Wheeler Building

 apartment building  Add category

150-foot, 12-story cooperative-apartment building completed in 1909. Designed by Goldwin Starrett & Van Vleck for William H. Wheeler, it was built to house millinery companies. It is clad in limestone; the stone framing the 2-story base has a banded design, with a rectangular cartouche at the center-top, just below a cornice, bearing the carved words "WHEELER BUILDING". There is a recessed central entrance, flanked by two storefronts. Above each storefront are four multi-paned windows with 5-over-3 translucent panes and dark-red iron framing. The dark-red iron band below the 2nd floor windows is topped by a dentil course. The 2nd floor has two bays of tripartite windows with dark-red iron pilasters.

The upper floors are separated into two halves by heavily decorated stone piers. A tripartite window fills each bay, with paneled stone spandrels between floors. Stylized brackets with diamond-shapes top the piers at the 11th floor, supporting a stone cornice with modillions and a frieze with a wave motif. The top floor has intricately carved stone surrounds at the windows, and similarly ornamented piers and brackets, between which run a dentiled stone roof cornice. Above the cornice rises a shallow pediment, peaked toward the center, where there is an angular cartouche.

The building was converted to a residential cooperative in 1987, with 22 apartments. The east elevation is clad in dark reddish-brown brick with a couple bays of large windows. The west elevation matches the east. The ground floor is occupied by Manny's General Merchandise.