The Kitchen, Montross & Wilcox Store at 85 Leonard Street between Broadway and Church Street in the Tribeca neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City was built in 1861 in the Italianate style for a company which dealt in dry goods. The cast iron for the building's facade came from James Bogardus' ironworks, one of the few surviving buildings for which that is the case. The building's columns are referred to as "sperm-candle style" from their resemblance to candles made from sperm-whale oil.
The design combines classically-inspired elements with the non-classical emphasis on lightness, openness, and verticality which characterizes cast-iron architecture.
The building was designated a New York City landmark in 1974, and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. It is located within the Tribeca East Historic District.
Famous quotes containing the words montross, wilcox and/or store:
“Drove she ducklings to the water,
Every morning just at nine;”
—Percy Montross U.S. poet. Oh, My Darling Clementine (attributed to Montross)
“Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone,
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.”
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850–1919)
“The first general store opened on the ‘Cold Saturday’ of the winter of 1833 ... Mrs. Mary Miller, daughter of the store’s promoter, recorded in a letter: ‘Chickens and birds fell dead from their roosts, cows ran bellowing through the streets’; but she failed to state what effect the freeze had on the gala occasion of the store opening.”
—Administration in the State of Sout, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)