Two identical three-story brick commercial buildings, each three bays wide, built side by side as a matched pair. Second-floor windows are framed in stone and flanked by pilasters with Corinthian capitals under a dentiled cornice, and the third-floor windows have shaped stone surrounds with clusters of fruit at the lintels. An openwork parapet pierced with round portholes and foliage crowns both halves. A large shield rises from the parapet over the eastern half, whose name tablet sits just below the cornice. The eastern half is painted white, and the western half keeps its buff brick.
Built by 1903 as a matched pair at 1401 and 1403-05 Washington. The architect and builder are unknown. In 1909 the western building held a skirt and waist factory, and the eastern one a business college, with a tag factory at the rear. The initials of the B and R Dry Goods Company survive in the terrazzo of the corner doorway, along with its painted sign on the east wall. Four more buildings once stood between the pair and 14th Street, and their removal left that wall exposed. Levin’s Clothing has long occupied the corner storefront. The two halves were never the same depth. In 1909 the eastern building ran all the way back to Lucas Avenue, where a four-story rear wing at 1416–18 Lucas held the tag factory on the first two floors and more of the business college above. The western building stopped about two-thirds of the way back, behind an open yard and a small two-story building at 1420 Lucas.
