490 Broadway
New York, NY 10012
The E. V. Haughwout Building · Property For Lease

The striking Venetian Renaissance-inspired cast iron facades of the E. V. Haughwout Building command the corner of Broadway and Broome Street in Manhattan. Designed by John Gaynor in collaboration with Daniel Badger’s Architectural Ironworks, the building opened in 1857 as SoHo’s first full-façade cast-iron building, the forerunner of what is now the greatest collection of cast-iron structures in the world. 490 Broadway is designated as “the greatest remaining single monument to cast iron” in the country, in G. E. Kidder Smith’s Source Book for American Architecture. It is also a precursor of Manhattan’s giant department stores, and, with its structural innovations, the modern skyscraper. The Haughwout building’s graceful facades were inspired by the great Sansovino library on the Piazzette in Venice, and feature tall arched windows with delicate balustrades, flanked by slender fluted Corinthian columns. This structural innovation was enhanced by another notable first: Haughwout installed the first Otis passenger elevator for public use. Just four years after opening, the store gained considerable fame when Mary Todd Lincoln ordered a complete set—over six hundred pieces—of china for the White House. The famous 1861 Lincoln Solferino china can be seen on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, and a set remains in the White House collection.