130-132 West 18th Street Stables Building

History and architecture

The two stables at Nos. 130 and 132 West 18th Street — units of an original row of thirteen brick-fronted stables erected in 1864-66 of which nine survive — were joined in 1907 to create the present building. Though joined at the ground story, the two facades retain their individual identity at the second story and remain largely intact. Designed in a round-arched utilitarian style related to the German Rundbogenstil. they feature a mix of Romanesque and Renaissance Revival details.

Each unit of the 130-132 West 18th Street building has a tripartite triumphal arch composition which focuses on a central bifurcated Renaissance arch at the second story. Originally built for wealthy businessmen, the two stables had several prominent owners, among them Civil War hero, Major Theodore K. Gibbs, and Nathaniel McCready, founder of the Old Dominion Steamship Line. As a component of one of the two uniformly designed mid-nineteenth-century private carriage house groups remaining in Manhattan, the 130-132 West 18th Street Stables Building 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.