55 White Street

Construction began in 1860 and finished in 1861, a store-and-loft building put up by cousins John Eliot Condict and Samuel H. Condict and designed by the firm of John Kellum and Son. The Condicts were leather men. J. E. Condict Company turned out cartridge boxes here, S. H. Condict and Company traded in saddlery and military goods, and Sprague, Colburn and Company kept commission offices in the same walls. Later tenants ran the downtown ledger of the era: J. H. Libby and Company in woolens, Lawson Brothers in laces and embroideries, Hoffman-Corr Manufacturing in rope and cotton waste and flags, and M. Slifka and Sons back in leather.

The White Street elevation is cast iron end to end, fabricated by Daniel D. Badger at his Architectural Iron Works and arranged as double-height arcades carried on columns thin enough that nineteenth century observers named the type for the sperm candle, the taper rendered from whale oil. The Landmarks Preservation Commission calls it an especially noteworthy example of that design, prized for the verticality and openness only iron could deliver. Badger thought well enough of the building to reproduce its facade in his 1865 catalog, Illustrations of Iron Architecture. His foundry plaques are still bolted to the iron pilasters at the rear, beside the utilitarian rolling shutters.

In February 1922 firefighters found more than a thousand tons of baled cotton burning in the sub-cellars, and the iron came through needing little more than new glass and paint. The closer call came in 1988, when a developer proposed a thirty-three story condominium tower that would have taken down the modernist synagogue next door at 49 White, William N. Breger's 1967 sanctuary, and carried nine new floors over the Condict roof. Civic groups took it to the Landmarks Preservation Commission instead, and on March 22, 1988 the building was designated an individual New York City landmark. The upper floors were converted to apartments about two years later, and the Tribeca East Historic District followed in December 1992, so the block now carries both protections.

Unit 1C is a triplex, three bedrooms with three full baths en suite plus a half bath, laid out across three floors with a fireplace, hardwood throughout, central air, and a washer and dryer of its own. The interiors are recent and designer-led, with integrated smart home controls running the apartment, and the sellers will deliver it furnished if a buyer wants it that way. Seven stories, an elevator, a bike room, cats and dogs welcome. The synagogue that a developer once wanted to demolish is still standing next door.