380 Broadway has architecture above its station.
It was built in 1860 with retail space at the base and loft space above, but it’s got that grand marble-veneer facade on the upper floors and some very nice cast iron by Daniel Badger at the first floor. It’s fortunes have followed that of the neighborhood: ignored when this stretch of Broadway was semi-industrial, cleaned up when it became fashionable Tribeca.
The description in the Tribeca East Historic District designation report is a little weird. Apparently it used to be much wider, and the portion of the north (left) collapsed in 1880. Rather than demolish the still-standing southern half of the building, the owners built a new north wall and carried on with their lives. From the description, it sounds like the brick-facade loft to the left covers the site where the rest of 380 used to be.
“Marble” in New York in the nineteenth century typically meant Tuckahoe marble. That’s the second-worst performing local stone (after brownstone) and it lead me to theorize an alternate universe of NYC masonry: here. The reason that the obvious care taken in restoring the facade of 380 hasn’t led to it looking cleaner is that it is difficult to clean Tuckahoe marble without damaging it. The iron looks to be in beautiful condition, whether preserved by accident or restored. I’ve got to believe that the corner support was originally either a corinthian column like the others or a maybe a square cast-iron pier. It looks funny boxed out like that, particularly with the larger box-out at the upper portion of the storefront.
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