Lerner Store Building

 office building  Add category

3-story office building originally completed in the mid-1800s as a 4-story house. It was sold in 1893 and converted to business use, with small offices, serving a variety of small tenants including bail bondsmen, well into the 20th century. The building was remodeled in 1925 to include a restaurant on the 2nd floor; the street level store and offices on the third and fourth floor remained.

A completely new facade was erected in 1928 to a design by Charles Whinston & Brother for Samuel A. Lerner and Harold M. Lane's Lerner Shops, which sold women's wear. Faced in stone and terra cotta, the structure now touted medieval motifs and heraldic symbols. Two handsome, if contrived, coats of arms surmounted with crowns announced Lerner Stores. Rope-twist colunettes, shields, blind arches and a quartet of somewhat eerie heads along the parapet combined to make the little building totally unique among its neighbors. The 2nd & 3rd floors have large tripartite show-windows, with most of the ornament between and above them. Lerner Stores would stay in their new home only two years. In 1930 the building was leased to Samuel Salnick.

The Lerner Company gained a reputation for employing imaginative adaptations of traditional architectural styles to the facades of its stores. The stores, therefore, served as their own advertising. Here, an eclectic Gothic Revival terra-cotta façade was designed to grab the attention of working women (particularly in the garment trade) shopping for ready-made clothing along Seventh Avenue during their lunch hour.

The ground floor was altered again around the 1980s with grey-brown stone cladding and a storefront with a deeply recessed entrance. The ground floor is occupied by Golden Gift Jewelry and Souvenirs.

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