Nº 461 Broome StreetSoHo Cast-Iron DistrictErected 1872

The facade is the first room.

Three lofts behind thirty-six columns of painted iron — cast for this block in 1872, bolted plumb in eleven days, and standing in the morning light ever since.

Read the elevation Attend the private view

The Iron

Cast iron was ordered the way you’d order type — by the catalog, by the bay.

In the winter of 1872 the Aetna Iron Works poured this facade in ninety-one pieces: columns, capitals, spandrels, sills, a cornice in nine-foot sections. Each casting was numbered in chalk, carted down Broome Street, and bolted to the brick behind it in eleven days. The result was a building that is mostly window — four storeys of glass held up by iron slender enough to embarrass masonry.

It has needed paint, and almost nothing else, for a hundred and fifty years. The lofts upstairs are what such a frame makes possible: clear spans, thirteen-foot ceilings, and arches that hand the light from one end of the floor to the other.

Castings: 91
Facade colonnettes: 36
Arched windows: 24
Days to bolt plumb: 11

The Plate

Read the elevation like the founders did.

The drawing follows the Aetna pattern book, casting by numbered casting. Every upper storey is one loft — rest on a storey and its loft will introduce itself.

Touch a storey to find its loft.

Provenance

Iron tells you where it has been. When six capitals came down sick with rust in 2023, nobody reached for fiberglass: new patterns were lifted from the best surviving original and poured in ductile iron across the river. Each replacement weighs 212 pounds and is stamped with its year on the abacus — because that is what the original founders did.

Loft II · one flight up

The Parlor Floor

The whole floor, and the building’s best iron. The parlor storey was cast to impress from the sidewalk — Corinthian capitals, the tallest arches, glass to within a hand of the ceiling — so morning reaches the back wall by nine. The six columns stand in one straight colonnade; everything else is open span.

Kitchen along the west party wall in blackened steel and plaster; two baths in Calacatta the color of the facade. The original hoist doors, planed and pinned, roll to close the primary suite.

Interior: 3,410 sq ft
Clear height: 13′9″
Arched windows: 8 on Broome
Columns: 6, Corinthian
Offered at: $6,750,000

Loft III · the even light

The Draughting Floor

For forty years a lithographer kept his tables on this floor because the light was even and the iron didn’t shake. It still doesn’t. Eight arches face north over Broome; the glass goes soft and shadowless by mid-morning, which is why painters fought over these leases in 1968 and why the floor still reads like a studio that someone happens to sleep in.

The columns wear their second-order capitals lightly. Original heart-pine floors, re-milled from the attic stock; the lithographer’s stone sink stayed, and works.

Loft III: a long white loft room with a line of slender cast-iron columns, arched windows, warm heart-pine floors, a linen sofa and a worktable — Loft III, looking north along the colonnade. 8:04 a.m., October.

Interior: 3,410 sq ft
Clear height: 12′6″
Arched windows: 8 on Broome
Columns: 6, composite
Offered at: $6,250,000

Loft IV · behind the frieze

The Cornice Floor

The top storey lives behind the dentils. From the street you’d never guess at the twenty-two-foot ridge skylight cut in 2024, or the mezzanine hung from the original tie rods above the north half — a study that floats over the floor like a printer’s gallery. At the windows, the cornice runs past the glass like a balcony rail you will never need to paint.

Sunset comes in over the rooftops of Greene Street and lands on the plaster the way it lands on the facade below: at a rake, taking its time.

Interior: 3,585 sq ft incl. mezzanine
Clear height: 11′11″, 19′ at ridge
Skylight: 22′ ridge, 2024
Columns: 6, foliate
Offered at: $8,400,000

Schedule A

Castings & clearances

As surveyed March 2026. Live loads per the 1872 schedule, re-certified with the recast capitals in 2024.

Castings and clearances by storey
Storey	Occupant	Clear height	Window head	Columns	Capital pattern	Live load
R	Ridge skylight, bulkhead	—	—	—	—	40 lb
IV	Loft IV — the Cornice Floor	11′11″	10′2″	6 cast	Foliate Nº 121	120 lb
III	Loft III — the Draughting Floor	12′6″	10′9″	6 cast	Composite Nº 117	120 lb
II	Loft II — the Parlor Floor	13′9″	11′8″	6 cast	Corinthian Nº 114	120 lb
G	Gallery, leased to 2031	15′2″	13′0″	10 fluted	Corinthian Nº 114	250 lb

Column count excludes party-wall pilasters. Loads in pounds per square foot; the lithographer never came close.

Private view

Three floors, opened.

Saturday 25 July · eleven to two
Nº 461 Broome Street, west of Greene

The ground-floor gallery will pour coffee at eleven and wine at one. The freight elevator runs all day, with an operator who knows the building better than we do.

Ask for a card

Or weekday mornings by appointment — the light is the argument.