The Decker Building, periodically also named the Union Building, located at 33 Union Square West in Manhattan, New York City was built in 1892 for the Decker Brothers piano company, to designs by the radical anarchist architect John H. Edelmann, working in the office of Alfred Zucker. It replaced the earlier Decker Building on the same lot, designed by Leopold Eidlitz and built in 1869. Andy Warhol had his Factory on the sixth floor of this building from 1967 through 1973. It is also where Valerie Solanas shot Warhol and art critic and curator Mario Amaya in 1968.

The building is only 33 feet (11 m) wide and 138 feet (42 m) deep on a lot that goes back 150 feet (46 m). It has a right of way to 16th Street from the rear of the building. The style of the building mixes influences from Venice and Islamic traditions. There are numerous terra cotta details on the façade which remain today. There was a minaret on the roof which disappeared before WWII. The building was valued at $285,000 in 1913, after which it was traded to settle debts. Figures.

The Decker Brothers pianos are known for their exceptional quality in knowledgeable piano circles, and the New York Times wrote that they had "a wide spread and enviable reputation for their superior quality". However, they did not achieve the notability of some of their counterparts, specifically Steinway & Sons and Chickering and Sons, even though widely acknowledged as being equivalent in quality to the Steinway and Chickering pianos of the era. Today the Decker Brothers pianos do not sell for as much as their more famous counterparts, yet they still command more than double the price of an average piano manufacturer of that era. The company ended its operations at the death of one of the brothers around the turn of the 19th century.

The Piano
The Decker Brothers piano had typical late square action and dampers, but very good scaling ahead of its day. A Decker Brothers piano has been more recently described as having "the most unusual design in the bass." This is due to the fact that the strings go under the plate at the tuning pin end with the tuning pin sticking up through a hole. It is guessed that this was done in order to get the string coil closer to the pinblock and so to have more of the tuning pin actually in the pinblock.

In 1967, Andy Warhol had to move his Factory from East 47th street due to that building being torn down. Union Square at the time was not an upscale area, but Paul Morrissey found him a loft in our building. He met Jed Johnson and hired him to help out refinishing the space and introducing him to Warhol.

On June 3, 1968, Valerie Solanas visited the Factory, looking for Warhol, who she felt was taking control of her screenplay away from her. She waited until Warhol returned around 4pm. Within a few minutes, she shot Warhol three times, seriously wounding him, as well as shooting Mario Amaya. Solanas turned herself into the police a few hours later.

Around 1970, Warhol built a video camera system and taped his visitors and documented the activities around the studio.

In 1973, Warhol moved the Factory to 860 Broadway, a short distance away. As part of packing up, he began to create the Warhol Time Capsules.

The Decker Building
Back when horses pulled buggies and garbage lined the streets.