Blum & Koch Building

 condominium  Add category

150-foot, 12-story residential building completed in 1911 for the Herald Square Realty Company. Designed by Schwartz & Gross as a store-and-lofts building, it has a 2-story white-painted limestone base, plus a transitional 3rd floor faced in white-painted limestone, with recent aluminum and glass infill replacing the original storefronts. The base sits on a grey granite water table. There are two original entries on Madison Avenue, and one on 28th Street - each topped by a triangular pediment with an elaborate cartouche. The western entry on 28th Street has been replaced by a modern glass and metal portal. There is also a narrow band of facade clad in the same glass and metal materials running up the former space between the building and its neighbor to the west. Not including this strip, the north elevation spans five bays (wider in the middle), and the east elevation has single-window end bay flanking a wide center bay. The 2nd floor is capped by a band course with a Greek-fret design.

The rest of the building's shaft is clad in buff-colored brick, with bracketed stone sills, and splayed stone lintels with keystones. The top three floors have additional terra-cotta ornament. There are four windows per floor between the end bays on the east facade; the north facade has double-windows in the end bays, and three windows per bay in the middle bays.

Its first several floors were leased to Blum & Koch, a straw hatmaker. The building was converted to condominiums sometime in the late 1900s. The ground floor is occupied by Madison Cleaners, Smile Pop dentistry, and Seven Grams Caffe.