The most notable feature of the striking red-colored industrial buildings is the gilded statue of a plump, unconventionally dressed cherub who, while sporting a jacket and a top hat, is neglecting to wear any pants. This is Puck — the mischievous fairy from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, known for playing pranks and causing chaos among the humans.
The naughty spirit holds a hand mirror, symbolizing its reflections on the human condition, and a fountain pen, responsible for writing. At his side hangs a book inscribed with his character’s quote from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, “What fools these Mortals be!”
The Puck Statues
Sculpted by Henry Baerer, one gilded Puck is watching over the main entrance of the Puck Building on Lafayette Street and another — on its northeast corner at Houston and Mulberry Streets.
The Puck Building Architecture
Built between 1886 and 1893, the Puck Building is one of the great survivors of New York’s old publishing and printing district. The massive red-brick structure occupies the entire block bounded by East Houston, Lafayette, Mulberry, and Jersey Streets.
Despite the complexity of its building history — it was built in several phases — the Puck reads as a single structure, retaining the integrity of its original design. The original section rises seven stories, while the later addition extends to nine, sharing nearly identical materials and designs.
The building’s architectural charm stems from its rhythmic, repeating arches and distinct red-brick facade. The round arches are typical elements of the popular in the 1880s Romanesque Revival style. Richardsonian Romanesque, the most prevalent version of this style popularized by Henry Hobson Richardson, featured asymmetry and rusticated materials. Albert Wagner, a German-born architect, used a different version of the style called the German Rundbogenstil. A variant of the Romantic Classicism of the first half of 19th-century Europe, Rundbogenstil translates approximately as “round-arched style” inspired by round-arched origins of Byzantine, Romanesque, and Italian Renaissance architecture.
The Puck Magazine
The Puck Building was constructed to house Puck Magazine – the first successful humor magazine in the country, featuring colorful cartoons, caricatures, and political satire. Its publisher, Joseph Keppler, commissioned the building in 1885. The English-language version of his small German satirical magazine became a milestone in the history of American humor. Along with printer Adolph Schwartzmann and lithographer J. Ottman, they commissioned a building on the edge of the publishing district of New York City. It was possibly the largest building in the world at the time dedicated to lithographing and publishing.
Puck employed excellent cartoonists and comic writers, whose works varied from mild humor to merciless satire. It ridiculed political corruption, monopolies, suffragist, unions, as well as extravagance, injustice and fashions. The figure of Puck and Puck’s words, “What fools these mortals be!” were printed on the magazine’s cover.
The magazine did not survive the financial troubles caused by World War I and closed its doors in 1918.
Later on, the massive building provided accommodations for numerous independent printing firms, printing services, printing ink companies, and, at some point, another popular satirical publication – Spy Magazine.
From satire to luxury
Kushner Companies acquired the building for office and retail space, and in 2011, they transformed the upper floors of the Puck Building into six penthouses: five on the eighth and ninth floor and a sixth – on the roof. True to their high-end nature, the units come with wine cellars, home theaters, spas, and yoga lawns, and some provide more than 5,000 square feet of outdoor space.
Luckily, the renovation preserved the building’s original identity, and the gilded mischievous Puck is still poking fun at human condition.
Leave a Reply