A seven-story brick loft-warehouse on the north side of Washington Avenue, one of the row of turn-of-the-century garment-district houses. Its signature is a band of terra-cotta lion-head masks across the second story — fitted with a restored pipe system that lets them breathe steam from their mouths — beneath a bracketed cornice that is lit at night. Ground-floor storefronts open onto the sidewalk below the plain brick upper wall.
Isaac Taylor designed the building in 1899 for the 11th Street Realty Company, which put it up as a speculative warehouse on Washington Avenue, the city's garment and wholesale district. Shoe companies occupied it in its early decades. The Bee Hat Company gave the building the name it still carries. Four brothers had started the hat, cap, and glove wholesaling firm in 1926; the company moved into 1021 Washington in 1944 and used the building for warehousing and sales. It stayed until 2000, by then one of the last garment-trade businesses left on the avenue. The building is a City Landmark and stands within the Washington Avenue East of Tucker historic district. A remediation and renovation beginning in 2005 converted it to residential lofts with two ground-floor retail spaces. That work restored a pipe system in the second-story terra-cotta lion heads that vents steam from their mouths, and added night lighting to the cornice.
