This five-story masonry building was constructed as two separate buildings c. 1852-53 for Thomas McKie. In 1967 the buildings were combined and given a new facade.

This four-story brick building was constructed c. 1850 for Peter Goelet. During the Civil War, this building was the home of the Hall of the Loyal National League, for which James A. Roosevelt served as secretary. A premier photographer of the late 1800s was also located here. Go back and click on the tours the building is featured in for additional information and history.

This cast iron building was designed in 1868 in the Italianate/French Second Empire style by architect John Kellum for James McCreery. It was once home to the city’s most elegant department store, James McCreery & Co. Dry Goods, and introduced several important innovations in department storefront sales. It suffered multiple devastating fires over the years, but was saved from demolition by its resilient cast-iron frame and an innovative plan in the early 1970s to convert the building to residences — the first such legal conversion of a manufacturing loft building in New York, which paved the way for hundreds more in its wake. Go back and click on the tours the building is featured in for additional information and history.

Several notable preservation battles have taken place in these blocks, in both the recent and more distant past, as great works of architecture or places of historic significance have faced the wrecking ball. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of extant historic buildings south of Union Square.

The area south of Union Square contains a stunning array of residential and commercial architecture from the 19th through the early 20th century. There is a particularly rich array of late 19th and early 20th-century factory/loft/warehouse architecture, in every style from Italianate to Gothic and Romanesque Revival, Neo-classical, Queen Anne, Victorian, and Byzantine. Work by some of America’s greatest architects, including James Renwick Jr., Henry J. Hardenbergh, Emery Roth, Griffith Thomas, Napoleon LeBrun, Harvey Wiley Corbett, David, and John Jardine, George B. Post, Carrere and Hastings, John Kellum, and Charles Rentz, among others, can be found here. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of these and other historic buildings south of Union Square.

A surprising number of innovative housing developments from the late 19th and early 20th centuries can be found here, including several ‘French Flats’ and model tenements. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of these and other historic buildings south of Union Square.

Many of the most prominent publishers in America and the world were located here, producing some of the most significant works of literature of the last two hundred years. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of these and other historic buildings south of Union Square.

Multiple innovators in the field of commerce were located here, once the center of commerce in New York, along with the headquarters of several prominent businesses. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of these and other historic buildings south of Union Square.

The area south of Union Square is one of New York’s main centers of cast iron architecture, from some of its earliest surviving fully cast-iron buildings to predominantly masonry buildings with distinctive and elaborate cast iron ground floors or ornament. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of these and other historic buildings south of Union Square.

This two-story neo-Renaissance style, galvanized iron-faced commercial building was constructed in 1897 by architect John C. Westervelt for the Roosevelt family. By 1910 it housed a branch of the Childs Restaurant, one of the first restaurant chains in America, whose later Coney Island building is a New York City landmark. Go back and click on the tours the building is featured in for additional information and history.

The 15-story black steel and glass office tower built here in 2019 is emblematic of the highly uncontextual new development rising in this area. It replaced a five-story, cast-iron warehouse constructed in 1887.

Prominent Irish immigrants and Irish Americans made a mark in the area South of Union Square, especially in the realms of politics, the arts, commerce, and literature.