Butterick Building ca. 1939 The Butterick company's success in producing both patterns and fashion magazines resulted in another big venture: the construction in 1903 of the Butterick Building at the corner of MacDougal (now Sixth Avenue) and Spring Streets. They commissioned the firm of Horgan & Slattery to design their new headquarters. The 15-story Beaux Arts style building became the jewel in the crown of the Butterick empire at the beginning of the 20th century. It’s hard to imagine nowadays, but a 15-story building in Manhattan would have been quite a commanding presence in 1903 (it’s no coincidence that the shock of such “skyscrapers” ultimately led to the passing of the city’s first zoning law in 1916). The Fuller Company, engineers of the iconic 22-story Flatiron Building going up at the same time, also built the Butterick Building. Standing at the head of Spring Street, the Butterick Building remains today a visual gateway to the Hudson Square neighborhood. Recently, when the City proposed to rezone Hudson Square to encourage new high-rise residential development, GVSHP asked that height limits for new construction be limited to 210 feet, about the height of the Butterick Building. The City ultimately opted for the more excessive 290 feet. Sparing no expense, when built, the interiors of the Butterick Building were designed by Tiffany. The building, marketed as “The Home of the Delineator Family,” operated 86 printing presses that produced Butterick’s 32 periodicals, which made it one of the largest magazine publishing companies in the country. With such a large floor area, the building accommodated a large range of activities, from seamstresses making sample garments to workers printing and shipping sewing pattern envelopes. But just what was The Delineator? The Butterick Publishing Company’s cultural and social significance was not limited to its home sewing patterns; it also created one of the most successful publications the country had ever seen: The Delineator. First created to help advertise Butterick sewing patterns in 1873, The Delineator ultimately became a champion of “the new woman” in the post-Civil War era. Finding herself balancing roles in and outside the home for the first time in history, the middle-class woman was the prime subscriber of Butterick’s magazine. With printing moving to the Butterick Building, the readership went from 30,000 in 1876 to 480,000 by the turn of the century, and by 1920 it climbed to over one million. It lasted until 1937. Butterick was located in this building until October 2001 when they were purchased by the McCall Pattern Company and were moved uptown to Penn Plaza, according to a former employee who now works for McCall’s. Even though they’re now gone, we’re glad to see this monument to women’s history still standing tall at its prominent spot on Sixth Avenue and Spring Street.

504-506 Broome Street, 1939.

Hudson Park Library, Seventh Avenue South facade, 1937. In late 1910s the nearby park, which gave the branch its name, Hudson Park, was largely demolished in the construction of Seventh Avenue South. An addition was built for an entrance on the new street, in a slightly different style. The new facade had Common or American Bond brick work instead of the Flemish Bond of the original structure and double-height limestone enframements on the windows. Both of these factors give the Seventh Avenue South facade a more rigid and geometric look. The library, following this addition, seems to hug the seven-story brick apartment building at the southwest corner of Leroy Street and 7th Avenue (not visible at right).

The NoHo Historic District was designated by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) on June 29, 1999, with the NoHo East Historic District designated in 2003 and expansions to the original district boundaries approved in 2008. This virtual walking tour features 25 buildings within the approximately 130-building original NoHo Historic District, in celebration of its 25th anniversary. The highlighted buildings represent the range of construction periods and array of building types, styles, and uses that occur throughout the district. We encourage you to explore this fascinating stretch of Manhattan virtually, or to use this tour as a jumping-off point as you take your own walk through the historic district! The three-part tour is organized by phases of development, based upon the same categories found within the LPC NoHo Designation Report. Part III includes buildings constructed from the 1890s to 1910s: The Booming Nineties a) 611-621 Broadway, The Cable Building b) 65-69 Bleecker Street, The Bayard-Condict Building c) 696-702 Broadway d) 34-36 Cooper Square, "Village Voice" Post-Consolidation Growth e) 756-770 Broadway, Wanamaker's Department Store Annex f) 684 Broadway (aka 2 Great Jones Street) g) 740-744 Broadway (aka 2 Astor Place) \-- To return to Part II of the tour, click here. To revert back to Part I of the tour, click here.

203 Prince Street ca. 1978 The land on which 203 Prince Street stands (and the rest of the block) had formerly been part of Richmond Hill, the estate of former Vice-President Aaron Burr (who, by coincidence was arrested and charged with treason on February 19, 1807; he was later acquitted, but the charge and his killing of Alexander Hamilton so tarnished his reputation in America that he fled the country, eventually selling his property such as this). By 1833, leather inspector John P. Haff owned the property and several additional lots on the block. According to Daytonian in Manhattan, while Haff’s official profession was inspector of sole leather, he was also an authority on agricultural techniques and a speculative builder both in New York and New Jersey. In 1833 Haff began building three handsome Federal-style residences on Prince Street where well-to-do merchants had begun settling. Among these was No. 203, a Flemish bond brick home two stories tall with a dormered attic. The Haff family leased the property until ca. 1865, when it was sold. At this time, the neighborhood around No. 203 Prince had dramatically changed. No longer an enclave of the wealthy merchant class, the Eighth Ward had a growing population of poor immigrants. In 1877 the Episcopal Church of Saint Ambrose at Thompson and Prince Streets opened a mission house in 203 Prince Street, headed by the Rev. D. G. Gunn and managed by Mrs. Mary Laidlaw. Its purpose, according to The Churchman on October 13 of that year, was “to give assistance to the worthy poor, to visit the sick and needy, to relieve the distressed, to feed the hungry, and to give employment to those out of work.” Originally 2½ stories tall, the house had a full third floor added in 1888, when the original attic floor was removed. The architect carefully lined up the windows with those below and designed nearly-identical sills and lintels. Note the change in the brick pattern above the second-floor windows, from Flemish bond — alternating long and short sides of brick — to running bond — all bricks with long side exposed. Flemish bond brickwork is characteristic of federal architecture while running bond is more common to late 19th-century construction.

55 Thompson Street, ca. 2006. The Tunnel Garage was built in 1922 during the early automobile age, ushering in the engineering marvel of its time, the Holland Tunnel. GVSHP sought landmark designation for the building, but the City refused, and it was demolished in 2006

Carmine Street buildings slated for demolition ahead of the downtown extension of Sixth Avenue, July 30, 1926. Prior to the 1920s extension, Sixth Avenue terminated at Carmine Street. The extension and associated demolitions were undertaken for two purposes: facilitating construction of IND subway tracks and providing a connection for vehicular traffic to/from the Holland Tunnel, via Canal Street.

84 King Street, December 7, 1927. Built in the 1920s and replacing five old houses, no. 84 (at right) was constructed as a two-story parking garage. It functioned in that capacity for a number of decades. The address, though, is best known as the Paradise Garage, a night club opened between 1977 and 1987, whose patrons were predominantly African American gay men. The state-of-the-art sound system installed in the club was considered the best in New York at the time. The club was the base for DJ Larry Levan, a cult favorite who style and musical productions are considered the precursor of modern house music. The club was not open to the general public and they served no food or alcohol, meaning it was not limited to bar hours and often stayed open all night and into the next day. The club closed in September 1987, a few months before its owner, Michael Brody, died of complications from HIV/AIDS. Today the building is occupied by a Verizon Communications facility, though the club is still remembered and mourned by those who attended its infamous parties.

Bertolotti's Restaurant, May 19, 1939. Though perhaps not apparent from this 1939 photograph, the building here at 85 West 3rd Street was constructed in the 1830s. In 1844 the writer Edgar Allan Poe moved into the building, then 85 Amity Street. Here he worked on “The Raven" and ''The Cask of Amontillado.'' He and his wife vacated the home in 1846 for a small cottage in the Bronx. Later tenants included actress Lillian Russell and, for nearly 70 years, an Italian restaurant called Bertolotti's. The small building survived most of the 20th century with NYU growing around it. In 2000 the school announced plans to demolish the building for an expanded law library and was met with vocal push back by preservationists, community members and scholars. Eventually NYU agreed to preserve the facade of the building. During construction of the new Furman Hall, the facade is moved down the block and reconstructed within the facade of the new building. Though it supposedly looks as it would have in 1845, preservationists have maintained that the changes of location and surroundings (it is no longer free-standing) and the new brick facade (the old bricks were not reused as planned) create something akin to a movie set, not a historic structure.

Bleecker Street Cinema, ca. 1977. Bleecker Street Cinema began its tenure at 144 Bleecker Street in 1962. Filmmaker and social activist Lionel Rogosin founded the space and opened the 200-seat theatre to present his 1959 film Come Back, Africa. A spot for art house, avant-garde, and foreign films the cinema closed in 1990. For less than a year the venue reopened and featured gay adult films, before a brief return to art films, and eventual closure in 1991. The theatre was an influential cultural venue for the independent film scene in New York. It was also a location for a number of more commercial movies including Desperately Seeking Susan and Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors. Today the building has been split again with no. 144 housing a pharmacy and no. 146 a stationary store.

2-6 Minetta Street, November 21, 1935. Located above a small historic lower Manhattan waterway called Minetta Brook, Minetta Street has a long and diverse history. The stream was moved underground in the 1820s because it was impeding the development of the area. The crooked Minetta Street was originally a path along the brook, created by the “partially-freed” African American population that had settled nearby in the mid 17th century. In the late 19th and early 20th century the street was known for its seedy occupants, including prostitutes and saloons that catered to Irish gangsters. After a concerted effort by local police to clean up the area, by the 1920s, Minetta Street and Lane were the more quiet and quaint blocks they remain today.

Donald Judd House and Museum, 101 Spring Street, ca. 2000. The five-story cast iron building at the corner of Spring and Mercer Streets was designed by architect Nicholas Whyte and completed in 1870. In 1968, Missouri-born artist Donald Judd purchased the building for $68,000, having outgrown his previous workspace. For Judd, it was the first building he ever owned. He configured the space into a residence, studio, and gallery. At 101 Spring Street, Judd developed his concept of "permanent installations" in response to what he viewed as the inadequacy of temporary gallery and museum exhibitions. In his 1989 essay, ‘101 Spring Street,’ Judd wrote: “I spent a great deal of time placing the art and a great deal designing the renovation in accordance. Everything from the first was intended to be thoroughly considered and to be permanent.” Judd passed away in January of 1994, leaving behind a foundation in his name which, over the last decade, sold off $23 million worth of art from its collection to fund the restoration of 101 Spring Street. Today, the works and interior design at 101 Spring Street remain as installed by Judd.

Louisa May Alcott Residence ca. 1933 Though she is most associated with the city of Boston, abolitionist and feminist Louisa May Alcott stayed here at her uncle's house at 130-132 MacDougal Street for two years after the publication of her most famous work, Little Women. She was raised by transcendentalist parents Amos Bronson Alcott and Abigail May and grew up around intellectuals of the day such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau. When she was young her family served as station masters on the Underground Railroad. She also read and was greatly influenced by the "Declaration of Sentiments", published by the Seneca Falls Convention on women's rights. As an adult, she wrote for the Atlantic Monthly and served as a nurse during the Civil War. It was her letters home-revised and published in the Boston anti-slavery paper Commonwealth and collected as 'Hospital Sketches'-that first brought her critical recognition for her observations and humor. She became even more successful with the publication of Little Women in 1868.

205 Bleecker Street as viewed from Hancock Street, a now de-mapped road in Greenwich Village. The street disappeared not long after this photograph was taken, swallowed up by the creation of Sixth Avenue South.

59 (right) and 60 (left) Washington Square South are the two four-story homes next to the wood-frame corner structure. When writer Willa Cather moved to New York in 1906 she lived in a studio in no. 60.

Four-story Sullivan Street loft building, including the Rotisserie Range Co., at No. 26; January 24, 1927. The buildings pictured were razed shortly thereafter to facilitate the downtown extension of Sixth Avenue and the construction of the IND Eighth Avenue Line. The extended avenue opened on September 18, 1930, while the new Eighth Avenue subway commenced service eight days shy of two years later, on September 10, 1932.

Theater, performance spaces, and the arts have always been an important part of the Village, East Village, and NoHo’s cultural heritage and built environment.

San Remo Cafe, 1937. The San Remo was a cafe and bar which opened in 1925 and closed in 1967. In the 1950s it became a popular haunt for literary and artistic notables of the Beat and Bohemian generation. Regulars included Gore Vidal, William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Dylan Thomas, Miles Davis, Jackson Pollack, James Baldwin, and Allen Ginsberg. A later account of the Cafe said this, “With its pressed-tin ceiling, black-and-white tile floors and dollar salads with all the bread and butter you could eat, the San Remo attracted a younger, hipper crowd more into experimenting with drugs than The White Horse’s habituées,” The bar and its patrons are described in a number of literary works authored by those who hung out there, including Jack Kerouac's 'The Subterraneans.'

Our Lady of Pompeii Church ca. 1928 On March 7th, 1898, Our Lady of Pompeii Church was incorporated as a separate parish. This South Village icon has been serving the neighborhood since 1926, but Our Lady of Pompeii has been a part of the Village since 1892. The Our Lady of Pompeii church that stands today was designed by architect Matthew W. Del Gaudio and constructed between 1926 and 1928. But the parish had several prior homes. In 1890, it began in a building located at 113 Waverly Place, as part of the Saint Raphael Society for the Protection of Italian Immigrants, under the leadership of Father Pietro Bandini. Father Bandini named his chapel there “Our Lady of Pompeii.” He worked to help the many Italian immigrants adjust to their new lives in America. By 1895, the Society moved to 214 Sullivan Street, but fire forced them out and they moved to an existing church at 210 Bleecker Street. This church was originally built in 1836 for the Unitarian Universalists, but was sold to the African American Roman Catholic congregation of Saint Benedict the Moor in 1883. There had been a significant African-American population in the area around Minetta Street, but as the century was coming to a close, they began moving further uptown, and Our Lady of Pompeii parish acquired the property and moved in on May 8, 1898 under the leadership of Father Antonio Demo (the square adjacent to the church now bears his name).

Manhattan Sign Company, 101 Mercer Street, 1932. The oldest building in the Soho Cast Iron Historic District, the Federal style brick house at 101 Mercer Street (aka 107 Spring Street) was built between 1806-1808. Though the original brickwork has since been covered by stucco — and at one point by clapboards, as shown in this photo — some window and lintel details persist. By the 1860s, the lower floor had been converted to a saloon. Above, signage for the Manhattan Sign Company remains, while advertisements for a store and basement to to let indicate that the company had closed or relocated.

John Althouse warehouses, Greene Street, March 28, 1947. A six-story brick and cast iron warehouse completed in 1884 for John Althouse, on the site of the Althouse Iron Works, an 1850s-era foundry. During the Civil War, the Althouse property served as a barracks for the 40th New York Volunteers. The warehouse was designed by William Ewan Worthen, who built an adjacent storage property at No. 146 Greene Street for Althouse in 1877.

85 Sullivan Street ca. 1937 83 and 85 Sullivan Street are two of the district’s individually landmarked properties, both of which obtained landmark designation in 1973. The buildings were originally built in 1819, rebuilt in 1825, and modified 50 years later. As we previoulsy noted: “83 & 85 Sullivan Street were built as part of the very first stage of urban settlement of this part of town, even before the particularly virulent yellow fever and cholera epidemics of 1822 famously sent New Yorkers permanently packing from their downtown homes to the more salubrious, rural climes of Greenwich Village to the north of the City.” As the 1973 designation reports describe, the area on which these properties are located was originally part of the Bayard Farm. The first Nicholas Bayard was Peter Stuyvesant’s brother-in-law. A later Nicholas Bayard conveyed the property to Daniel Ludlow and Brockholst Livinsgton in 1789. They, in turn, sold it to Aaron Burr in 1791, who acquired a portion of the Bayard Farm contiguous to his estate “Richmond Hill”, which stood west of Sixth Avenue. Burr subdivided his property, and when he sold these lots to Anthony Bowrosan in 1802, they were on what Burr called Locust Street. Bowrosan, who operated a tavern and garden at Richmond Hill, sold the lots in 1807 to carpenters. The 83 Sullivan lot was sold to carpenter David Mulford, who first built the rear house on this lot in 1810, with 83 Sullivan being erected as a 2.5 story federal style home in 1819. 85 Sullivan was sold to carpenter Drake Crane, who first built the rear house on this lot in 1810, with 85 Sullivan being erected as a 2.5 story federal style home in 1819. Both original homes were destroyed in a fire, and rebuilt in 1825. Both homes were renovated to add a full third story, 83 Sullivan in 1880 and 85 Sullivan in 1874. The properties have remained basically the same since then. They both still have their original Federal style doorways and leaded transoms, noted by the designation reports as “unusually fine”, “Elegant and understated, they typify the architecture of good breeding”, and are among the earliest surviving Federal Style doorways in the city. The low stoops with wrought-iron railings, Flemish brickwork, and multi-paned wooden sash windows are also original.

My Archive Spring 2019 "This photo was taken in 1981. The gentleman on the right end is my grandfather, Paolo Anfosso, with his retired neighborhood cronies. They gathered most days in Minetta Triangle or Fr. Demo Square. He and my grandmother, Yolanda, were fixtures in what was then the very Italian Greenwich Village. They lived at 259 Bleecker Street above Zito's Bakery for over 70 years. Paolo was a chef in Jersey City who spoke mostly Italian. Yolanda was a kindergarten teacher first at the Children's Aid Society then, St. Anthony's on Sullivan St. The 3rd gentleman from the right was his good friend also named Paul. The story goes, someone saw them all gathered one day and stopped to ask if they would have their picture taken. To us, this has become a family classic moment in time." —Jean Gross

Above the display windows of Crate & Barrel, and the crowded Broadway and Houston Street sidewalks is a facade of uniquely decorative flourishes that hint at a time of transition for New York’s infrastructure. This building is a massive structure and was included within the boundaries of the NoHo Historic District. Two sculptures of classically-garbed women stand astride a massive circular window, sitting atop a pediment that reads ‘The Cable Building.’ The ‘cable’ in the building’s name refers not the kind of cable that transmits telegraph, telephone, or television, but the kind that pulls cable cars. Built from 1892 to 1894 by the Broadway & Seventh Avenue Railroad Company (later the Metropolitan Traction Company), the building was a unique example of a multi-use structure. It housed in its lower floors the machinery needed to propel much of the Broadway cable car system, with a large office building above. Four 32-foot wheels kept the network of cables in motion for as many as sixty cable cars traveling up and down Broadway from the Battery to Midtown (the cars moved by clamping on to the moving cable embedded in the street). The building was built with a steel and iron frame, with terra cotta and stone facing by the noted firm of McKim, Mead, and White. The New York Times noted “Although the large windows clearly denote a commercial space, the delicate terra cotta, light orange brick and elaborate copper cornice are characteristic of more monumental design. The sculptor J. Massey Rhind designed two colossal female figures flanking the doorway — commissioned sculpture is also unusual on commercial buildings. The Real Estate Record and Guide called the new Cable Building ”the highest achievement of the art” and remarked that, with its example, ‘no excuse remains for building cheaply or meanly on any New York City property.’” As the prediction of the demise of ‘cheaply’ or ‘meanly’ made buildings didn’t quite pan out, neither did the Metropolitan Traction Company’s hopes for business success. Less than a decade after the building and its massive steam-powered cable moving machinery were constructed, electric technology made it obsolete. In May of 1901, the final cable car trundled down Broadway and the line was electrified. A few years later in 1904, the subway system would begin opening and connecting the city. The building would stand to see the significant widening of Houston Street in the 1930s and housed many small-scale manufacturers and offices, including businesses like National Pants, Hercules Shoe Lace and the Doll Parts Manufacturing Association. By the mid-1980s after changes in ownership, the building was largely converted back to office use, and in 1989, the Angelika Film Center opened on the southwest side of the building, occupying much of the space that previously housed the cable car machinery.

Longo Sanitary Bakery, ca. 1935.

The Village Gate, 158 Bleecker Street, on the ground floor and basement of the Atrium building, ca. 1975. Designed by Ernest Flagg, Mills House No. 1 (today called the Atrium Building) was completed in 1897. The building was the brainchild of Darius Ogden Mills. His idea was to develop clean, "healthful" hotels which would allow struggling men to get a leg up. Between 1897 and 1904 he built three single-room-occupancy hotels as alternatives to slum housing. The Mills House No. 1 was the largest. While the rooms were tiny by any standards, only five by seven feet, each one looked out onto either the street or one of two 50 by 50-foot courtyards. According to the New York Times, "each room had an iron bedstead, a hair mattress and pillow, a feather pillow, a chair and a clothes rack; there was no room for anything else. The walls stopped about a foot short of the ceilings, apparently to assure good ventilation." A stay here cost 20 cents a night. In the 1970's the building was reconfigured into regular apartments, although the airy courtyards, glass skylights, and most of Flagg's exterior survive. Between 1958 and 1996, the Village Gate, a nightclub, occupied the first floor and basement of the building at the corner of Thompson and Bleecker Streets.

Spring Street facade of 150 Varick Street, through the plots at 14-37 Dominick Street, ca. 1935.

Opened in 1992 and closed in 2001, the Guggenheim Soho was designed by Arata Isozaki. The museum's attendance never quite matched the 250,000 expected annual visitors and its costs eventually caused its closure.

Spring Street Presbyterian Church ca. 1927 Now the site of a hotel, the Spring Street Presbyterian Church was founded in 1809 and the original building was completed in 1811. It was known for its strong abolitionist stance. The church had a multiracial Sunday school and admitted African-Americans to full communion. Their stance was met with backlash, however, and was burned down twice by the 1830s. In June of 1836, a new brick structure was opened on the site. The Presbytery closed the church in 1963 and in 1966 the building was destroyed by a fire. The site was excavated in 2006 in the process of being cleared for the new Trump SoHo condo hotel, and the church’s former cemetery was uncovered.

Fugazzi's Bar and Grill, ca. 1940. Formerly a fish market, the all-night cafeteria is famously mentioned in Allen Ginsberg epic poem, Howl. Supposedly, Ginsberg worked as a custodian at the bar.

No. 142 Greene Street, ca. 1978. This cast iron-fronted commercial building was designed by German-born architect Henry Fernbach and completed in 1871. A century later, as Soho became the focus of the city's contemporary art scene, the building became home to a series of blue chip galleries, including Leo Castelli, Pace, and Sperone Westwater.

Mercer Hotel, ca. 1975. Commissioned by John Jacob Astor III for his office and business, the Romanesque Revival structure was completed in 1888 to the plans of architects William Schickel and Isaac E. Ditmars. Owing to its wealthy patron, the Astor Building was considerably more ornate than its industrial neighbors. This building is perhaps best known for its more recent history; in 1997 hotelier André Balazs opened the Mercer Hotel, a luxury boutique hotel of 75 rooms.

While their significance is often underestimated or dismissed by heterosexual society, bars and other establishments played a pivotal role throughout the 20th century — but particularly in the pre-Stonewall era — as centers for LGBT activism and community. These spaces, whether always gay friendly or only during certain times of the day or week, gave LGBT people the freedom to be themselves in a way they usually could not be in their personal or professional lives. This curated collection largely reflects the bar and nightlife scene of downtown Manhattan; as we research more sites we encourage you to reach out to us with suggestions in upper Manhattan and the outer boroughs.

127, 129, 131 MacDougal Street Houses ARCHITECT: Unknown DATE: 1828-29 STYLE: Federal These three buildings were constructed in the Federal style, characterized by its 2-1/2-story height, Flemish bond brickwork, low stoop with wrought-ironwork, entrance with Ionic columns, entablature and transom, molded lintels with end blocks, peaked roof, molded cornice, and pedimented double dormers.

Wm. Grotecloss photography studio, No. 227 Bleecker Street, circa 1860. This frame building stood at the corner of Bleecker and Carmine Streets, approximately at the location of present-day Father Demo Square.

This is the location that the Fire Patrol moved to when it vacated 31 Great Jones Street. This new location is the 5th and last built for the Patrol. Constructed in 1907 and designed by architect Franklin Baylies, it has an immediately recognizable classic-firehouse look. The Patrol stayed in that building for almost a hundred years, saving damaged goods and chugging along as the only insurance supported salvage company. The Fire Patrol was suddenly disbanded in 2006 and the building put up for sale, sparking Village Preservation to seek to landmark it as quickly as possible. In 2010 news anchor Anderson Cooper bought the building, but lucky for us, he kept the character of it intact while renovating it to fit the needs of a private residence

Caffe Reggio, date unknown. This South Village mainstay opened in 1927 and its original owner, Domenico Parisi, spent his life savings of $1,000 to purchase their 1902 espresso machine. They claim to be the first coffee shop in the United States to serve Italian Cappuccino. According to a 1945 New York Herald Tribune article, "Dominic's Espresso machine is a shining Gargantua equipped with many spigots, filled with hot water and steam, which makes a cup of coffee in just about three seconds... A visit to the Caffe Reggio is an experience worth having." This spot was also one of the many locations in Greenwich Village where a young Bob Dylan played in the 1960s.

Longo Sanitary Bakery, 1937. This Bleecker Street bakery dates to 1905 when an Italian baker purchased the building at no. 201 for $5,000. The ground floor shop was opened by 1907 selling baked goods and items that the Italian immigrants were accustomed to buying, including espresso beans, dried mushrooms, and spices. According to the grandson of the original owner, the large bread baking ovens were also used by neighbors to cook items that did not fit in their smaller home appliances. The current owner's father learned the business of coffee after the long hours required for baking became too much. He purchased Porto Rico Coffee Importers and moved it from no. 195 to this storefront. Today the coffee store remains and is still owned and run by the Longo family.

Cafe Wha? ca. 1933. The cafe and theater has a rich history. Built in 1907, it is one of the oldest Off-Broadway venues still in operation. It was originally used to house horses but was converted into a theater in the 1958. The Players Theatre contains a main stage with more than 200 seats and a 50-seat black box theatre as well as four rehearsal rooms. According to the South Village Historic District Designation Report, “Gene Frankel directed and held theatre workshops at the Players Theater from 1959 to at least 1968. The Café Wha? has occupied part of the building since the 1950s except for a period when it was replaced by the Café Feenjon. Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul & Mary, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Bruce Springsteen, Richard Pryor, and Bill Cosby are among the performers who played the Café Wha?” Players Theatre has hosted a large number of off-Broadway productions since opening its doors. Most notably in the early 1990s, Natalie Portman starred in the musical Ruthless, in which Britney Spears also participated as an understudy. An archive of every production at the theater can be found here.

The twelve-story Little Singer Building was designed by Ernest Flagg for the Singer sewing machine company in 1903.­­ It is located in Soho at 561-563 Broadway between Spring and Prince Streets. The intricate iron tracery on the exterior makes this one very distinctive and you’d be hard-pressed to miss it if you walked past; it’s a style unique to the time period.

Paradise Garage was a semi-underground club focused solely on music and dance. Unlike many other clubs at the time, it was membership only – not open to the general public. Moreover, it did not discriminate among its membership based on race, class, or sexual identity. Sole proprietor Michael Brody, with financial backing from former boyfriend Mel Cheren, opened the club in 1977 as the 84 King Street Garage with a series of “construction” parties as the renovations continued for a year. DJ Larry Levan (born Lawrence Philpot) worked with Richard Long of Richard Long & Associates to develop, design, and assemble the award-winning sound system that was considered the best in New York. It officially opened as the Paradise Garage on January 28, 1978. Only open on weekends, patrons entered the club through a first-floor garage door entrance and walked up a long ramp to the second floor. The 10,000-square-foot space was divided into a 5,000-square-foot dance floor, which could accommodate 2,000 people, and a 2,000-square-foot lounge. The club served no alcohol – or food – allowing it to stay open after bar hours, often until noon the next morning. Levan chose records that sustained all-night dance marathons and changed the sound of dance music. Songs he played soon showed up on the radio and were featured at New York’s Vinylmania Records. His musical influence spread to dance clubs across the United States and Europe, and is recognized as a precursor to house music. The building was demolished in 2018.

120 West 3rd Street African Free School No. 3, 120 West 3rd Street (formerly 120 Amity Street): This is the former location of African Free School No. 3, one of seven schools dedicated to the education of the children of free and enslaved blacks in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The first African Free School was the very first school for blacks in America. The African Free School Institution was founded in 1787 by members of the New York Manumission Society, an organization devoted to the full abolition of African slavery. At the time of its creation, many African residents in the city were still slaves. The mission of the institution was to empower young black people and educate them on something other than slavery, which was a complicated and bold proposition for the time. In 1785 the Society worked to pass a New York State law prohibiting the sale of slaves imported into the state. This preceded the national law prohibiting slave trade, passed in 1808. The 1783 New York law also lessened restrictions on the manumission of enslaved Africans. In New York, a gradual emancipation law was passed in 1799, which provided that children of enslaved mothers would be born free. However, long periods of indentured servitude were required; 28 years for men and 25 for women. Existing slaves were eventually freed until the last slaves were freed in 1827. The first African Free School, a one-room school house located in lower Manhattan, was established in 1794 and held about 40 students. Here, the children of both free and enslaved blacks were taught reading, writing, arithmetic, and geography. Boys were also taught astronomy, a skill required of seamen, and girls were taught sewing and knitting. After a fire destroyed the original building, a second school was opened in 1815 and held 500 students. African Free School No. 2, located on Mulberry Street, was Alma mater to abolitionist and educator Henry Highland Garnet. African Free School No. 3 was established on 19th Street near 6th Avenue, however, after objections from whites in the area, it was relocated to 120 Amity Street (now known as 120 West 3rd Street). By 1834 the seven existing African Free Schools, with enrollment surpassing a thousand students, had been absorbed into the public school system.

"George Maciunas did not invent artists loft living. He did, however, invent loft cooperatives and in doing so became the person responsible for the creation of SoHo. When Maciunas discovered 80 Wooster Street in 1967, the building was past its prime as a commercial venue. The Miller Cardboard Company was eager to sell and Maciunas, the Lithuanian born artist-visionary, founder of the Fluxus art movement, was eager to buy… After returning to New York in 1963, Maciunas published a one page manifesto titled 'FLUXHOUSE, PLAN FOR AN ARTIST CONDOMINIUM IN NEW YORK CITY.' In it he set forth the economic problems facing artists and proposed a solution. He envisioned purchasing underutilized loft buildings by a not-for-profit corporation and renovating them to provide living-work spaces for artists. He saw communal resources for the artists and expected that in return the artists would provide services to the greater community. It took another four years before he started to implement his plan… Maciunas went on to develop sixteen buildings but maintained a special relationship with 80 Wooster Street. Fluxhouse Coop II is generally acknowledged as the first successful artists’ coop in SoHo, if not the world." For more on the making of the co-op, check out this article by Roslyn Bernstein and Shael Shapiro on Maciunas in Gotham: A Blog for Scholars of New York City History.

468-472 West Broadway, ca. 1976. W.B. Marvin, the owner of the Marvin Safe Company, hired architect Oscar S. Teale in 1855 to erect this six-story brick and iron factory after his firm's previous headquarters caught fire. At the time of construction, Marvin's company was a key player in the industry with products that ranged in size from small office models to large vaults. When the building opened in 1856, Marvin leased the ground floor to the C. & C. Electric Motors Company. More than 250 employees, all male, worked in the factory at the height of its use. The building, now also residential, maintains a commercial bottom floor that is leased to Hugo Fine Arts Galerie.

Located in the heart of the South Village and the South Village Historic District is the oldest continuing South Village Italian organization, Tiro a Segno, today located at 77 MacDougal Street. It has been at this location since 1924 and has served the Italian American community since its founding on August 14, 1888. Tiro a Segno calls itself “the oldest Italian heritage organization in the United States” and today it continues its mission, devoted to the dissemination of knowledge of Italian culture. 77 MacDougal almost looks like an Italian embassy with the Italian flag and American flag prominently displayed in front. In fact, it is three c. 1850 row houses that were originally built in the Gothic Revival style. Until about 1940, they had full-height cast-iron balconies on their front facades, as seen in the c. 1940 tax photo below. In 1924, Tiro A Segno moved to its permanent home at 77 MacDougal Street with a shooting range and bocce court in the basement. Today it is more typical to find visitors enjoying fine wine or cuisine than engaging in target practice. Some reports claim that Giuseppe Garibaldi, who unified Italy, was a member, although that is unlikely since he died in 1882. However, members have included Lee Iacocca, the tenor Enrico Caruso, and Fiorello H. LaGuardia, one of New York City’s most revered Mayors and the first Italian-American to hold that position.

16 Minetta Street, ca. 1940. View looking east from rear (westerly) wall to No. 14 Minetta Street; today, this vantage point is near Minetta Green, a small park east of Sixth Avenue.

The 1898 consolidation of all five boroughs as one unified City of New York brought the population from 2 million to 3.4 million people and intensified the need for more water. In 1905, the City established a Board of Water Supply to plan and build a new system of reservoirs and tunnels that would ensure access to clean water for the growing population. The next year, the Board started planning the Catskill Aqueduct and installed a laboratory at 147 Varick Street to test equipment and building materials, and to analyze water and soil samples. The Board also hired a photographer to document this monumental project, and put the photo lab here to print and store thousands of images.

186 Spring Street ca. 1933 In the era immediately following the Stonewall riots, 186 Spring Street (which was recently demolished) was home to a number of important figures of the Gay Rights movement, serving for a time as a "gay commune" of sorts. Bruce Voeller, who lived in the building, co-led the first delegation of gay rights leaders to ever meet with the White House, helped end the federal government's ban on employing gay people, helped get homosexuality removed from the American Psychiatric Association’s list of mental illnesses, got the very first piece of federal gay rights legislation introduced, and won the first Supreme Court case establishing rights for gay parents. Another resident, Jim Owles, was the first openly gay person to run for public office in New York. Owles, along with Voeller and Arnie Kantrowitz, founded several of the country's first and largest LGBT organizations.

While New York is now one of the safest cities in the country, it still has had its share of notorious murders, here are but a few!

Intersection of Sullivan and Broome Streets, and the newly-extended Sixth Avenue, 1932. The three-story house closest to the corner (at center) is No. 57 Sullivan Street, wood-frame rowhouse built in 1817 for mason David G. Bogert. The house was originally two-and-a-half stories, in the Federal style, with dormer windows above a simple cornice. In 1858, current owners added a third story and extended the facade’s Flemish bond brickwork to a new wooden cornice. In 1932, the demolition of an adjacent building exposed the house’s wooden frame (as captured in Charles Von Urban’s photo. The house was restored after 1995 and designated a New York City Landmark in 2009 — some 39 years after its original proposal.

289 Hudson Street, 1974. The Half Note Club was one of the premier places to hear jazz in the 1960s, and at least a half-dozen records were “live from the Half Note.” John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Cannonball Adderly, Billie Holiday, and Judy Garland all performed here before it became a topless bar in 1974. It’s now a deli.

512-514 Broome, October 7, 1935. The two Federal style building at nos. 512 and 514 seen here likely date to the early decades of the 19th century. In the early 20th century no. 512 (at right) was the New York office of a Ohio-based mosaic company. Two brick buildings still stand in this location. The building at left is now three stories and the one at right one is a single story. It is unknown whether these current structures are built from the bones of the earlier buildings. The empty lot at far left is currently still unbuilt and serves as the garden area for a Thompson Street restaurant.

233 Bleecker Street; ca. 1975.

Just on the edge of Village Preservation’s neighborhoods, this historic firehouse is especially unique because of its size. When it was being built in 1904, the New York Times said it would become “one of the largest fire engine houses in the city.” Designed by architect Edward P. Casey, the iconic large rusticated limestone base supports a beautiful brick facade and elegant windows. In 1987 the city decided the location was no longer needed as an active firehouse. When considering what to do with the building, the Department decided that, because of its size, it would be a perfect home for their museum, then located at 100 Duane Street, which was growing too large for its space. And so they relocated the New York City Fire Museum to Spring Street and opened on July 6th of that year.

2,4,6 Minetta Street These three houses on Minetta Street dated to 1800, when ”the Minettas” — Street, Lane, and Place — were home to free African Americans. By 1900, the tiny houses had become rag pickers’ warehouses. They were renovated as private homes in the 1920s, when the Village attracted artists, writers, and professionals in search of an American Montmartre. Only months after Abbott photographed Minetta Street, the houses were demolished to make way for a five-story apartment building fronting on Sixth Avenue. Abbott’s composition was typically direct and artful. The stepped shadow falling across the facade of no. 4 echoes the stoop below, while the shadow of a bulbous chimney across the street breaks up the rectilinear pattern of light and dark.

H.H. Upham Company building, ca. 1975. In 1891, the H.H. Upham Company, a leading manufacturer of commercial signs, moved into its new headquarters on South Fifth Avenue (later West Broadway and LaGuardia Place). The Romanesque Revival building, designed by the Brunner & Tyron firm, features terra cotta ornamentation a bronze cartouches inscribed with the company’s founding date and the date of completion for the new structure.

Minetta Lane and MacDougal Street, ca. 1925. Pictured at left is Minetta Tavern. The restaurant, established in 1937, is named after the lost Minetta Brook, which ran southwest from 23rd Street to the Hudson River. Along with Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, Eugene O'Neill, E. E. Cummings, Dylan Thomas, and Joe Gould, the eatery has long been a favorite hangout of various artists, writers, and poets since its opening.

Buildings at the southeast corner of Thompson and West Houston Streets; July 2, 1929. Signage for the corner building's storefront touts "Building Coming Down" fire sale prices, ahead of the razing of the entire southern blockfront for subway and street widening work. The white brick building at far right is 152-154 Thompson Street, which today sits at the Houston Street corner.

155 Wooster Street, ca. 1935. In 1968, Paula Cooper opened her first gallery in this building, becoming one of the first gallerists to open up shop downtown, in a neighborhood that would soon become synonymous with the city's contemporary art scene. Cooper's inaugural show included works by Sol LeWitt, Dan Flavin, and Donald Judd. The gallery relocated to Chelsea in 1996.

Broadway, north of Spring Street, 1898. Street scene featuring streetcars, horse-drawn carriages, cobblestones, and cast iron facades along the west side of Broadway. At left, the building with awnings and a pair of American Flags is the “Charles Broadway Rouss” building. In 1889, Rouss, a wealthy, self-made merchant, built a massive three-bay-wide building at 549-553 Broadway to house his department store. A keen self promoter, Rouss stamped his name “Charles Broadway Rouss” across the facade, between the first and second stories. Eleven years later, Rouss acquired the lot immediately to the north, and added a matching fourth bay, adopting the 555 Broadway address. “Charles Broadway Rouss” was amended to cover the facade’s full width. Indeed, when Rouss died in 1902, his death certificate bore his adopted middle name.

"West Broadway, (left) at and adjoining the north east corner of Grand Street, showing the 2-story Sapphire Hotel, 1939."

Charles Broadway Rouss Building, 1938.

You'd assume that in two decades time these little food joints, pictured in 2001, might have disappeared. But, alas, a shop that sells 1,000 carrot 🍰 a week, a 🍕 chain owned by Albanians, and many greasy spoons ☕ are resilient. Discover the everyday culinary delights that have persisted on Broadway.

112 Prince Street, c. 1978. Artists Richard Haas' first mural, on the north party wall of 112 Prince Street, is called "Soho Mural." It was completed in 1975 after Haas proposed his idea to Doris Freedman, who led City Walls Inc. Haas drew from his surroundings in SoHo, a neighborhood rapidly changing due to plans of urban redevelopment and large-scale construction that disrupted the cityscape and left an abundance of exposed blank walls in the area. The mural's building, at 112 Prince Street, is now listed as part of the SoHo Cast-Iron Historic District, though this designation came after the completion of Haas' work. Haas worked with architect Hanford Yang to acquire drawings of the West facade, which he meticulously copied in oil paint onto the brick party wall of the building. Ada Louis Huxtable, renowned architecture critic for the New York Times, called the work "an exercise in art and wit and instant architecture," a year after it was painted. Her successor Paul Goldberger called Richard Haas "the great architectural muralist of our time" in 2000. Haas started a campaign to conserve his first piece of work, titled "Save 112 Prince," in 2015.

Intersection of Sullivan and Grand Streets; March 8, 1927. This photo was taken in preparation for the construction of the IND Eighth Avenue line and the extension of Sixth Avenue (the lot at right has already been cleared for the project). Two blocks east, the Grand Street station of the Sixth Avenue El is visible above West Broadway. Today, the intersection of Grand Street, Sullivan Street, and Sixth Avenue is known as Duarte Square, after Juan Pablo Duarte, a founding father of the Dominican Republic (in keeping with Sixth Avenue's 1945 honorific renaming as the "Avenue of the Americas").

No. 420 West Broadway (left), ca. 1980. The loft building at 420 West Broadway dates to the 1870s, when it was built for the prominent developer Amos R. Eno by architect Robert Mook. The building was extended to Thompson Street during the 1880s. Until 1970, the building's tenants represented a variety of manufacturing industries, including glass and paper products. After 1970, the building became a locus of the burgeoning downtown art scene, and home to several prominent gallerists. In 2001, the remaining gallerists were displaced, as the building was redeveloped for residential use. Today, marketing materials refer to it as the "Soho Gallery Building."

Josiah Purdy House, 1932. In 1818, Josiah Purdy built a Federal style frame house at the corner of Spring and Wooster Streets, likely including a ground floor storefront. The house was home to a succession of working class families on the upper floors, while the ground floor space had by 1870 been converted to a saloon. Charles Von Urban’s 1932 photograph, taken during Prohibition, shows a painted advertisement for Peter Doegler beer (“available in bottles and barrels”) on the upper-floor clapboards along Wooster street, though the storefront itself appears to be available for rent. From 1978-2006, Tennessee Mountain, a barbecue restaurant and bar, operated in the first two floors. The restaurant was likely responsible for the addition of ahistorical ground floor bay windows. A 2006 restoration project replaced the Wooster Street clapboards, refreshed the Spring Street Brickwork, and reverted the bay window alterations.

No. 205 Prince Street, ca. 1977. The corner house is one of two buildings said to have been constructed by Aaron Burr in 1834. Now owned by the artist Anna Thornhill and her husband Simon Nuchtern, the building today remains a residence and includes a studio for Simon's film and subtitling company, Katrina Productions. According to Thornhill, the cellar may have housed a Prohibition-era brewery. After Nuchtern and Thornhill purchased the house in the mid-70s, they hired architects James Swan and Thomas Pritchard to sketch plans for extensive renovations, including an ambitious and as-yet unrealized feature described in a 1976 New York Times feature: a roof made entirely of glass. Edmund Vincent Gillon's late 1970s photo was taken from Father Fagan Square, a small triangular plaza named after a Brazilian-born priest who died rescuing his fellow clergymen from a 1938 fire at the St. Anthony's rectory on Thompson Street.

"I am the Best Artist" on the West Broadway facade of 500 Broome Street, ca. 1986. The mural "I am the Best Artist" is the work of René Moncada, a South American-born artist. He created a number of these self-aggrandizing pieces on walls in SoHo beginning in the 1970s. This mural at West Broadway and Broome was the most prominent, completed in 1986, and measuring 10 foot by 50 foot. It became an iconic and culturally important art piece for the neighborhood and within the NYC art scene, propelling the artist into renown in the art world. The street art here is no longer extant, most of his street art was removed or covered up as the neighborhood began to change and gentrify in the 1990s.

The former site of Bethel AME Church, 214 Sullivan Street, ca. 1944. Though it was demolished more than a century ago, this is the former location of the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church (Bethel AME), the heart of a growing African American community in what was then referred to as “Little Africa”. Before becoming home to the Bethel AME, the site was purchased for the Associated Methodist Protestant Church in 1837, and then sold to the Sullivan Street Methodist Church in 1842. The Bethel AME Church purchased the church in 1862. It is noted on maps of the time as the “Colored Bethel” (1879) and the “African Methodist Church” (1887). In 1895, the church became home to the parish of Our Lady of Pompeii for a short time, which had moved there from Waverly Place. Today, the building at 214 Sullivan Street is a Renaissance Revival factory building that was built in 1899 for a paper box company.

Washington Square Village, an iconic Robert Moses development right across the street from the Center for Architecture. Constructed in the 1950s, Washington Square Village was initially built as a middle-class housing complex, but due to a languishing rental market it was purchased by NYU in 1964 to be used for faculty housing. Those residents who were already living in WSV were able to retain their apartments, some of whom still live there 40 years later! However, it is important to note that Jane Jacobs vehemently opposed the construction of Washington Square Village and University Village. “This is not the rebuilding of cities,” said Jacobs, “this is the sacking of cities.” Jacobs frequently spoke out against “slum clearance” and believed that “There is no logic that can be superimposed on a city; people make it, and it is to them, not buildings, that we must fit our plans.” For Jacobs, the destruction of historic buildings and neighborhoods like Greenwich Village would irreparably harm the city and its inhabitants. Interestingly, Washington Square Village and University Village have become significant historic structures in their own right. Of particular interest are I.M. Pei and James Ingo Freed’s Silver Towers I and II, constructed in 1960 around a courtyard featuring a sculpture by Carl Nesjär and Pablo Picasso. In 2008, the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission designated Washington Square Village and University Village as NYC landmarks. In 2012, NYU submitted a plan to redevelop the empty lots between the superblock’s existing buildings. In response, NYU faculty and Village Preservation formed a coalition to oppose the development; the group claimed victory in 2014. NYU immediately appealed the decision, and it remains to be seen what will happen to this once-reviled development.

Sullivan Street, March 20, 1927. The Raffetto Bros. pasta store is visible in the ground floor of No. 176. Mayor Fiorello La Guardia was born across the street (out of frame) at No. 177.

On May 25, 2020, George Floyd was murdered by then Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin. As Floyd was arrested for supposedly using a counterfeit $20 bill to buy a pack of cigarettes, the officer knelt on the back of his neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds as he lay face down on the street. Despite Mr. Floyd’s pleading with the officer stating “I can’t breathe” several times Chauvin continued to use the non-sanctioned technique to restrain and subdue the victim until he died in what culminated in an extrajudicial murder. All of this was captured on video by witnesses, security cameras at a nearby restaurant, and the body camera of J. Alexander Keung, an officer complicity standing nearby. When the news broke and the footage hit the internet, the country was distraught. At the time, the world was already reeling from the Covid-19 pandemic, in the midst of a near nationwide lockdown with many out of work or working from home. Similar to the ways in which television made the injustices of the Jim Crow South no longer ignorable to Americans around the country it was almost impossible to miss the footage of this event as it proliferated across the internet and media outlets. Yet again, another murder in the seemingly never-ending string of violence committed by police forces against communities of color. Demonstrations began the very next day in Minneapolis. They spread throughout the country and eventually the entire world. All eyes were on this moment and communities mobilized to express frustration with the endemic of police brutality as well as the judicial and societal complacency towards that violence. They also came together in solidarity, ready to confront the reality of the murder, the truth behind the systemic inequalities that allowed the murder to occur, and not just to demand change but actively engage and construct ideas of what that change can and should look like. Things were no different in SoHo, Manhattan; a place that is known to be more aligned with the retail trends of the wealthy rather than a hotbed of community activism. Despite that reality the area was reclaimed by the community and made into a center of direct action. The streets, formerly deserted, were transformed into a parade ground of demonstration and the plywood boards that secured the storefronts of shops that serve the elite were co-opted by local artists and activists to transmit messages that resonated with those concerned with improving the whole of society. Since then, former police officer Derek Chauvin was charged with second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter in the death of George Floyd and the three officers also present: J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas K. Lane, and Tou Thao have been charged with aiding and abetting second-degree murder. It is important to note that this is not justice this is accountability, but it could be a step in the right direction towards preventing further injustices by police. Local artist James Hong realized what was happening and knew it was important to capture and preserve this juxtaposition on display in the midst of a community reclaiming the streets as part of a nationwide response to the murder of George Floyd. In his own words “The poignancy of Soho – the pinnacle of consumerist society – transformed into a platform of social messaging cannot be lost. This may serve as a reminder that no matter how things in society may be beautifully cloaked in delivering subliminal messages of how we should live, a raw but potent social message can subvert it- not with iPhones and high tech, but with messy paint, caulk and spray cans.” James’ actions led to this selection of ten photographs, and many others not included here, to be exhibited at the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space in the fall of 2020. The plywood windows of SoHo are torn down by this point but James and Bill DiPola, director of MoRUS, had the foresight to save the very same plywood in these photos and install them as gallery walls for the pictures to hang on, in effect recreating parts of SoHo within the museum and immortalizing the conversations these boards promoted from their storefronts. They are still on display at MoRUS and will live here on the Urban Archive so that you too might tour the neighborhood during one of its most critical moments of direct action taken by a community in the 21st century.

Last horse-drawn street car, 1917. The last horse-drawn streetcar line, the Bleecker Street & Fulton Ferry Line, finally ended service in 1917. Lasting more than a decade after the opening of the subway, the horse-drawn cars also shared the road with electric streetcars for decades. The Bleecker Street line had been in operation since 1864, transporting passengers from the West 14th Street Ferry in Chelsea to the Fulton Ferry in the Financial District. When it closed in July 1917 it was not replaced with a trolley or bus route.

Mori Restaurant, Bleecker Street, November 21, 1935. 144 Bleecker Street was built 1832 as two townhouses (Nos. 144 and 146). Placido Mori established his Italian restaurant at No. 144 in 1883. In 1920, Mori enlisted then-unknown architect Raymond Hood — who would go on to design several New York skyscrapers, including Rockefeller Center — to create a new facade incorporating No. 146 for an expanded restaurant. As part of Hood’s compensation, he received an apartment upstairs. Mori closed in 1937 and the building was later occupied by another restaurant and a handful of activist organizations. Between 1962 and 1990, the building was home to the well-loved Bleecker Street Cinema. Today the building has been split up again with no. 144 housing a pharmacy and no. 146 a stationary store.

Eve Addams Tea Room, 129 MacDougal Street ca. 1933 In 1925, Eve Kotchever (better known by her pseudonym, Eve Addams) opened her tearoom here at 129 MacDougal Street. She was a Polish-Jewish lesbian immigrant known as the "queen of the third sex" and "man-hater" and supported this opinion with a sign on the door of her establishment that read "Men are admitted but not welcome". The Greenwich Village Quill called the tearoom a place where 'ladies prefer each other". On June 17, 1926, the club was raided by police and Addams was charged with disorderly conduct and with obscenity for her collection of short stories, Lesbian Love. She was deported and was later said to have opened a lesbian club in Paris.

Fugazi Theatre ca. 1923 From 1922 to about 1929, the short-lived though popular Fugazy Theatre stood on this site. Its interior housed 1,687 seats and one screen. Owned by Humbert J. Fugazy (1885-1964), a boxing promoter and prominent Italian resident who grew up in the South Village, the theater was designed by architects Reilly & Hall. A 1922 drawing appearing in The New York Times indicates that it was originally called the MacDougal Theatre, which makes sense since this was the street the entrance faced. Interestingly, plans had also been filed in 1921 to build a three-story brick theater here designed by F. E. Vitolo and C. W. Schlusing with Fugazy and one Anthony Rosetti as the owners. Numerous sources, including the Times article, show that the realized building was a Reilly & Hall design. The article mentions that the theater was five stories, which echoes what we see in the drawing, and that it was expected to open in October 1922. It also notes that “Besides providing an attractive building for the locality it will also furnish excellent entertainment, combining moving pictures with vaudeville.” The theater was touted as the largest in the heart of Greenwich Village at that time, and that Fugazy was the son of a well-known Italian banker in the neighborhood. At the time of the building’s construction, Fugazy lived at 157 Bleecker Street at the corner of Thompson Street. His past residences also included 142 Bleecker Street (at present-day LaGuardia Place) and 39 Charles Street (near West 4th Street). So what happened to the Fugazy Theatre? According to Cinema Treasures, the City purchased the theater in 1929 in anticipation of subway construction. A 1951 aerial shows that the stretch of property now occupying the Passannante Ballfield had long been cleared of any building here.

Construction on the Sixth Avenue extension at Bedford Street, 1928. The six-story buildings at left are 174-178 West Houston Street (although the entrances are actually on Bedford). Until 1925, Sixth Avenue extended only as far South as Carmine Street. As it had done for the 1917 Seventh Avenue extension, the city used eminent domain to clear existing structures between Carmine and Canal Streets— including the entirety of the forgotten Hanover, Congress, and Clark Streets — to make way for construction of the IND Eighth Avenue subway under the new Sixth Avenue extension. The new Eighth Avenue line opened in September 1932, seven years after work began on the extension aboveground.

Washington Square Art Show display on the construction fence for the NYU Law Center, ca. 1950.

St. Anthony of Padua, during subway and street construction on West Houston Street; June 15, 1930. The congregation of St. Anthony of Padua was established in 1859 and was the first Roman Catholic Italian congregation organized in New York City. The first services were conducted at former site of the Church of St. Vincent de Paul on Canal Street. In 1866, the community moved into an edifice that had previously been the Sullivan Street Methodist Episcopal Church. It was organized was a hybrid between a national parish and a territorial parish. It had permission to minister to all Italians, wherever they resided, but it also had geographic bounds and welcomed all those within its borders. It opened a school in 1872, with some 500 Italian and Irish students taught by the Franciscan Sisters of Allegheny. Finally the parish began raising funds for their own purpose-built church. The new church, seen here, was designed by Arthur Crooks in the Romanesque Revival style, and completed in 1888. The church has been featured in a number of motion pictures including the The Godfather, Part II, Moonstruck, and Men in Black.

561 Broadway (center), ca. 1977. The Little Singer Building is a 12-story Art Nouveau structure. Designed by Ernest Flagg for the offices and factory of the Singer Manufacturing Company, the L-shaped building was completed in 1904 (four years before its more massive sister was built further downtown). The main facade on Broadway is a charming mix of brick, steel, terra cotta, and glass rendered in red and green. It features a nine-story recessed central bay. The secondary facade at 88 Prince Street mimics the Broadway frontage. Since 1979 the building has been a co-op with 20 offices and 15 live/work units for artists.

Hudson Park Branch, date unknown (pre-1920). Constructed between 1904 and 1906, the Hudson Park Library was designed by Carrère & Hastings. The library's location was chosen largely due to its proximity to the adjacent Hudson Park. That park, though, was effectively demolished during the south extension of Seventh Avenue. The construction that razed the park though also prompted the construction of a new addition to the building, so that patrons might also enter on the new Seventh Avenue South. The 1920 addition was also designed by the building's original architects. Given its location in an Italian community, the library, from its opening, offered Italian language books. Poet Marianne Moore worked as a library assistant from 1921 to 1925.

504-506 Broome Street, 1939. These two Federal style buildings on the northwest corner of Broome and West Broadway, which were not in the best shape when this photograph was taken, are no longer standing. Gone too, of course, is the elevated line that ran next to them on West Broadway. According to the SoHo Historic District Extension Designation Report no. 376 West Broadway is the same plot as 504-506 Broome, and in 1993 a one-story garage was replaced with the three-story stucco building that now stands on this corner.

Gunther Building, 469 Broome Street, ca. 1975. The 1871 Gunther Building, called "one of \[architect] Griffith Thomas' finest designs" by the Landmarks Preservation Commission, was constructed as a warehouse for the furrier William Gunther. Thomas, a prolific architect of the latter 19th century, was responsible for the design of several recognized buildings in the LPC's 1973 SoHo Cast Iron District. William Gunther was the owner of C.G. Gunther’s Sons, a fur retailer founded by his father, Christian G. Von Gunther, in 1820. According to Time magazine, Gunther's was the only men's fur department in Manhattan that offered "coats made of every kind of fur, from buffalo, favored by post-Civil War tycoons, to collegiate raccoon.” Like many of SoHo's cast iron warehouses, the Gunther Building was converted to live/work loft residences, under a cooperative structure notable for the absence of monthly maintenance fees. Between 1996-2001, the architect Beyhan Karahan, a Gunther resident since 1994, led a restoration of the building's cast iron facade. Upon the project's completion, her firm, Beyhan Karahan and Associates, was recognized by the Preservation League of New York for its faithful restoration.