Duane Street

A full floor in an 1881 cast-iron building, kept as one room for the length of the bays and lit by nine arched windows.

The building went up in 1881 as a dry-goods warehouse and kept its cast-iron front through a century of tenants who had no reason to care about it. That indifference is why it survives — nobody could afford to modernise it.

The 1998 conversion took the top floor as a single volume and left it that way. Nine arched windows run the length of the north wall, the columns still mark the structural bays, and the pressed-tin ceiling was cleaned rather than replaced. Only the bedrooms and baths are enclosed, and they sit against the party wall so nothing interrupts the window line.

It is a bright loft rather than a moody one. The windows face north, so the light is even from ten in the morning until it goes, and the floor takes long bands of it in the afternoon.