Carter's Review

This handsome group of five loft buildings at 18 Leonard Street between Hudson Street and West Broadway in TriBeCa was expanded and converted to condominium apartments in 2000 by 1422 LLC.

The 9-story project is named after the dry goods merchant and philanthropist who endowed the Juilliard School of Music, which is now part of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.

The buildings, some of which date to 1881, had been used for storage and light manufacturing but had suffered from age and neglect.

Joseph Pell Lombardi & Associates, one of the city's best-known preservation specialists, were the architects for the conversion, which involved preserving the existing façades and adding one floor to three of the buildings and two floors to two others to create penthouses.

Initial prices for the project's 32 apartments ranged from $850,000 for a two-bedroom unit of 1,500 square feet to $3,750,000 for a penthouse duplex of 4,000 square feet.

The red-brick façades have black metal window shadows and the building's name is emblazoning in black lettering against white paint above the third floor, a treatment also used at a few other attractive conversions of similar type properties of the same period in TriBeCa such as the Sugar Warehouse at 79 Laight Street.

This location is convenient to City Hall and the Civic Center, the esplanade along the Hudson River, SoHo, Chinatown and Ground Zero and the area has excellent public transportation and many restaurants.

The building has a three-step-up entrance, a large, modern-style lobby, and multipaned windows, but no sidewalk landscaping and no garage.