Cast Iron

Cast iron buildings have street fronts made of iron parts poured into molds at a foundry, shipped to the site and bolted together. Columns, arches, cornices and window frames were made as identical pieces, so a facade repeats the same bay many times, often in Italian Renaissance patterns of arched windows between columns. Because iron columns could be slimmer than stone piers, the windows between them are large. The iron was usually painted to look like stone, and the buildings housed stores, warehouses and workshops.

The E. V. Haughwout Building in New York (1857), designed by John P. Gaynor with ironwork by Daniel D. Badger, copies the arcades of the Sansovino Library in Venice and housed the first successful passenger elevator, built by Elisha Otis. Nearby, 28 Greene Street (1873), designed by Isaac F. Duckworth, has a Second Empire iron front. Other groups survive in Philadelphia's Old City and in the Skidmore/Old Town district of Portland, Oregon.

James Bogardus (1800-1874), a New York inventor, built the Edward Laing Stores at 97 Murray Street in Manhattan, considered the first cast iron building in America, and patented his system in 1850. He promoted iron fronts as a cheaper alternative to carved stone, and in 1851 he built the first three cast iron structures in Washington, D.C. Daniel D. Badger's Architectural Iron Works in New York was another major producer.

Most cast iron fronts went up between 1850 and 1880, in the warehouse and shopping districts of eastern and midwestern cities. The success of iron exteriors in those decades led builders to adopt steel frames for entire buildings, and after 1900 steel and concrete replaced cast iron. New York has about 250 cast iron buildings, most of them in SoHo. In 1973 the city designated the SoHo-Cast Iron Historic District, 26 blocks with about 500 buildings, and in 1978 it was added to the National Register of Historic Places.