Karma Gallery

 office building, parking garage

6-story building completed in 1901. Designed by Charles H. Caldwell as a factory for the John Williams Bronze & Iron Works. It is clad in beige brick (now painted blue at the ground floor). The facade has four wide center bays, with a narrow one on each side. The main bays have triple windows, segmental-arched on the 2nd & 5th floors (The four right bays on the 5th floor have been bricked in). Those on the 2nd floor are topped with voussoirs of alternating brick and limestone. The outer bays have narrow round-arched windows, and these continue across the top floor. There is a limestone belt course above the 2nd floor. At the roof is a pressed copper cornice with double brackets. There is also a very small 1-story wing attached to eastern side of primary facade, with a round-arched window opening with radiating brick lintel, topped by a triangular pediment with stone coping.

The exposed eastern elevation is clad in brown brick, with ten bays of rectangular windows with plain brick lintels and flat stone sills. A fire escape runs down this facade.

John Williams established his own bronze foundry in 1875, with the firm originally located at 115-121 East 13th Street. In 1888, John Williams acquired the foundry buildings at 544-556 West 27th Street in West Chelsea (since demolished) that had previously belonged to the Colwell Iron Works. William’s foundry soon became one of the country’s more prestigious manufacturers of ornamental bronze and iron work. The building at 549 West 26th Street was sold in 1928 to the Otis Elevator Company, whose headquarters already occupied an adjacent lot. The iron works continued to operate at two other buildings on West 27th Street until the late 1940s, and the company was finally dissolved in 1956. Otis owned this building until the 1970s.

It now used partially as office space and for parking. Chelsea Truck & Bike Rentals occupies the ground floor.

www.nyc.gov/assets/lpc/downloads/pdf/presentation-mater...