The silk workers of a Fourth Street loft building

The Silk Building (right, back in the day when Tower Records occupied the ground floor) has been a celebrity-studded condominium since the 1980s.

But as the name of this East Fourth Street edifice suggests, it began its life as a factory space for workers who produced silk garments.

The Silk Building fit right into the neighborhood at the time, which was packed with loft buildings housing clothing manufacturers, part of the city’s enormous garment industry.

Decades after the industry moved out of lower Manhattan, two friezes in the building’s handsome lobby continue to pay homage to the female workers who spun silk into clothes.

The first, “Silk Textile Workers of New York,” shows female employees designing and sewing silk over machines and looms.

The second depicts ancient silk production in China; explaining how silk is made, starting with the cultivation of silkmoth eggs.

 The Silk Building isn’t the only manufacturing space from the city’s Garment Center days that has been repurposed for luxury residential or office use.

The Spinning Wheel Building and the American Thread Company are remnants of an older New York, and the bronze Silk Clock of this Park Avenue South loft building is an especially charming reminder.

[Top photo: City Realty]