The Wool Club Reborn

Artist Claudia Doring Baez lived in the penthouse of the American Thread Building for 22 years before hiring a decorator.

- WENDY GOODMAN

In 1981, claudia doring baez and her two brothers had moved to New York from Mexico to attend Columbia University. Her mother, the artist Lucero Gonzalez, followed, and together they set out to find a place to live as a family. Walking around downtown one day, Doring Baez and one of her brothers came upon this 1896 Renaissance Revival building on the corner of West Broadway and Beach

Street. Designed by William B. Tubby as the Wool Exchange, it had a storage warehouse for wool, a bank, offices, and the members-only Wool Club on the top floor when it opened. Later, it was renamed for the American Thread Company, which had offices there. By the time Doring Baez and her brother strolled by, a developer had converted it into condos and was apparently eager to make the process as easy as possible for prospective buyers. “We just literally walked in, and in the lobby where you now have the doorman, there was Citi Bank offering you a loan,” she recalls.