The International Tailoring Company Building, 111 Fourth Avenue: Review and Ratings

Review of 111 Fourth Avenue by Carter Horsley

This attractive, 13-story building at 111 Fourth Avenue at 12th Street was erected in 1925 by Starrett & Van Vleck for the International Tailoring Company, whose name still appears on the building's façade above the entrance.  It was converted by David M. Teitlebaum to 180 co-operative apartments in 1977 and now has 172 units. 

Warmer, Burns, Toan, Lunde was the architect for the conversion. 

The building is two blocks south of Union Square that has a major food market on Saturdays, four blocks north of Cooper Union and one block east of the famous and very large Strand Book store. 

There is excellent public transportation nearby at Union Square. 

The building has substantial ground-floor retail space.

Bottom Line

An important pioneer in the gentrification of the East Village and the proliferation of "open" kitchen apartments,, this loft conversion has an excellent location close to the Strand Book Store and has 11 different apartment layouts per floor, including many with some angles.

Description

The building's neat grid pattern of large windows is enlivened with its polished granite, arched and canopied entrance with sidewalk landscaping and decorative circular plaques. 

It has some nicely ribbed pilasters on its base and its terracotta façade nicely frames its multi-paned windows.

Amenities

The building has a full-time doorman, a canopied entrance with sidewalk landscaping, a roof deck, a bicycle room, storage and a laundry room on every floor.

Apartments

Apartments have 13 1/2-foot-high ceilings with 10-foot-high windows. 

Many have sleeping lofts, some of which are built-in and some of which have furniture that circumvented city regulations that limited the permissible number of "zoning rooms" a building can have because they did not count as "separate" rooms. 

According to the developer, "the more unusual the layout the quicker an apartment line rents, noting that the building had some angled dressing rooms with vanity sinks that without the angles would not have been large enough to qualify as a distinctly separate area. 

Many of the apartments have "open" kitchens and Mr. Teitlebaum said in an August 21, 1977 article by Carter B. Horsley in The New York Times that the open kitchens were not considered inhibiting in interior design by tenants in the building as they could be "screened off easily from the living rooms if desired.  "The smaller an apartment's square footage....the greater the need to be creative," the article continued, adding that Mr. Teitlebaum said that "a 20-by-20-foot living room does not require much creativity, but one half its size does." 

Apartment 5I is a two-bedroom unit with a small entry foyer that leads to a long, diagonal  hallway that passes a 7-foot-wide kitchen with a breakfast bar and a six-sided, 21-foot-long living room. 

Apartment 3N is a two-bedroom unit with a 17-foot-wide living/dining room with a 8-foot-long, windowed, open kitchen with a breakfast bar and a spiral staircase to a 11-foot-long loft over the kitchen.  The 16-foot-long bedroom on the main level has a built-in desk and stairs to the storage loft over its bathroom. 

Apartment 5D is a one-bedroom unit with a 13-foot-long entry foyer that leads diagonally past an 11-foot-wide open and windowed kitchen to a 19-foot-long, five-sided, double-height living room and a double-height bedroom.  A staircase next to the kitchen leads to a 9-foot-wide mezzanine and planting ledge. 

Apartment 5J is a one-bedroom unit that has a 26-by-25 living area and a 7-foot-wide, enclosed kitchen and a staircase that leads to a 13-foot-long loft bedroom that extends rectilinearly into the double-height spaces of the living room. 

Apartment 6J is a one-bedroom unit similar to unit 5J except that its living room is only 17-by-17 feet and has a staircase to a 15-foot-long loft space over the bedroom. 

Apartment 4J is a one-bedroom unit with a small entry foyer that leads to a diagonal hall that leads to a 7-sided, 17-foot-square living/dining room and an enclosed kitchen. 

Apartment 12O is a studio unit with a 14-foot-long, angled entry foyer that leas to a 15-foot-wide living space with an angled, 8-foot-wide open kitchen with a breakfast bar. 

Apartment 5K is a one-bedroom unit with a 16-foot-long living room with an open kitchen near the front and a 13-foot-wide sleeping loft at the far end.