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.

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