70-72 Reade Street

 condominium, 1850s construction, Italianate style (architecture)

5-story Italianate residential building completed in 1857, renovated in 1998. Designed by Samuel A. Warner as a store-and-loft building, it extends through the block from Reade to Duane Street. The primary facade of the building, on Reade Street, is faced in stone (now painted) above the first story; each story has six bays of windows with segmental-arched heads, molded surrounds, and bracketed stone sills. The facade is capped by a bracketed stone roof cornice. The original storefront framing, consisting of fluted cast-iron columns and piers supporting a cast-iron entablature and a bracketed stone cornice, survives at the first story.

The Duane Street facade (No. 112-114) is executed in stone (now painted) and has six bays of segmental-arched window openings per story with stone sills. The facade is also topped by a bracketed stone roof cornice. The original storefront framing, similar to that on Reade Street, also survives; the columns and piers (missing their capitals) are raised on pedestals to compensate for the sloping grade of the site.

The present building was originally divided into two stores. In the 1880s and 1890s, tenants included boot and shoe wholesalers, dealers in rubber goods, a perfume showroom and factory, and a paper box factory. From the early 1900s through the 1940s, the building contained the offices and factory of John Boyle & Co. cotton merchants. Later tenants have included dry goods merchant Abraham Kraft and confections merchant G. Schillingmann. The upper floors were converted to residential around 2000. The ground floor is occupied by the MacKenzie Group door company on Reade Street, and by Tribeca Duane Cleaners & Tailoring, Western Union, and Everything Eyewear on Duane Street.