Cerbelli Creative Event Management

 interesting place, commercial building

4-story Flemish-revival commercial building completed in 1894 as a fire station. Designed by D’Oench & Simon, it was built for New York Board of Fire Underwriters as Fire Patrol #3. In 1839 the New York Board of Fire Underwriters was established as an outgrowth of the Mutual Assistance and Bag Corporation which had been formed 36 years earlier. The insurance companies sought to prevent or at least reduce the loss of property caused by fires. When the Board of Fire Underwriters added actual fire fighting to its methods of preventing losses to insured property, the Fire Patrol was established. The Fire Patrol was a private organization, distinct from the Fire Department. The Patrol would rush to a fire working side-by-side with fire fighters, laying tarps to protect goods from water, removing goods when possible, and all the while fighting the flames. This building was the third such Fire Patrol building erected in the city.

It was clad in cream-colored brick with terra-cotta ornament above a ground floor of Indiana limestone, now all painted black. The facade was originally crowned by an elaborate stepped gable and peaked roof covered in Spanish tile, long since removed. Behind the station was a 2-story brick carriage house with feed rooms and a hayloft. The building was finally decommissioned in 2006, with the lower two floors replaced by a nightclub. The entire building currently houses a creative working space.

The ground floor has narrower end bays with black metal-and-glass doors flanked by flat pilasters and topped by keystones, above which are transoms. The large center bay is flanked by round Doric columns projecting in front of the inner flat pilasters, and has glass infill with a herringbone pattern of black metal framing.

The 2nd & 3rd floors have two bays of double-windows with separate upper transom panes, each separated by stone mullions. The piers of the 2nd floor are banded, and those on the 3rd floor are banded only at their edges. A continuous lintel across the 2nd-floor windows is surmounted by a pair of shallow, splayed arches, and a panel above and between them has an elaborate frame; this panel originally bore the name of the fire patrol. The 3rd floor has a continuous drip moldings above the windows, surmounted by lion heads and ribbon ornament. The 4th floor has a tripartite window set in a large round-arch; each window segment is itself round-arched, and the outline of the main arch is banded, as are the outer piers. A projecting medallion on either side of the tripartite window is framed by floral ornament. The eastern one bears the letter F (for Fire), and the western one the letter P (for Patrol). The current roof line is stepped up at the ends and center.