287 Broadway

Manhattan, United States

Exterior only

Visible from the street; the inside is private.

At the southwest corner of Broadway and Reade Street in Lower Manhattan stands 287 Broadway, a six-story cast-iron building completed in 1872 to designs by architect John B. Snook. Executed in French Second Empire and Italianate styles, the structure is distinguished by cast-iron facades on two streets—a rarity in the city—adorned with segmental pediments, round-arched windows with keystones, and Ionic and Corinthian columns. The sixth story features a slate mansard roof with window dormers and copper cresting. Originally conceived as a commercial building for the estate of Stephen Storm, it housed insurance companies, the Children's Aid Society, and the Union Pacific Railroad Company before evolving through manufacturing and artist occupancy in the twentieth century. After stabilization work, the building was converted in the 2010s into apartments above ground-floor retail. A designated New York City landmark and National Register property, 287 Broadway represents a surviving example of mid-nineteenth-century cast-iron commercial architecture.