82 Second Avenue Building Date : 1841 Original Use : Residential Original Owner : Elisha Peck Original Architect : Unknown Description & Building Alterations Originally built as a 3 1/2 story Greek Revival-style row house with basement and store, this now four-story with attic building was part of a row of houses at 78 to 84 Second Avenue owned by Elisha Peck. It features a planar brick facade and a molded cornice with short attic-story windows. The two-story storefront extension was installed in 1918, with the cornice and side piers on the extension’s facade. The original stoop has been removed and the window lintels have been stripped.

84 Second Avenue, date unknown. A survivor of a time when many storefronts had the two-story glass fronted facade seen here, 84 Second Avenue has a long and somewhat mysterious history. In the late 19th century the building was Irene Stenard's Temporary Home for Women, a boarding house for working poor women. The address became well known in 1887 when Nellie Brown (the pseudonym of investigative reporter Nellie Bly) checked into this facility before feigning insanity for the purpose of being committed to the institution on Blackwell's Island. The resulting report was published as the scandalous 'Ten Days in a Madhouse.' At some point, likely in the early 20th century, the glass storefront and wooden ornamentation at the roofline were added when it became a commercial space. For many years in the mid-century, the storefront was occupied by a shop that sold tuxedos and formal wear. In 1974 it was the venue of a brutal murder; 40-year-old seamstress Helen Sopolsky was found bludgeoned to death on the second floor. Following the event, the space was abandoned just as it was, supposedly with the fingerprinting dust still marking the furniture. The Sopolsky family is said to still own the building. Though someone it said to have lived on the top floor, the lower floors are a conspicuously empty space. As the neighborhood has revived and boomed in the last few decades, the permanently unlit and dusty 'DRESS FOR HIRE' neon sign has remained unchanged.

80 Second Avenue Building Date : 1841, 1881 Original Use : Residential Original Owner : Elisha Peck (1841), George Roll (1881) Original Architect : Unknown (1841), Julius Boekell (1881) Description & Building Alterations Originally built as a three-story Greek Revival-style row house, this building was part of a row of houses at 78 to 84 Second Avenue owned by Elisha Peck. It was raised to full four stories in 1881. During further alterations in 1920, the stoop was removed and a two-story storefront extension was installed. The existing facade features planar brick, a bracketed roof cornice, a cornice at the second story, and side piers on the 1920 storefront extension. The details of the window lintels have been removed. The neo-Grec cornice may date to the 1881 extension.