Cary Building

The Cary Building occupies a through-block site between Chambers and Reade Streets, identifiable by its two identical cast-iron façades that stretch in an Italianate arcade. Built in eighteen fifty-six and eighteen fifty-seven for the dry goods firm Cary, Howard and Sanger, it represents an early, prominent use of cast iron in commercial design. Architects King and Kellum worked with Daniel D. Badger’s Architectural Iron Works to create this structure, which mimics the appearance of stone through faux rustication and paired Corinthian columns.