True North Union Square (New York City, New York)

 store / shop, apartment building

8-story Beaux-Arts/Romanesque residential building originally completed in 1897 as a 7-story warehouse and store-and-loft building, known as the Hancock Building. Designed by Marsh, Israels & Harder, it became home to the venerable hardware store, Hammacher & Schlemmer in 1904, who had outgrown their location on the Bowery. The company adorned the exterior of the building with two large painted signs on the inside walls of the highly-visible corner facing the intersection of East 13th Street and Fourth Avenue. Hammacher Schlemmer stayed here for over two decades, leaving in 1926 for a larger space at 147 East 57th Street. Other manufacturers and retailers took its place at 127-135 Fourth Avenue, including the Sendar Company, which in the 1950s advertised itself as America’s largest distributor of glassware for promotional and carnival use.

By the late 1970s the building had been converted to residential use above the ground floor, with small balconies inserted on the streetfront and sidewall facades. Decades later, in 2014, the building was renovated to include a new penthouse floor, a clocktower installation, and the watertower was repainted to feature a STIK figure artwork.

Sitting on an oddly-shaped plot of land, the building displays a complex assortment of styles, in the rough shape of an L. The Fourth Avenue facade is more elaborate than its 13th Street counterpart, as it was the primary entrance to the ground floor store. A 1-story commercial annex was incorporated inside the L, completing the building footprint out to the northwest corner. The more modern styled 1-story wing is faced in white stone, with a base of green-painted brick, and with a metal railing and terrace on top. It has three large bays of windows on the north side, and a metal service door. The west facade has two more bays, the northern one with a slightly-recessed set of glass double-doors integrated within it.

The west facade of the main building, on Fourth Avenue, is clad in tan brick with terra-cotta trim, above a 2-story rusticated limestone base. The central entrance has a steel-and-glass door, narrow sidelights, and a transom set in a stone molding with a carved shield. Above, at the 2nd floor is a round oculus window with leafy Beaux-Arts decoration. On either side of the entry is a modern metal-and-glass storefront, topped by sloped copper roofs, with the 2nd floor having four double-windows on either side, divided by pilasters with Renaissance ornament.

The upper floors have nine bays of single-windows, the middle one set farther apart. The 3rd floor has banded brick and splayed lintels on the windows, with keystones. A band course with an egg-and-dart molding sets off the 4th floor, where six 3-story fluted columns rise to stylized Ionic capitals at the 6th floor, supporting a dentiled stone cornice. The 7th floor has round-arched windows, and the facade is crowned by a black metal roof cornice with modillions and dentils. There are two bays of beige metal balconies with rounded corners at the 2nd-7th floors, and they wrap around two of the columns at the 4th-6th floors.

The north facade on 13th Street is plainer. The ground floor has two large round-arches, one with plate-glass and the other with glass double-doors. To the left is a narrow window, and to the right is a service entrance and vents with metal louvers. The 2nd floor has four single-windows and a very small window in the middle. Stone cornices set off the bases of the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th floors, with a larger cornice below the 7th. The upper floors have three single-windows in the middle, and a single-window end bay on each side. A tan metal fire escape runs down the middle of the facade, which is crowned by a simple black metal roof cornice.

The inner walls of the L-shape, overlooking the 1-story corner wing, are faced in tan stucco. The wider, north-facing one has a double-window and a single-window bay, and a bay of French doors opening onto more balconies. "TRUE NORTH" in black lettering is painted down the west edge. The west-facing wall has sliding glass doors opening onto another set of balconies. At the roof line of the junction between the two elevations is mounted an angled clock face, with the water tower rising above and behind it.

The building contains 48 apartment units. The ground floor of the main building is occupied by NOME restaurant, Mocha Burger, and Schmackary's cookies, and the 1-story corner space by Sandwicherie restaurant.

www.villagepreservation.org/2020/03/02/why-isnt-this-la...