67 First Avenue; 131-133 East 4th Street Building Date : 1882 Original Use : Residential/Commercial Original Owner : George Roll Original Architect : Julius Boekell Description & Building Alterations This five-story old law tenement was erected in 1882, designed by architect Julius Boekell and owned by George Roll, along with the buildings next to it at Nos. 69, 71 First Avenue and 129 East 4th Street. The building was to be occupied by three stores and 16 families. The building features a bracketed cornice in Queen Anne-style. The window lintels and sills appear to have been stripped, in addition to the quoining on the corner of First Avenue and East 4th Street.

While the holiday season seems to begin earlier and earlier every year, there is a point every winter when New Yorkers know Christmas has actually begun: when the Christmas trees markets come out. But how did this practice come about? Crowding sidewalks with the smell of pine, funneling pedestrians into a gauntlet of jutting branches. The answer involves two essential elements of New York's history: immigration and capitalism.

69 First Avenue Building Date : 1882 Original Use : Residential/Commercial Original Owner : George Roll Original Architect : Julius Boekell Description & Building Alterations This five-story old law tenement was erected in 1882, designed by architect Julius Boekell, along with the building next to it at Nos. 67, 71 First Avenue and 129 East 4th Street. The building features a bracketed cornice in Queen Anne-style. The window lintels and sills appear to have been stripped and the ground floor has been altered. The site was formerly occupied by a three-story flat-roofed building known as Nos. 67-71 First Avenue, home to Roland G. Mitchell & Co.’s paraffine candle manufacturing company. The building burned down in 1882, and “the disaster \[was] little regretted, as the manufactory has been a nuisance to the noses of the inhabitants of the Seventeenth Ward for a decade” (see New York Times article at sidebar).