Plenty of historic office buildings have been converted to residential use in recent years — especially in Lower Manhattan, where some of the oldest commercial structures in New York stand. The latest building to undergo such a transformation is the Clock Tower Building, which is now being called 108 Leonard.

Completed in 1898 as the headquarters of the New York Life Insurance Company, the 16-story building occupies an entire city block with its grandest portion, fronting on Broadway, designed by McKim, Mead & White — the starchitects of their day.

The white marble facade is lavished with lion heads, balustrades and other flourishes drawn from Italian Renaissance palazzos, and the whole thing is topped by a three-story pavilion with a mechanical timepiece that gave the structure its nickname.