63 Nassau Street Building

History and architecture

The 5-story, Italianate style cast-iron front facade on the building at No. 63 Nassau Street was almost certainly produced c. 1857-59 by James Bogardus, the pioneer of cast iron architecture in America, making it an extremely rare extant example of his work it is one of only five known Bogardus buildings in the U.S. (four in New York City). It is also one of the oldest surviving cast-ironfronted buildings in the city, and one of the very few located in Lower Manhattan, the oldest part of the city and its original financial center.

This was a remodeling of a c. 1844 structure, occupied by Thomas Thomas, kitchen tinware manufacturer (on this site since 1827), and constructed by his son Augustus Thomas. Following the fathers death in 1856, the new iron facade was evidently commissioned as a speculative venture to capitalize on the commercial changes in the area around Maiden Lane, including Nassau Street, which was being transformed into a major jewelry district. Augustus Thomas was a business associate of William V. Curtis (owner of this property in 1856-60) in a silkgoods import firm which was then located in the Milhau Pharmacy Building, Bogardus first iron-front commission (1848) one block away at No. 183 Broadway. Thomas and Curtis thus had first-hand knowledge of Bogardus work and cast-iron-fronted buildings.

The attribution of this facade to Bogardus was originally made by Margot Gayle, a founder of the Friends of Cast Iron Architecture and co-author of the definitive monograph on Bogardus, based primarily on a signature characteristic known only to buildings definitely linked to Bogardus, namely bas-relief medallions of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin (only the two of Franklin survive today) found on the third story. This attribution is made more conclusive by the connection between Thomas, Curtis, and Bogardus first commission.

The building was owned from 1860 to 1946 by Julien Gauton, a French-born bootmaker, and his heirs in the Carroll family. Many of the tenants, through the 1950s, have been associated with the watch and jewelry trades. The elegant and finely detailed design originally featured (the ground story was first altered in 1919) superimposed 2-and 3-story arcades formed by elongated fluted Corinthian columns (most of the capitals leaves are now missing), rope moldings, arches with faceted keystones, and foliate spandrels. The facade is terminated by a widely-projecting, modillioned foliate cornice supported by a corbel table. It is an early and significant surviving commercial building dating from the 1840s-50s, when the jewelry district was first created in the vicinity of Maiden Lane.