126-128 West 18th Street Stables

History and architecture

The stable building at 126 West 18th Street is one of nine remaining brick-fronted stables from an original row of thirteen erected in 1864-66. The only survivor of the three initial stables in the group, the design of which formed the model for the rest of the row, No. 126 was erected for Elisha Brooks in 1864.

Executed in a round-arched utilitarian style related to the German Rundbcaenstil, it still features a mix of Romanesque and Renaissance Revival details. No. 126 West 18th Street has a tripartite triumphal arch composition which focuses on a central bifurcated Renaissance arch at the second story. The building has had several notable owners, among them the socially prominent banker Archibald Gracie King.

As a component of one of the two uniformly designed mid-nineteenth-century private carriage house groups remaining in Manhattan, it is a rare survivor. These stable rows reflect a period in the city's developmental history when private carriage houses began to be erected some blocks away from their owners' homes, on streets devoted almost exclusively to private stables and commercial liveries.

An early manifestation of this trend, which became common practice during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, the West 18th Street row was one of the most extensive of the period and contained unusually large and handsomely decorated stables.