A stable for the Police Building
In 1915 a seven story brick stable went up at the corner of Baxter and Hester Streets, built to serve the New York Police Department headquarters that had opened one block away on Centre Street in 1909, the domed Beaux Arts pile the city still calls the Police Building. The horses of the force boarded on Baxter; the commissioners paraded on Centre. The stable outlasted the horses, and in 1927 the building took the name that is still painted across its brick.
That name belonged to Jacob Goodman, a Centre Street truckman who began dealing in secondhand metalworking machines around 1925. From 1927 the Grand Machinery Exchange warehoused his stock at Baxter and Hester, through the decades when lower Manhattan was still a district of foundries and machine shops, and the business stayed in the family for three generations until it left for Long Island in 2006.
The conversion
In 2007 Max Protetch, the gallerist known for dealing in architectural drawings, converted the warehouse with Andreas Veith into a condominium of 14 lofts, with architects Ed Rawlings and Mark Dubois on the plans. The conversion kept what mattered: the heavy timber beams, the exposed brick, the tall pine ceilings, and the faded Grand Machinery Exchange sign, left on the facade on purpose.
Loft 1B
Unit 1B is a 1,707 square foot duplex with two entrances, one through the condominium lobby and one of its own off tree lined Baxter Street. The upper level carries 14 foot pine ceilings, oversized warehouse windows, exposed brick, and an integrated kitchenette; a cast iron staircase drops to a lower level of storage and built-ins. A live work condominium at the meeting point of SoHo, Nolita, Chinatown, and Little Italy, offered as a commercial unit with a footprint that reads as gallery, atelier, or showroom.
