HERE’S the DeVinne Press Building, 393-399 Lafayette on the NE corner of East 4th. When researching the building, from my Photo-Lettering type days I remembered the Bodoni-esque DeVinne type font. Theodore DeVinne was a giant of print on either side of 1900, publishing then-popular but now forgotten magazines such as Scribner’s, Century, and St. Nicholas Children’s Magazine. The DeVinne name was famed for innovative type fonts and high-quality books and magazines. The press building was constructed in 1886 with additions in 1890, by the architects Babb, Cook and Willard.
As the National Register of Historic Places plaque says, the DeVinne Press Building boasts tremendously thick load-bearing walls as the building was completed in 1885, before the era of steel skeletons. Note the five different types of arched windows. I hadn’t noticed the De Vinne Press name spelled out in the brickwork below the decorative pediment.
More in the 1966 Landmarks Preservation Commission Report, set by a typewriter that probably came with a bell.
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