Overview

About American Felt Building, 114 East 13th Street

Certain streets in the city become "backwaters" of a sort, "left-over" spaces that primarily suffer from, and are dominated by, big "doings" on adjacent blocks. Such blocks, however, generally get discovered eventually.

This is such a block.

For decades the north side of this street had the rear of Luchow's, the great German restaurant, and the Academy of Music theater that eventually become the Palladium discotheque whose interior renovation by famed Japanese architect Arata Isozaki was one of the most spectacular in the city.

As a result of the "rear" presence of such high-traffic destination centers, this street had a considerable degree of night-time activity.

This very handsome building, which is known as the American Felt Building, has always been the best on the block because of its fine limestone facade. It was erected in 1909 and converted to condominium apartments in 1984, three years before the completion of the important Zeckendorf Towers project on the east side of Union Square at 14th Street sparked the area's renaissance. When this building was converted, however, the immediate vicinity was desolate, drab and dark and much the area's rejuvenation sparked by the large Zeckendorf project initially was north of 14th Street.

The American Felt Building at 114 West 13th Street was not a pioneer luxury conversion in the area as two other former industrial properties nearby on Fourth Avenue had been made more than a decade before. The company after which it was named made felt used in pianos.

In the late 1990s, however, several major new projects sprang up in the immediately vicinity. One was the angular mixed-use tower on the south side of 14th Street on the west side of Fourth Avenue that featured a movie complex, a huge record store and a very large facade sculpture facing north up Park Avenue South.

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