Maxwell is located in a beautiful building in Tribeca that is rich in history.
Here's a brief summary:
In 1891, architect Stephen Decatur Hatch—also the designer of the Princeton Club and the New York Life Insurance Building—was commissioned by Fleming Smith to design a warehouse in Romanesque Revival and neo-Flemish style.
Formerly a shoe factory and wine warehouse, the building has characteristic Romanesque features such as a rusticated stone base, segmental arches, and symmetrical window arrangements. Rough granite and sandstone topped with a stone cornice surround the ground level, and the upper floors utilize yellow brick and red brick quoining with keyed window surrounds. A sandstone water table distinguishes the top two floors.
On Watts Street, the central copper-trimmed gable is flanked by crow-stepped gables, wrought iron balconies, and two copper-clad dormers. The Washington Street facade features an imposing arched window beneath a stepped copper gable with the initials "FS" and the date "1891" and two other dormers. Historic copper finials that encased the dormers are now being replicated and restored.
The Fleming Smith Warehouse was Tribeca's first commercial-to-residential conversion in the late 1970s. In 2005, Scott Henson Architects completed a full façade restoration.
