Stephen Decatur Hatch · 1891 · New York
Stephen Decatur Hatch's bank at Broadway and Bleecker.
Manhattan Savings Institution, 644 Broadway at Bleecker (red brick and sandstone, green copper turret). Look for "MSI" in the copper pediment. Stephen Decatur Hatch designed it, and it was finished in 1891.
The best story belongs to the building it replaced. In 1878 a gang led by George Leonidas Leslie, a trained architect turned master bank robber, hit the bank's earlier building on this corner. They got away with more than $2.8 million in cash and securities, one of the largest bank robberies in US history.
The bank moved out in the early 1940s, and the building has held residential lofts since the 1970s. Kith now occupies the ground floor.