed windows in the end bays, under bull's eye windows. A paneled replacement parapet surmounts the center pavilion.

The facade on 22nd Street has an 8-bay black cast-iron ground floor, surmounted by a dentiled cornice. Pilasters separate the bays, and slender piers further divide the bays into three sections. Above the ground floor the facade is clad in red brick and has aluminum replacement windows. The 2nd through the 4th floors are identical and have a continuous limestone band course at impost level that also follows the contours of the sixteen segmental-arched windows. A corbelled brick belt course separates the 4th & 5th floors. The 5th floor has paired arched windows in each bay, and has a band course similar to those on the lower stories. A bracketed galvanized-iron cornice caps the facade. A 12-story annex was built to the east in 1911.

The Stern Brothers store was New York City's largest store until Siegel-Cooper opened up in 1896. The store had top-hatted doormen, but took pride in offering goods priced for all classes. The building was sold in 1968, when it mostly served as a shipping facility and for light manufacturing. The new owners renovated it, and it was soon occupied by a variety of showrooms and offices. In 1986, Hasbro, Inc., the multinational toy and board game company, moved in, conducted toy fairs and even inspired a scene filmed there for the Tom Hanks movie "Big." Hasbro remained almost 20 years.

The building was renovated again in 2000, with the ground floor now occupied by Manhattan's first Home Depot, which also takes up space in the annex.

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