The Renwick

The striking loft building at 806-808 Broadway/104-106 Fourth Avenue, which runs the entire block from Broadway to Fourth Avenue behind Grace Church at 11th Street, was designed in 1887 by James Renwick (architect of the adjacent landmarked church forty years earlier) and the partners in historic successor firm –James Lawrence Aspinwall and William Hamilton Russell, Renwick’s grand-nephew. Though a utilitarian structure housing offices, storage, and manufacturing, Renwick and partners designed it with vivid Gothic detail to serve as an appropriate backdrop to Grace Church, a New York City and National Historic Landmark.

Aside from some storefront signage, the building is almost completely intact to its original design, from the gothic arches and tracery to the more robust, industrial Romanesque detailing of the Fourth Avenue façade. Both sides of the building maintain beautifully intact cast-iron storefronts, while the Broadway side boasts florid Art Noveau-style ironwork over the doorway and entry.

The harmony between this structure, built as a store and manufacturing building, and one of the most delicate and important Gothic Revival structures in the United States, is nothing short of remarkable.

In 1981 the building was converted to residences and renamed ‘The Renwick,’ in honor of its architect. The building gained additional notoriety with the publication of Caleb Carr’s The Alienist, in which the building serves as the headquarters for the team of investigators looking into the murders at the heart of the book’s story.

The Grace Church, Grace Church Rectory, Grace Church Memorial House, The Renwick, and The Lancaster, an 1887 apartment building at 39-41 East 10th Street also designed by Renwick –all within feet of one another –provide an unrivaled example of the skill of James Renwick as an architect. The sadly recently-demolished St. Denis Hotel at Broadway and 11th Street added even further to this rich ensemble of Renwick designs added over time. While the master architect constructed other ensembles elsewhere, few if any span nearly half a century as these do, and serve such varied purposes –religious worship, residences, and commercial loft space –while maintaining such compatibility and dialogue between the pieces.