94-100 Lafayette Street Building (Avildsen Building)

History and architecture

Located at the southwest corner of Lafayette and Walker streets, the building at 94-100 Lafayette Street, now called the Avildsen Building, is an impressive early twentieth-century commercial style building designed by the prominent New York architectural firm of Howells and Stokes. The structure was originally two separate buildings that functioned as such until they were joined in 1952. The earlier building at 94-98 Lafayette Street, built in 1907-08, is a six story structure with two discontinuous facades; the later structure at 100 Lafayette, erected in 1909-10, has eight stories and is similar in design to its earlier neighbor.

Architecturally harmonious, both were built for the same owner, Helen Hartley Jenkins, and were used for almost forty consecutive years for storage and sales by two of the most important hardware manufacturing firms in the United States-- the Russell and Erwin Manufacturing Company and the Stanley Works. Avildsen Tools & Machines, Inc. joined the two buildings into one in 1952 and utilized them for hardware manufacture as well as storage and sales.

After 1982, the building was occupied by a variety of manufacturing concerns, mostly garment manufacturers. In 1999 the present owner purchased the building to make office space. Faced in tan brick with limestone and terra-cotta details, the building at 94-100 Lafayette Street has minimal but welldesigned neo-classical details. The original metal frames and spandrels of the windows are intact as are most of the ground-floor showrooms. The building is the only known store-and-loft building designed by Howells and Stokes and an unusual example of the commercial style in New York City.