23 and 25 Park Place Building

History and architecture

Built in 1856-57 for the dry goods firm Lathrop, Ludington & Co. by the architect Samuel Adams Warner, the five-story party-wall building at 23 and 25 Park Place extends through the block to 20 and 22 Murray Street.

It is a handsome example of the mid-nineteenth century double store-and-loft buildings that are found in the Tribeca area of Manhattan. Seven bays wide on Park Place and five bays wide on Murray Street, the five-story structure has similarly articulated unified facades influenced by the Italian Renaissance palazzo style prevalent in commercial architecture of the time. The upper stories are faced in stone and united by molded sill courses at the second and fifth floors and molded stringcourse at the fourth floor with alternating panels and roundels and embellished with a hierarchy of classically-inspired window treatments.

Ornamentation includes the second floor’s aediculated surrounds with alternating bracketed triangular and segmental pediments adapted from the Farnese Palace in Rome, the third floor’s elegant bracketed projecting lintels, the fourth floor’s projecting lintels and the fifth floor’s finely carved eared moldings surrounding round-arched windows. Both facades are topped by continuous stone cornices ornamented with dentils, modillions and a frieze of alternating panels and roundels.

On Park Place the cornice terminates in scrolled brackets with rosettes. Portions of the original cast-iron storefronts with fluted Corinthian columns and pilasters that were manufactured by Daniel D. Badger and documented in his 1865 catalog are still visible at 23 Park Place and 20 Murray Street. Since the late 1860s, the two buildings have been home to a variety of businesses such as dry goods, manufacturing and publishing firms, associations and restaurants.

Only from 1921 until early 1930 were they again occupied by a single tenant when the New York Daily News leased both buildings for its operations.