This lovely little building sits across from my morning bus stop. Yes, this is rush hour in Manhattan. No, there isn't any traffic at the moment. I was wondering what the story was behind the building.
The building was built in 1888, designed by Napoleon LeBrun who was the architect for NYC at the time. Apparently he built a lot of firehouses back then all in similar vein. The building was declared an historic landmark in 1997, but even that did not save it from the budget chopping black in 2003.
Once in a great while there is activity in the building, but for the most part it just sits there. I wonder what will happen with it? Maybe they will convert it into a candle shop? There was a new Dunkin Donuts shop going in on Broadway a few months ago (maybe a year or so ago?), anyway, they had to take down all of the business signs that had gone up above the first floor over the course of years and when they got down to the brick and mortar the original signage for the building was still there. It had been a corset shoppe (yes, "pe" was there). I thought it was pretty funny that a corset shop was now Dunkin Donuts. I imagined that the women who once shopped there would be either horrified or ecstatic about the change. Horrified because they knew how much tighter the corset would have to be or ecstatic because they knew the corset would hide the intake of donuts.
I think I would be ecstatic!
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