Landmarks Preservation Commission April 12, 1983 Designation List 164 LP-1226 PUCK BUILDING, 295-309 Lafayette Street, Borough of Manhattan. Built 1885-86; addition 1892-93; architect Albert Wagner. Landmark Site: Borough of Manhattan Tax Map Block 510, Lot 45. On November 18, 1980, the Landmarks Preservation Commission held a public hearing on the proposed designation as a Landuark of the Puck Building and the proposed designation of the related Landmark Site (Item No.l2). The hearing was continued to Februrary 10, 1981 (Item No.5). Both hearings had been duly advertised in accordance with the provisions of law. Five witnesses. spoke in favor of designation. There were no speakers in opposition to designation. DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS The Puck Building, originally the horne of Puck magazine, is one of the great surviving buildings from New York's old publishing and printing district. The red-brick round-arched structure occupies the entire block bounded by East Houston, Lafayette, Mulberry and Jersey Streets, and has been one of the most prominent architectural presences in the area since its construction one hundred years ago. The building is further distinguished by the large statue of Puck at the building's East Houston and Mulberry Street corner; this is among the city's most conspicuous pieces of architectural sculpture. Puck was, from its founding in 1876 until its demise in 1918, the city's and one of the country's best-kno;vn humor magazines. Published in both English and German-language editions, Puck satirized most of the public events of the day. The magazine featured color lithographic cartoons produced by the J. Ottman Lithographic Company, largest in the country, which shared the Puck Building space. The current building is the result of three stages of construction, all super vised by architect Albert Wagner; the building and its additions read as a single unified composition. The style is an adaptation of the Rornanesque Revival, which had reached great popularity in the 1880s through the works of H.H. Richardson. Wagner's Romanesque, however, was not Richardsonian. A German-born architect, Wagner had worked in New York for Prague-trained Leopold Eidlitz, and his version of the Rornanesque appears to reflect the round-arched German "Rundbogenstil" that Eidlitz had brought to New York several decades earlier. The Puck Building remains one of the most striking 19th-century industrial buildings in lower Manhattan. Puck Magazine Puck, a comic magazine, was founded by Joseph Keppler (1838-1894) and Adolph Schwarzrnann and first appeared in German in 1876. "In March 1877 an English

-2- edition was inaugurated which .survived until 1918, twenty-two years longer than its German predecessor."! Adolph Schwarzmann was a printer and Puck's business manager. According to F.L. Mott, in his History of American~azines, "of Schwarzmann not much has been written; but the prosperity of the magazine's business affairs testifies to his competence."2 Joseph Keppler, one of the best American caricaturists of the last third of the 19th century, was until his death the chief caricaturist of the magazine and "the genius of this weekly."3 Joseph Keppler was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1838. He had talents for acting and drawing, and for many years did both. In 1854 he entered the Akademie der Bildenden Kunste (the Academy of Fine Arts) in Vienna, a renowned school of art, where he studied for two years.4 In 1867 Keppler came to the United States. In 1868-72 he livedin St.Louis, Mo., where he made two attempts, both unsuccessful, to publish comic weeklies in German. The second one was called Puck, Illustrierte Wochenschrift ("Puck, an illustrated weekly") which first appeared in March, 1871, and lasted only until February, 1872.5 Never the less, according to the Encyclo pedia Americana, the magazine, "while it failed as a commercial enterprise, made his reputation. It was seen at once that a caricaturist of rare skill as a crafts man, o

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