1 Bond Street

New Building docket 373 of 1879. The Manhattan Buildings Department entry records a six-story factory for Robbins and Appleton at 1 to 5 Bond Street, architect Stephen Decatur Hatch, and the Landmarks Preservation Commission's designation report puts the dates on it: begun June 4, 1879, finished April 30, 1880. The clients were Henry A. Robbins and Daniel F. Appleton, watch importers turned manufacturers whose works at Waltham, Massachusetts, had grown into the American Waltham Watch Company. The Bond Street building was their watchcase factory, with the lower floors leased to the publisher D. Appleton and Company.

Hatch had spent four years drafting for John B. Snook and kept the commercial palazzo in his hand, at the Gilsey House on Broadway, at the Murray Hill Hotel, and here, where the cast-iron front is one window unit repeated twelve times across each of the upper four floors: a deeply recessed one-over-one sash between smooth columns carrying a shouldered arch, a cornice over every floor. The report reads the ground floor's spiral-grooved columns and the entrance portico under its broken pediment as the ornamental exceptions, and the mansard as the other: imbricated slate, a central four-bay dormer with a bull's-eye the commission suspects once held a clock of the owners' own manufacture, and Palladian-style dormers in the end towers over the shallow pavilions. The commission designated the building on June 19, 1979, and the National Register followed on October 29, 1982. The city's lot record files it inside the NoHo Historic District as well, dates the shell to 1880 and counts six floors, eighteen residences and one store since the conversion of the late 1980s.

Penthouse B is the corner tower. Its arched windows are the dormers the report describes, and they run along two walls of a living room that rises 17 feet under skylights, with a gas fireplace at one end and, at the other, three arched openings with iron rails where a mezzanine looks down. Wide-plank oak runs the floor; the piers between the arches are cased in a fawn-veined stone. The kitchen is windowed, with marble counters and a backsplash veined in green, cream cabinets, a butcher-block island, a radiant-heated floor, an eat-in banquette and appliances by Sub-Zero and Monogram. Two bedrooms on this level keep beamed ceilings and share a den and a bath; staff quarters have their own bath and a stacked washer and dryer; a powder room in dark plaster serves the main floor.

The mezzanine is close to 750 square feet, a media room that pocket doors close off from the void, with a wet bar under a copper-topped counter and a bath with a soaking tub and a marble trough sink. The primary suite is beside it, two walk-in closets in a line to a bath with a shower and a separate water closet. In all, 3,317 square feet, three bedrooms plus the staff room, four and a half baths, in an elevator building that allows pets. Approved plans are in place for a private roof terrace above the slate. The docket of 1879 recorded a factory; the mansard it lists is now a home with the plans for its roof already stamped.

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