Recent rezoning means big changes for the Williamsburg waterfront. This was once one of the country’s most active working waterfronts. At its northern end, on the south side of Bushwick Inlet, Charles Pratt had his Astral Oil Works. To its south was Hecla Iron Works, which once employed more than 1,000 workers making things like the ornamental ironwork of Grand Central Terminal. South of Grand Street was the great sugar refinery that was once the flagship of the Havemeyer Sugar Trust. It became the Domino plant until it closed last year. Sugar refining was once one of New York’s principal industries; indeed, 2005 is, by my reckoning, the first year in 275 years that there has not been a working sugar refinery within the present boundaries of New York City.

These and many other industries were served by an intricate – some might even say Rube Goldberg-like – network of piers and waterfront railways, all now gone. Meanwhile, the inland part of northern Williamsburg has boomed as a trendy place to live and play. Skyrocketing property values have had developers drooling over the possibilities of waterfront luxury housing. It now looks like the developers will have their way. And, for better or worse, Williamsburg will never be the same.

It’s why some of us worry about the fate of the artistically more important waterfront buildings that have thus far eluded landmark designation, and that might be razed or inappropriately altered.

For me, one building stands for the rest. It is the former warehouse of Austin, Nichols & Company, on Kent Avenue between North 3rd and 4th Streets, near the heart of Williamsburg’s trendy Northside.

Austin, Nichols was a large food wholesaler, and the warehouse had direct rail and pier connections. Beyond that, the building has a very distinctive appearance. As well it might, given that it was designed by Cass Gilbert, architect of the Custom House at Bowling Green and the Woolworth Building, among other classics of American architecture. In fact, the warehouse opened in 1913 – the same year as the Woolworth Building.

No one would argue that the ware house is the artistic equal of the Woolworth Building. Yet the warehouse is an outstanding example of a great architect’s application of his artistry to a utilitarian structure. Note the battered, inward-sloping walls, and the lovely way they reach resolution in the coved, or outward spreading cornice. Note also the slit-like windows, like bowmen’s slots in Medieval forts.

The warehouse merits landmark consideration as one of surprisingly few Cass Gilbert buildings in New York and as an important work in his career. For this is where he worked out many of the ideas and techniques that he used a few years later in his U.S. Army Supply Base in Sunset Park, one of the undisputed masterpieces of American utilitarian architecture.

Finally, the warehouse reminds us that the architects who strove to give us the “City Beautiful” fully extended their aesthetics to the humblest of building types.