A plain three-story red brick commercial building seven bays wide, with three storefronts at street level, now painted red, white and navy. Brick piers divide the upper floors into wide bays of dark-framed windows. Its fame is the band of cast relief panels set into the brick spandrels below the top floor, credited to the artist Bob Cassilly: baboons sitting in a row, and monkeys strung out in a chain, each one hauling on the tail of the next. They gave it the name the Monkey Building. A blue neon blade sign with a pinwheel at its head still hangs at the corner, left from Wind Capital Group, the wind energy firm that moved in after the 2008 renovation. At the alley the rear is stuccoed brick, three stories with a fire escape, its ground floor covered by a mural of lightbulbs, gears and the word INNOVATE.
Built in 1916 by Sol Abrahams and Son, contractors; no architect is recorded. It stood empty through much of the 1990s and 2000s. After part of the roof collapsed in 2007 it was renovated, and by 2008 it held a wind energy firm and Erlich’s Cleaners, which moved here when 1402 Washington was torn down. It replaced a row of two-story storefronts shown on the 1909 Sanborn map.
