page_title: American Bank Note Company Printing Plant
section_title: Lafayette wing
hierarchical_section_title: American Bank Note Company Printing Plant / Site description / Lafayette wing
caption_attribution_description: English: Detail of the Lafayette Ave side of the American Bank Note Company printing plant at 1201 Lafayette Ave, Bronx, NY.
context_page_description: The American Bank Note Company Printing Plant is a repurposed printing plant in Hunts Point, the Bronx, New York City. It was built in 1909 by the American Bank Note Company, contemporaneously with their corporate headquarters in Manhattan. In addition to printing paper documents, stamps, and currency, the plant also minted coins, and was thus known by local area residents as The Penny Factory.
  The main structure includes three interconnected buildings. The Lafayette wing, spanning the south side of the block, is the longest and tallest. It incorporates the main entrance, at the base of an imposing tower. The lower, but more massive, Garrison wing is perpendicular to that. These two were built first, and constitute the bulk of the complex. The Barretto wing is an addition on the west side of the Garrison wing. The small detached North Building is at the rear of the property.
  The buildings total 405,000 square feet, occupying the 178,000 square foot block bordered by Garrison Avenue, Tiffany Street, Lafayette Avenue, and Barretto Street. The block is roughly pentagonal, with Barretto curving to form two sides.
  The plant was used by American Bank Note from 1911 until 1986.
context_section_description: Along Lafayette Avenue was a tall but narrow building which contained offices and workrooms for plate preparation.  This runs the full length of the street frontage, almost 465 feet (142 m).
  The exterior façade of the building is brick, with a structural framework of steel, allowing for wide unbroken arches filled with glass. Such large windows, unusual for the time, allowed daylight to flood into the building, necessary for visual inspection of detailed and colored printing work.  The building also used modern incandescent and arc lighting.
  The Lafayette wing was originally constructed as three stories, three bays deep, with large windows topped by arches on the third story.  In the center of the block is a nine story tower, at the base of which is the plant's main entrance.  As Lafayette avenue slopes down to the west, the left-most portion of the building exposes several basement levels to the façade.  In 1925, an additional story, only two bays deep, was added to the top of the building, using materials that closely matched the style of the original.
caption: Lafayette Avenue elevation, showing southern-exposure window detail.
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