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.

Astor Library ARCHITECT: Alexander Saeltzer; Griffith Thomas DATE: 1849-69 STYLE: Northern Italian Renaissance The Library is a three-story brick and stone building with basement and attic story. This structure has special value because each of the three portions of its development has been carefully maintained and constituted a source of stylistic influence over a wide area. Modifications, for the most part, have been few. The Library is developed in a symmetrical plan in an early Renaissance manner. Most of the architectural details of the building stem from North Italian Renaissance work of the first half of the 15th century.

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.

New York's first major library, the Astor Library, founded on Lafayette Street with money donated by financier John Jacob Astor. The Astor is one of three private libraries that merged to form the New York Public Library in 1895.

The Astor Library opened to the public in 1854, and in 1895 consolidated with the Lenox Library and the Tilden Foundation to become the New York Public Library (NYPL). During this time, its building was expanded twice, in 1859 and 1881. In 1898, the Astor Library became part of the new public library at 42nd Street. Subsequently, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society purchased the building to use it as a "receiving station, aid center, dormitory, and synagogue for thousands of newly arrived immigrants." (Christopher Gray in the New York Times) In this iteration, the stacks were removed and the interior was largely reworked by architect Benjamin Levitam. The building was sold once more, in 1965, and just as the developer who bought the structure planned for demolition, it was saved by the newly established Landmarks Preservation Commission. The Commission arranged for the producer of the New York Shakespeare Festival, Joseph Papp, to step in to purchase the building. And thus, the present-day program for the building was born. Aside from major interior reimaginations, the building's front stoop, as the 1875 photo above shows, was restored (though with considerable stylistic difference), to re-establish the connection between Lafayette Street and the building entrance.

Between 1954 and 1957, the Municipal Art Society surveyed historic buildings in all five boroughs to create a database of potential landmarks to preserve. Local residents and MAS staff compiled individual sheets devoted to about 200 buildings. Each sheet outlined the building’s date, location, and style and provided a description and a small photograph. This is the list of Manhattan buildings.

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 I includes buildings constructed between the 1830s and 1850s: Urbanization Begins: The Federal and Greek Revival Period a) 428-432 Lafayette Street, Colonnade Row b) 732 Broadway, "Treffurth's" c) 381 Lafayette Street d) 2 Bond Street e) 58 Bleecker Street, the James Roosevelt House The Development of Social and Cultural Institutions f) 423-437 Lafayette Street, Astor Library (now The Public Theater) The Store and Loft Building Type in the NoHo Historic District g) 645-647 Broadway h) 635 Broadway Cast Iron-Fronted Buildings in NoHo i) 620 Broadway (aka 154 Crosby Street) \-- To progress to Part II of the tour, click here. To skip ahead to Part III of the tour, click here.