47 2nd Avenue Building Date : 1867 Original Use : Residential Original Owner : Michael McGovern Original Architect : John O'Neil Description & Building Alterations No. 45 & 47 Second Avenue were constructed together as pre-law tenements on a single tax lot in 1867. This pair of two tenements feature the stone window lintels and sills, cornice supported by modillions and beltcourses. “The earliest tenements were constructed before there was any substantial regulation of this type of housing. The first law that governed the actual physical form of tenements was not passed until 1879 and is known as the ‘old law.’ Thus, the first wave of tenements erected in New York City… are ‘pre-law’ tenements.” – Andrew Dolkart, The South Village: A Proposal for Historic District Designation.

The East Village has long been a richly diverse immigrant neighborhood. It has also served as a hub for cultural movements: the Beats, punk rock, bohemians, Hare-Krishna…the list goes on. Take a walk through the area that was considered the center of counterculture in New York.

By the early 20th century, as the Lower East Side grew, Second Avenue became a bustling thoroughfare, its rowhouse architecture either demolished or converted in favor of buildings hosting a mix of uses. Examples of its building types include: numbers 107 and 72, fanciful, terra-cotta-clad commercial buildings constructed in the late 1920s; number 57, a nine-story New Law tenement that straddled the line between tenement and apartment building; number 43, the avenue’s first office building; and number 32, originally a City courthouse that was converted into the Anthology Film Archives in 1979. In the early 20th century, Second Avenue became known as the “Yiddish Rialto.” In addition to the Jaffe Theater (site # 1), other significant sites include number 66, the Yiddish Public Theater that later served briefly as CBGB’s Second Avenue Theater, and 66 East 4th Street, the New York Turn Verein (German athletic and social club), where America’s first Yiddish-language theater performance is said to have taken place in 1882. Second Avenue between East 7th Street and East 2nd Street is located within the East Village/ Lower East Side Historic District boundaries.