Puck Building
The Puck Building is a mixed-use building at 295–309 Lafayette Street in the SoHo and Nolita neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City, New York, U.S. The building was designed by Albert Wagner in the Romanesque Revival style, with elements inspired by the German Rundbogenstil style. It is composed of two sections: the original seven-story building to the north and a nine-story southern annex. The Lafayette Street elevation of the facade was designed by Herman Wagner in a style similar to that of the original building. The Puck Building is a New York City designated landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Puck Building occupies the block bounded by Lafayette, Houston, Mulberry, and Jersey streets. The red brick facade is divided vertically into bays of uniform width. The facade is also divided horizontally into several tiers of arcades, with wider arches at the top and narrower arches at the bottom. The sculptor Henry Baerer crafted two sculptures of the Shakespeare character Puck for the facade. The building is topped by a penthouse structure. The original interiors were arranged as open plan offices, which largely remained intact in the late 20th century. There is retail space in the basement and first two stories; office and studio space on the intermediate stories; and six penthouse apartments on the highest stories.
The building was the longtime home of Puck magazine, a humor cartoon whose founders Joseph Keppler and Adolph Schwarzmann acquired the site in 1885 with J. Ottmann. The original building was completed the following year, and the annex was built between 1892 and 1893. When Lafayette Street was extended through the neighborhood in the late 1890s, the western section of the building was demolished, and a new facade and entrance were built on Lafayette Street. Puck magazine went out of business in 1918, and the structure was used by printing firms over the next several decades. Paul Serra's family bought the Puck Building in 1978, and Serra and his partner Peter Gee converted it to commercial condominiums, which were completed in 1983. A syndicate led by Harry Skydell bought the Puck Building in 1986 and carried out additional renovation. Kushner Properties, a partner in the syndicate, took over the building in the 1990s. The lowest stories were converted to a store in 2011, and Kushner Properties converted the upper stories to penthouse apartments between 2011 and 2013, constructing a dormer for one of the apartments.
Site
The Puck Building is at 295–309 Lafayette Street, in the Nolita and SoHo neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City, New York, U.S. It occupies an entire city block between Lafayette Street to the west, Houston Street to the north, Mulberry Street to the east, and Jersey Street to the south. The land lot is quadrilateral and measures around. Across the street to the southeast are St. Patrick's Old Cathedral and St. Patrick's Old Cathedral School. In addition, an entrance to the New York City Subway's Broadway–Lafayette Street/Bleecker Street station is directly outside the building to the north. There are glass-and-iron vaulted sidewalks around the building; the vaulted sidewalks on Mulberry Street have all been replaced, but those on Houston and Lafayette streets are largely intact.Prior to the construction of the Puck Building, the site had been occupied by St. Catherine's Convent, which was built by the Order of the Sisters of Mercy in 1848. The convent was located at 35 East Houston Street, and the adjacent House of Mercy was at 33 East Houston Street. When the building was erected in the 1880s, it was at the southern end of Manhattan's printing district, which was centered around the Astor Library Building. Furthermore, there were numerous publishers, printing firms, and publications headquartered in the neighborhood. These firms had settled in the neighborhood in part because of their proximity to the New York and New Haven Railroad's freight terminal, which was several blocks south on Canal Street between Centre and Lafayette streets.
At the time of the building's construction, Lafayette Street did not exist at the intersection with Houston Street. What is now known as Lafayette Street was two separate streets: Lafayette Place to the north and Elm Street to the south. These two streets were connected between 1897 and 1905. Because of the construction of Lafayette Street, part of the original building has been demolished. Before the original building was truncated, it carried an address of 31–39 East Houston Street.
Architecture
The Puck Building was designed by Albert Wagner and was built for Puck magazine and the J. Ottmann Lithographing Company. It is designed in the Romanesque Revival style, with elements inspired by the German Rundbogenstil style. It was constructed in two parts: The north section was built in 1885–1986 and the south addition in 1892–1993. The front of the building on Lafayette Street was relocated in 1899 when the street was widened. Herman Wagner was the architect for the renovated facade.Facade
The current Puck Building is composed of the original structure to the north, which dates from 1885, and the annex to the south, which dates from 1892. In both sections of the building, the western elevation of the facade, along Lafayette Street, dates from 1898. The Lafayette Street elevation is stylistically similar to the original facades of both the original building and the annex. The original building is seven stories high, while the annex is nine stories high. The building's facade includes gilded statues of Shakespeare's character Puck, from A Midsummer Night's Dream; the sculptor Henry Baerer created two such statues for the building.Every elevation of the facade is divided vertically into bays of uniform width. The original building measures three bays wide on Houston Street to the north, six bays wide on Mulberry Street to the east, and four bays wide on Lafayette Street to the west. The southern annex is five bays wide on Mulberry Street and six bays wide on Lafayette Street. The southern elevation on Jersey Street is clad in plain brick and has a small number of window openings with iron shutters. The bays are separated vertically by projecting brick piers, which rise atop granite pedestals. The rest of the facade is made of red brick, except for the cast iron window frames and statues, as well as the wrought iron entrance gates. Some terracotta and sandstone is also incorporated into the facade. All four corners of the building are chamfered, with small diagonal cutouts. On Mulberry Street, there are two wrought-iron fire escapes, one each in the annex and the original building.
Lower stories
On the first two stories of the facade, there is one double-height arch in each bay. The piers between each bay are wider than on the upper stories, and there is a brownstone course at the bottom of each pier, just above the granite pedestal. On the first story, most of the bays contain rectangular openings, which are divided vertically into groups of three. Some of the first-story openings contain storefront entrances instead of windows; these entrances are accessed by small stoops, which are made of pieces of vaulted sidewalk. The second story is a semicircular lunette window, which is divided vertically into three panes. A cast-iron transom bar separates the first- and second-story windows. The lunettes are surrounded by round arches with slightly projecting edges, and there is a horizontal string course made of brownstone above the second story.The Puck Building's main entrance is on Lafayette Street, within the fifth-northernmost bay. This entrance is shaped like a triumphal arch. At the ground story of the archway are two rectangular doorways, which are separated by a cast-iron column and flanked by smaller cast-iron piers. In front of each doorway is an ornate Art Nouveau wrought-iron arch with a set of wrought-iron gates. A transom bar runs above the doorways, and a statue of Puck stands atop the center of the transom bar. Above the transom bar is a lunette window. On either side of the entrance is a granite pedestal, above which are two stone columns and two pilasters, all in the Doric order. The columns and pilasters are all topped by capitals with wreath motifs. Above the columns is an architrave bearing the words "Puck Building" in all-capital letters, with a console bracket below the center and a balustrade above it.
When the building was completed, Puck magazine described the structure as having round arches along both Houston and Mulberry streets, with a recessed wrought-iron entrance at the corner of these streets. The entrance at the northeast corner of the building, at Houston and Mulberry streets, included a pair of doorways until 1899. This entrance has been replaced with a double-height brick column with a brownstone sphere. Above it is one of the Puck statues. which holds a mirror, pen, and book. The statue also included the inscription "What fools these mortals be", the phrase printed on Puck magazine covers; this inscription had been worn away by the 1950s. When the building's entrance was located at this corner, the column stood in front of the entrance.
Upper stories
On the third to seventh stories, the piers are narrower than on the lower stories. The third and fourth stories comprise a second tier of arcades. Within each bay, the third and fourth stories are composed of two double-height arches, each of which is half the width of the ground-level arches. The windows between the third and fourth stories are separated by patterned spandrel panels. Within each arched opening, there is a pair of sash windows on either story. Each pair of arches is separated vertically by a narrow brickwork pier with patterned capitals. In addition, there are corbels and brownstone sills running horizontally above the fourth story.The fifth through seventh stories of each bay comprise a third arcade. On these stories, each bay has three triple-height arches, each measuring one-third of the width of the ground-level arches. Within each arched opening, there is a single sash window on each of the fifth through seventh stories. As with the third-and-fourth-story windows, each arch is divided by narrow brickwork piers with patterned capitals. At the sixth story of the building's northeast corner, the chamfer has a massive console bracket, which originally served as the base of a flagpole. A patterned brick course, corbels, a brownstone sill, and a cornice run horizontally above the seventh story of the original building.
The annex rises another two stories; the eighth and ninth stories of the annex form a separate arcade. On these stories, each bay contains three double-height arches, which are the same width as the arches on the fifth through seventh stories. A cornice runs horizontally above the ninth floor, and each of the piers rises slightly above the level of the cornice. Both the original building and the annex were originally topped by a parapet. The section of the parapet above the original building was removed by the late 20th century but was restored in the 2010s.