Goelet Building (New York City, New York)

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10-story office building originally completed in 1887. Designed by McKim, Mead & White as a mercantile building for Goelet family interests, it was converted to a store-and-loft building in 1906 by Maynicke & Franke who removed McKim, Mead & White's top story, adding the present five upper stories.

Designed to take advantage of its corner site the Goelet Building's orange-red brick, stone, and terra-cotta facades are treated as a single unit which wraps around the corner of Broadway and East 20th Street. The facades are divided into three bays on Broadway, three bays at the corner, and four bays on East 20th. The bays on the street fronts are three windows wide, the corner bays only one window wide.

Giant arches articulate the 2-story base. At the corner these rest on Ionic columns with alternating polished granite and terra-cotta drums. On the street fronts they spring from granite pilasters. The arches have alternating brick and stone voussoirs and are outlined by terra-cotta archivolts and by patterned bricks of a slighty deeper shade of orange than the tawny Roman brick that faces the walls. At the ground floor, all the bays have modern storefronts, except for the eastern bay on 20th, which has service entrances. In the 2nd-floor lunettes all the bays but the end bay on Broadway retain their original mullions and cross bars. The 2nd floor is crowned by a patterned brick fret molding and a boldly modeled stone dentil course.

The 3rd-5th floor windows are grouped into vertical strips surrounded by molded stone frames and continuous bands of patterned brickwork. The spandrels between the windows are filled with patterned brickwork with central bosses in an interweave design perhaps inspired by Oriental calligraphy. The last bay on 20th Street continues the articulation of the other bays but is faced in a lighter tan brick and trimmed with deeper toned terra-cotta panels in place of McKim, Mead & White's patterned brickwork. The profile of the stone window surrounds is also slightly flattened.

On the 6th-9th floors Maynicke also simply repeated the articulation of the three lower stories employing the same brick and terra-cotta panels he had employed for the last bay on the 3rd-5th floors. Here, however, he substituted terra-cotta frames for the stone window frames used below. The 10th-story attic is also articulated with banded window frames. A terra-cotta bed molding survives from an elaborate roof cornice but the cornice itself was removed in 1931. Also notable is the building's rounded corner at the intersection of Broadway & 20th Street.

By the late twenties most of the building's tenants were connected with the garment industry. It was converted to offices in the late 20th century.

The ground floor is occupied by Craft Bar, and Beecher's Handmade Cheese.

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