ESTABLISHED MCMXIV · HUDSON YARDS

The Glass Farmhouse

a 1914 Renaissance Revival icon
on the edge of Hudson Yards

Address
438–448 W 37th Street
Built
1914 · opened 1915
Architects
Hill & Stout
I. Origin

In 1914, the Underhill brothers — specialists in the construction of buildings made for printing presses — broke ground on a thirteen-story specialty loft on West 37th Street. The architects were Hill & Stout. The style was Renaissance Revival, in colored terra cotta. The building was wired for the new wonder of Edison electric service before its doors had even opened.

Long before any of this, the block sat in what the Dutch had once called the Great Kill District — a low-lying stretch of the colonial countryside then known as Newfoundland, named for the stream that drained three small tributaries into the Hudson.

By the mid-eighteenth century, this riverside ground had taken on another name: the Glass House Farm. Around 1758, four New York merchants — Matthew Ernest, Samuel Bayard, Stephen Atkinson, and John Milligan — opened a glass-bottle factory here as part of early Dutch-backed efforts to build a glass industry in the colony, calling themselves the Glass House Company of New York. The works ran for roughly a decade. A roadhouse, the Glass House Tavern, kept its sign on the property as a stage-coach stop for travelers along the post road, lasting through the Revolutionary War and after.

One hundred and fifty years later, the Underhills built on the same ground. The orchards were gone. The names — Glass House Farm, Glass House Tavern — survived in old deeds and surveyors' notes. They survive again now in the building's present one: The Glass Farmhouse Condominium.

In those years the block was a working one. Two doors east stood the Thomas Sinclair Garage, advertising an "auto laundry" — what an earlier century called a car wash. Just beyond it, the 20th Precinct station house. Toward Tenth Avenue, a piano factory. The Underhill Building took its place among a full row of specialty trade lofts — the textbook ecology of an early-twentieth-century industrial street, organized by the goods it produced.
II. — Heritage

A House That Printed the Century

From colonial farmland to printing-press palace to authentic loft residence — three centuries on a single block.

Colonial Era

The Glass House Farm

Four New York merchants — Ernest, Bayard, Atkinson, and Milligan — open a glass-bottle factory on riverside farmland on Manhattan's West Side, calling themselves the Glass House Company of New York. The works run a decade. A roadhouse, the Glass House Tavern, keeps its sign on the property as a stage-coach stop along the post road. The names hold the land for the next two centuries.

1758
1914
The Building Rises

The Underhill Brothers Build

The Underhill brothers — specialists in printing-press loft construction — clear a five-story apartment house from the lot and break ground on a thirteen-story specialty loft, engineered for the immense weight of the presses. The architects are Hill & Stout. The style is Renaissance Revival, in colored terra cotta. The building is among the very first in the city to contract for Edison electric service before completion.

First Tenants · 1915

Inks, Engravings & Enamels

The Underhill Building fills with the trades of the printed page. Moss Photo Engraving — established 1871 — sets up beneath the cornice. Baer Brothers manufactures paints, varnishes, gold and aluminum leaf "with the two bears." Bachmeier & Co. supplies aniline dyestuffs. A. T. De La Mare prints the era's florists' guides and flower-seed catalogs. The TelAutograph Company transmits handwriting by wire.

1915
1932
The Underhill Building photographed c. 1932 — south elevation, with the full block in view
In the Twenties

A Working Block on the West Side

A bright, busy stretch of West 37th in its prime — long-haul deliveries pulling up to the curb, buildings full of working trades, the print and paint floors going at a pace the avenue would maintain for another forty years. The Underhill stands at the center of the block, its terra cotta crown crisp against the sky.

The Underhill Building photographed in 1940 — the Moss Brothers, Est. 1876 sign painted at the top of the building parapet, with cars at the curb
Mid-Century

The Sign on the Sky

By 1940, several of the surrounding low-rises have come down, and the Underhill rises clear above its neighbors. The painted sign at the parapet — Moss Bros., Est. 1876 — faces the new traffic on the avenue, readable for blocks. The presses keep running.

1940
1981
The Conversion

A Haven for the Creative Class

The presses fall silent. The building is converted to mixed use — fifty-two residences above twenty-one commercial spaces — and delivered as raw white box: pullman kitchen, hardwood floors, single bath. The twelve-and-a-half-foot ceilings and the original printing-floor windows are preserved. The lofts attract photographers, musicians, designers, and gallery names drawn by the sun, the scale, and a kind of Manhattan that, by then, had nearly stopped being made.

Today

The Glass Farmhouse

The building bears the colonial farm's memory in its present name. The lobby has been restored. The roof deck is landscaped, opening to the skyline of Hudson Yards — the most expensive private development in American history, risen on what was, until recently, an open rail yard. The orchard is gone. The address remains. One of the rarest, most authentic prewar lofts left in Manhattan.

Now
III. — Original Settlers

The First Tenants

Inks, dyes, photo engravings, and signatures sent by wire — the trades of the early-century printed page.

No. I
Alpheus Theodore De La Mare
Printers of florists' guides & seed catalogs
No. II
Bachmeier & Co., Inc.
Aniline Colors, Dyestuffs, Soaps
No. III
Baer Brothers
"The Paint with the Two Bears"
No. IV
Moss Photo Engraving Co.
Engravers, Established 1871
No. V
TelAutograph Co.
Handwriting Transmitted by Wire
August 1914 newspaper advertisement: Another Building Specifies Edison Service — The Underhill Building at 438-448 West 37th Street
A Notice from August, 1914

Wired for Edison
Before Completion

The Underhill Building, then under construction, was among the first specialty buildings in New York to contract for Edison Service. The advertisement ran in a 1914 industry journal — six months before the doors would open to the printing trades.

"Surely the cases cited in this journal each week are proof enough of how highly Central Station Service is esteemed by progressive building men."

The notice is a small artifact of a much larger turning. In 1914, electrification was new enough that one paid to be associated with it. The building's structural layout was, in the ad's own phrasing, "especially adapted" for printers and the allied trades — and from the start, it ran on current rather than gas.

V. — Three Portraits

One Building, Three Eras

A trio of commissioned illustrations marking the building's century: 1932, 1940, and the present day with its new neighbors rising.

Commissioned illustration showing the Glass Farmhouse today next to a new luxury residential building under construction with the Hudson Yards skyscrapers behind, while a 1930s Model A sits parked at the curb in the foreground
c. 2026 · The Layered Block

The new rising, the old still standing

This third illustration was commissioned to mark the most recent chapter — and it is, deliberately, two paintings at once. The Hudson Yards skyscrapers are rendered in soft blues, glassy and faded behind the building. A new luxury condominium climbs into the frame at left, its terraces stepped with greenery. They are tomorrow.

And yet, parked at the curb: the Model A sedans. The street lamp curves the way it did a hundred years ago. The Glass Farmhouse stands between them — neither erased by the new, nor frozen in the old. The juxtaposition is the story.

Commissioned illustration of the Underhill Building, c. 1932
c. 1932
The full block, Model A's at the curb · the printing trades in their prime
Commissioned illustration of the Underhill Building, c. 1940
c. 1940
The Empire State Building rises behind clouds; the Moss Engraving sign reaches the parapet · mid-century
VI. — Architecture

Drawn in Terra Cotta
Lit at Night

Hill & Stout · 1914

The Underhill Building was massed without setbacks — a privilege of the city before the 1916 zoning law. Brick rises thirteen straight stories from the sidewalk, dressed at top and bottom in colored terra cotta of distinctly Renaissance Revival cut.

The two-story base, faced in rusticated terra cotta blocks, opens through pointed-arch entrances with molded archivolts and corner urns. Above them, the central bays bloom into oversized windows — the deliberate generosity of a building made for the printed page, where natural light was a working tool. Brick piers frame slender side bays. Three top stories close the composition with quoins, urn-carved piers, and a denticulated cornice that runs the length of the façade. By night, soft uplighting traces every detail.

Inventory of Detail

  • Pointed Archesterra cotta entrances with molded archivolts
  • Rusticationtwo-story base in colored terra cotta blocks
  • Printing Baysthree central bays of oversized windows
  • Urn-carved Piersclassical motifs at the top three floors
  • Cartouches & Swagsspandrels carved with ornament
  • Quoinsat the corners of the upper unit
  • Denticulated Cornicea crowning band of tooth-like blocks
  • Architectural Lightingfaçade illuminated after dark
VII. — Character

The Building, in Detail

A working loft above, a working studio below, and a façade that has carried both for more than a century.

The Glass Farmhouse façade — 13 stories of brick rising into a colored terra cotta crown
The restored residential lobby, with mailbox wall and a steel-framed glass vestibule
The pointed-arch entrance at night, with warm uplighting tracing the rusticated stone
VIII. — The Roof Deck

A Garden in the Sky

A communal deck running the length of the building, with skyline on every side.

The Glass Farmhouse rooftop, looking east toward the Empire State Building, with planters, a wooden water tower at right, and tile pavers running the length of the deck
Rooftop tables and chairs at sunset with residents gathered, planters and skyline beyond
View from the roof at sunset, with the Hudson Yards towers catching the last orange light
The community herb garden — basil, mint, rosemary, and seasonal flowers in a planter box on the roof

The deck runs the length of the building. Wooden water towers, the original kind that crown New York's prewar lofts, rise at the center of the roof. Tile pavers, planters of grasses and herbs, communal tables and chairs, a small herb garden labeled in the building's blue.

From up here, the view is 360° — the Empire State to the east, the Hudson Yards towers to the west, the river beyond. By day it's a place to read; at sunset, a place to gather. The deck is residents-only.

IX. — The Residences

True Loft Living

Seventy-three units behind a double address: fifty-two residences at 448 West 37th, and twenty-one commercial units at 438 — twenty creative studios on the second through fifth floors, plus the ground-floor storefront.

The Glass Farmhouse occupies a full block-front with two entrances. 448 opens to the residential lobby and the upper-floor lofts. 438 opens to the lower-floor commercial studios — long the working homes of photographers, painters, musicians, and designers, several of whom have been in the building since the 1981 conversion. Roughly a third of the original 1980s artist-residents still own here today. Among the building's celebrated current and former residents are names known in fashion, photography, music, architecture, and the gallery world — kept here, by long preference, in the company of neighbors rather than press.

52
Residences · 448

Originally delivered as white box

Each loft was a blank canvas at conversion — pullman kitchen, hardwood floors, a single bath — to be imagined floor by floor by its owner. Many remain dramatic, near-original loft volumes today.

12.5'
Ceiling Height

Original printing-press ceilings

The structural scale of presses and embossing machines — preserved as residential rarity. Some lofts span sixty feet wall to wall.

13
Stories

Penthouse to landmark base

Upper floors look west across the Hudson; the lower bays preserve the Renaissance Revival storefront in colored terra cotta.

438 · Fifth Floor and Below
21
Commercial Units

Where the creative class still works

The lower floors hold twenty-one commercial units — entered through the second address at 438. Twenty are working studios on the second through fifth floors: photographers' shooting floors, musicians' rehearsal rooms, designers' studios, some here for forty years. The twenty-first is the ground-floor storefront. The building's character today is shaped, more than anything else, by the fact that it never stopped being a place where things are made.

The Amenities

Behind its prewar façade, the building runs on a modern energy spine — a centralized boiler-management system, thermostatic radiator valves for room-by-room control, and upgraded efficient lighting with occupancy sensors — earning the city's top energy grade under Local Law 84.

  • Landscaped Roof Deck 360°
  • Restored Lobby Recent
  • Part-time Lobby Attendant Daily
  • Resident Manager · Superintendent On call
  • Modern Laundry App & mobile pay
  • Package Room Secure
  • Smart Building Access App-based entry
  • Video Intercom State of the art
  • Energy Rating Grade A · LL84
  • Community Herb Garden Seasonal
X. — Hudson Yards

A Neighborhood Reborn

Step out the door and you stand at the seam of two New Yorks — pre-war Midtown to the east, the twenty-five-billion-dollar Hudson Yards to the west.

Sanborn-style block map showing 438 West 37th Street with adjacent piano factory and police station
— the block at the turn of the twentieth century · ★ marks the building —

The Block, Once

Where the specialty trades stood

This insurance atlas shows the building (★) on a fuller block than the one that survives today. Just east stood the 20th Precinct station house; toward Tenth Avenue, a piano factory. A century on, the police station and most of its neighbors are long gone — the block has been continuously remade ever since.

What you see around it now — Hudson Yards rising to the west, the High Line lifting in from the south, a new neighborhood park of three and a half acres planned just north of the building — is the latest layer in a stretch of Manhattan that has been continuously remade for more than a century.

HUDSON RIVER 11 AVE 10 AVE 9 AVE 8 AVE 42 ST 40 ST 37 ST · BUILDING 34 ST 30 ST FUTURE GREEN SPACE PARK 3.5 acres BELLA ABZUG PARK HIGH LINE FUTURE EXTENSION MOYNIHAN CONNECTOR ★ THE GLASS FARMHOUSE BARYSHNIKOV VESSEL EDGE THE SHED MOYNIHAN JAVITS N
— a sketch of the surrounding blocks —
Existing High Line & Moynihan Connector
Proposed High Line extension
Future neighborhood park
01

The High Line

elevated park · nearest entrance at 34th & Hudson Boulevard · proposed extension toward Hudson River Park

On Foot7 min
02

Moynihan Connector

elevated bridge linking Penn Station to the High Line · opened 2023

On Foot5 min
03

Bella Abzug Park

green space and a children's playground running 33rd to 37th between 10th & 11th Avenues

On Foot2 min
04

New Green Space Park

3.5 acres of green space planned just north of the building

On Foot2 min
05

Hudson Yards · The Vessel

the most expensive private development in U.S. history

On Foot7 min
06

Edge Observation Deck

the highest outdoor sky deck in the western hemisphere

On Foot8 min
07

Baryshnikov Arts Center

the dance and performing-arts incubator · adjacent

On Foot1 min
08

Chef's Table at Brooklyn Fare

three michelin stars · across the street

On Foot1 min
09

The Shed

a center for artistic invention

On Foot9 min
10

Moynihan Train Hall

amtrak · long island rail road · new jersey transit

On Foot8 min
11

Whole Foods Market

at hudson yards

On Foot5 min