Project Showcase: Custom Brick of Manhattan’s The Village West, Greenwich Village, Manhattan

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Aug 11, 2026

At the corner of 14th Street and Sixth Avenue, a century of Greenwich Village architecture meets The Village West, a new, 13-story residential development. On a cleared corner parcel with no historic shell to preserve and no old structure to restore, the structure’s rounded corners, deep-set windows, and richly textured brick feel as if they’d always belonged there.

The bridge between past and present is The Belden Brick Company, the leader among custom brick manufacturers. A custom blend brick and special shapes speak the visual language of a denser, older streetscape.

From Sidewalk to Skyline, The Village West’s Identity Is Defined by Custom-Made Bricks

Like the 19th-century buildings surrounding it, The Village West, designed by New York City’s BKSK Architects, follows a classical base-middle-top composition. Above its terra-cotta storefront system at street level, brick carries the building’s identity.



Belden Brick’s custom-made brick spans the tower’s full middle and upper stories. In covering the exterior’s largest surface area by far, brick gives the building its identity—whether viewed from the sidewalk or skyline. Where a narrow band of terra-cotta announces the entrance underfoot, the brick facade is what passersby live with. It’s the material that provides the building’s weight and texture from every angle above eye level.

Curved Bricks, Cast Shadow: Special Shapes Create Depth

Depth was the design team's central goal. David Kubik, BKSK partner, says much of what makes a historic facade feel substantial comes down to cast shadow. Achieving that on a new building meant treating brick as a shaping material, not just a cladding one. Recessed and projected brickwork climbs the tower's cylindrical volumes in patterns that, at a smaller scale, echo the same details established at street level.



Belden Brick’s special shapes carry that logic all the way to the window openings: unique headers crown each of the building’s rounded windows, built with a full eight-inch brick return into the brick facade wall—a small, high-visibility detail that mirrors the same depth-and-shadow ambition driving the rest of the design.

CUSTOM BRICK MOLDS MEET EXACT TOLERANCES

Executing that ambition took more than custom brick molds; it took precision. BKSK committed early to a two-inch airspace behind the brick specifically to accommodate the facade’s undulations, a decision that shaped how brick dimensions and mortar joints needed to be calculated well before installation began. With Boston Valley Terra Cotta’s horizontal bands set at fixed points between floors, brick coursing had almost no room for drift. Belden’s custom-made bricks had to meet exact dimensional tolerances so that materials from two different manufacturers, installed by different trades, would align correctly.

Completed in spring 2026, The Village West is precision brickwork not just as an aesthetic choice, but as a construction requirement. This from-the-ground-up building on a cleared Greenwich Village corner earns its place beside Manhattan’s storied Chelsea and West Village architecture history that surrounds it.

Owner/Developer: IGI-USA (The U.S. division of Izaki Group Investments)
Architect & Interior Design: BKSK Architects
General Contractor: Hunter Roberts Construction Group
Brick Distributor: Belden Tri-State Building Materials
Photography: Michael Young, Field Condition

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