Chelsea Merchantile Condominium

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18-story Neo-Classical residential building completed in 1906 as a fabric manufacturing building. Designed by Schickel & Ditmars, the building is U-shaped, with a broad, landscaped alley down the middle. There are three main wings (north, east, and south), with the south wing visually different above the 2-story base, and shorter at only 13 floors.

The main facades are clad in beige brick, with the base in limestone with a grey granite water table and bases to the piers. The east facade on the avenue spans nine bays, with the main entrance in the 4th bay from the north, with a revolving door flanked by traditional glass doors, and covered by a black metal suspended canopy. Both end bays have entrances to the Whole Foods Market that occupies most of the ground floor, with molded surrounds and smaller canopies. The north retail entrance has a revolving door paired with a glass door, and the south entrance has sliding glass doors. The other bays at the ground floor have plate-glass storefront windows divided into four tall panes with smaller upper panes.

The upper floors have bays of four windows with grey-green metal mullions, except for the ends bays. These have recessed triple-windows. At the 2nd floor the end bays are fronted by a cornice and wrought-iron railing and have hooded lintels with scrolled keystones. The middle bays are separated from the ground-floor bays by brown metal spandrel panels with vertical ribbing. The tops of the piers at the 2nd floor have egg-and-dart moldings, and the base is capped by a dentil course. The brick spandrels at the upper floors each have four simple recessed rectangles, with the end bays having longer, singular rectangles. The 14th floor is set off by band courses at the top and bottom, with windows more deeply recessed. The 16th floor forms the lower roof line, and has stylized capitals at the piers.

The north facade along 25th Street mostly matches the east facade, spanning 10 bays. The end bays differ in having two sets of double-windows, but the details are the same, including the iron railings at the 2nd floor. The western bays at the ground floor have beige brick infill and various service doors and loading docks with roll-down metal gates. The west end bay has an entrance to the underground parking garage. The 17th & 18th floors only exist on this wing, and are set back from the lower roof line, faced in white pre-cast stone.

The south facade on 24th Street is split into two section. The 4-bay east section is similar in design to the other facades, but with smaller bays. The middle two have triple-windows, and the end bays have double-windows. Instead of retail entrances, the ground floor's end bays have windows, but with matching surrounds. The 13-story, 9-bay west section is very similar at the 2-story base, although the 2nd-floor windows are tripartite, with the mullions overlaid with narrow brown iron elements. The east "end bay" is actually shifted over to the position of the 3rd bay. The upper floors have tripartite windows as well, with double-windows in the smaller two bays. The tripartite windows are divided by slender brown iron colonnettes, except for the 3rd floor, which has flat colonnettes with an overlapping pattern. The colonnettes extend across the brown metal spandrel panels between floors, which are decorated with vertical ribbing at the main bays, and with trios of roundels at the smaller two bays. The spandrels above the 3rd floor project outward at their center sections, where they have rounded pediments broken by cartouches. Above the 8th floor they have triangular pediments. A stone cornice with two rows of egg-and-dart moldings tops the 9th floor, where the piers are adorned with stone cartouches, with the moldings wrapping around each pier. A stone cornice caps the 12th floor, and the 13th (top) floor is set far back behind it, with rooftop terrace space.

The west-facing facades of both the north and south wings are clad in red brick, and both wings have a few double- and single-windows.

The building later turned into offices where it became the Veterans Administration Building. It was most recently converted to condominiums in 2000, to designs by Avinash K. Malhotra and Gruzen Samton. The lobby was redesigned in 2019 by ODA Architects. It contains 354 condominium units managed by Rose Associates. Most of the ground floor is occupied by a Whole Foods Market.

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