295-309 Lafayette St., New York, New York. County/parish: New York.
Added to the National Register of Historic Places July 21, 1983. NRIS 83001740.
1 contributing 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 similar style to 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.
(read more...)National Park Service documentation: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/75319843