136 West 18th Street Stable

History and architecture

The stable building at 136 West 18th Street is one of nine remaining brick-fronted stables from an original row of thirteen erected in 1864-66. Designed in a round-arched utilitarian style related to the German Rundbogenstil, it still features a mix of Romanesque and Renaissance Revival details. No. 136 West 18 th 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 Charles Landon and Benjamin H. Hutton, partners in one of the most prestigious dress goods importing firms in the New York City during the second half of the nineteenth century.

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.