The Villager Building

 Romanesque (architecture), apartment building, 1891_construction

6-story Romanesque-revival residential building completed in 1891. Designed by Ralph S. Townsend as a store-and-lofts building. It has a 2-story base with alternating bands of white stone and dark grey brick, divided into three main bays. The piers have delicately carved capitals at the tops of the 1st & 2nd floors, including faces at the 2nd-floor level. On the upper floors, the piers are buff-colored brick, with ornately carved white stone capitals (including faces) at the top of the 3rd floor, and at the base of the wide segmental-arches that cap the 5th floor. The spandrels between the 3rd, 4th & 5th floors are carved terra-cotta. The top floor has three round-arched windows in each bay; the bays are separated by piers with clustered colonnettes, or ribs, of brick carried on stone corbels. The center bay rises up higher than the outer two.

The three centered arches over the triple windows at the fifth floor once rested on carved Romanesque capitals, such as may be seen on the piers at second floor level. They have been smooth-stuccoed. The building was built on the site of the former Shiloh Presbyterian Church, whose small cemetery still exists just to the northeast. The building was renovated and converted to apartments in 1981. The brown brick south wall has remnants of painted advertising signs.

The ground floor was occupied by Jefferson Market gourmet food, now vacant.

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