Street & Smith Building (New York City, New York)

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103-foot, 7-story Neo-Classical/Renaissance-revival residential building completed in 1905. Designed by Henry F. Kilburn as an office building and printing plant for the Street & Smith publishing house, it was later converted to loft apartments. It is clad in red brick, with five recessed central bays of double windows between end sections of narrower, more-widely separated double windows on the avenue side. The end sections and all of the vertical piers have projecting horizontal brick bands. The 15th Street side has the same design, but with four central bays instead of five. The ground floor has large segmental-arched openings with splayed brick lintels, and is capped by a stone cornice. At the far north side of the 7th Avenue facade is a stone entryway with double columns on each side supporting an entablature.

The upper floors have thin stone sills and wider stone lintels connecting each window pair in the recessed center section. The outer bay window pairs also have thin stone sills, but splayed brick lintels on top. The center bays at the 6th floor have splayed brick lintels as well. A stone cornice marks the base of the top floor, which has a regular row of rectangular windows grouped into pairs. A continuous stone lintel connects them all, and is topped by a dentiled stone roof cornice on both facades. The ground floor along the avenue is occupied by Jensen-Lewis furniture.

An addition for the publishing house was completed in 1922 on the east side. It has a similar window pattern and segmental-arches on the ground floor, and the cornices extend across the new facade, but the cladding is in a different shade of red brick, and lacks any of the banding and splayed lintels seen on the original building.

Street & Smith sold the building in 1941, but continued to lease four floors. In 1961 the former printing plant was taken over by Hudson Vitamins. The first floor was used mostly for the packing and shipping departments; the 2nd for offices and the research laboratories, manufacturing was done on the 3rd through 5th floors. Along with additional manufacturing space on the 6th floor were the bottling and inspection departments. A 7th floor addition, completed in 1968, was for office and storage space. Hudson Vitamin Products left at the end of the 1970's when plans were laid to convert the upper section to apartments, just three per floor, and a sprawling retail space at ground level. The alterations were completed in 1980, with 64 apartment units, and the main entrance relocated to 15th Street. Home furnishings retailer Jensen & Lewis moved into the store space and would be a familiar presence for decades. It lasted at the address through 2014. The ground floor at the west end is now occupied by Safavieh Home Furnishings.

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