Superior Ink

Built 2009 on the former Superior Ink factory site, 62 residences across 15 floors.

400 West 12th Street, 10014

Superior Ink was designed by Robert A. M. Stern Architects and completed in 2009. It is new construction on the site of the former Superior Ink factory rather than a conversion of it, which is worth stating plainly because the name suggests otherwise and the interiors follow from it.

The main building is seventeen storeys of light orange brick with setbacks and arched windows, holding 62 apartments. Seven townhouses in red brick stand alongside it, with stoops, bay windows and private gardens, drawn from the nineteenth century houses of the surrounding streets.

Because it is new, the fabric is new. There is no exposed timber, no cast iron and no salvaged industrial frame. The arched windows are a designed reference rather than a retained opening, and the walls behind them are ordinary modern construction that will take fixings anywhere.

The townhouses are the exception to everything else here. They run on several floors with their own entrances and gardens, so circulation is vertical and the ground floor answers to the street rather than to a lift lobby.

Within walking distance

Building facts

New York City Primary Land Use Tax Lot Output, version 26v1. Tax lot 1006407501.