210 Eleventh Avenue

 office building  Add category

144-foot, 11-story Neo-Gothic office building completed in 1911. Designed by Shire & Kaufman as a factory for Martin and Arthur Zinn. Originally known as the Zinn Building, it has a 3-story base clad in beige brick. 2-story segmental archways at the base form window and doorway openings (the windows resting on canted granite ledges). The arches contain triple windows and feature terra-cotta surrounds and voussoirs and decorative metal spandrels. There is a cornice above the 2nd story, and triple rectangular windows with brick posts at the 3rd floor, and another cornice above the 3rd floor.

The shaft of the building has 7-story segmental archways with triple windows and decorative metal spandrels. At the 10th floor, terra-cotta gargoyles form the base of terra-cotta pinnacles. At the top floor there are three segmental-arched windows in each central bay, and at the outer bays are segmental-arched triple windows with continuous curved transoms and terra-cotta surrounds and voussoirs.

There is a terra-cotta coping at the roof line. The free-standing penthouse at the corner of the north and west elevations is a 1914 addition by Edward Lehlbach. The south facade is clad in red brick, with unevenly spaced segmental-arched windows. The east part of the south facade is recessed back, with more regular windows and buff-brick quoins. A fire escape runs down the far right bay. The east elevation is clad in red brick on the lower floors, and painted white above.

The initial occupants of the building, the Zinn Company, made various metal goods. The Zinn brothers leased some of the space, and the building housed a lithography company and other printing-related businesses. The centralization of printing trades in West Chelsea continued for several decades, and is apparent in the sale of the building in 1930 to the 210 Eleventh Avenue Corporation, a group of printing and paper jobbers. By the 1950s, the building was under the ownership of the Royal Paper Corporation, who used the building for distribution and warehousing of printing paper, printing of gift wrapping paper, and manufacturing of envelopes. The building was renovated in 2004, and is now home to several art galleries, including Stricoff Fine Art, the Leila Heller Gallery, and the Cavin-Morris Gallery.