There’s no mystery as to what that big thing sticking up above the roof of this building* is: it’s the top of an elevator shaft. The windows in line with the thing are all marked “SHAFT WAY,” which is a not-so-subtle hint; the fact that this is a mid-1800s commercial building that is still in use today makes it a good guess that some modernization has taken place.
Looking at the old maps, it seems that this building was already there in 1855. The architectural style and some minor details – such as the remnant of fire-shutter hinges, make an 1840s or 50s construction date very believable.**
The safety elevator is an 1850s invention but it took some time to spread to existing buildings, particularly industrial ones. We think of Stone Street today as part of the financial district, but it was part of the dock area when this building was constructed, and this was most likely a warehouse or light manufacturing loft. So the elevator came later, as a retrofit.*** The retrofit elevators were typically near the front of the building or directly behind it, as is the case here, to ease street access. The “SHAFT WAY” signs are there for the vitally important and quite simple purpose of warning fire-fighters not to attempt entry through those windows.
The rooftop extension contains the elevator shaft over-run and, if it’s a cabled elevator, the machine room. It’s more likely to be a cabled elevator than a hydraulic, but there’s no way to be sure from the outside. From the structural engineering perspective, it doesn’t much matter. From the building history perspective, the elevator installation was necessary over 100 years ago to keep this building economically viable. The fact that the installation damaged the building’s appearance was, by comparison, not very important.
* Yes, the building is around the corner from our office. Yes, I am that lazy.
** The usual real-estate web sites all list the construction date as 1900, which is obviously wrong. 1900 and 1920 show up in a lot of city records as catchall dates for “we know it’s nineteenth century but we don’t know when” and “we know it’s early twentieth century but we don’t know when.” Whenever I see one of those two years, I automatically assume that it’s wrong; on those occasions when a building was actually constructed in 1900 or 1920, I have to remind myself the date isn’t wrong.
*** A lot of 1860s lofts in SoHo had elevators later retrofit into them.
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