A landmark SoHo warehouse, 28-30 Greene Street was built in 1873 in what became the neighborhood-dominant Second Empire style, as a sequel to the celebrated 72 Greene (the so-called King of Greene Street). A busy, elaborately decorated facade, the two Frenchified structures demonstrate now, and demonstrated then, that new cast-iron technology could help produce ornate architectural ornamentation affordably and quickly, transforming what had been marks of extreme opulence and refinement into democratic decorative elements available to any builder with a plot of land to develop.