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75 Essex Street
75 Essex Street
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1928

75 Essex Street
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IMAGE DATE1928
FromNew York Public Library logoNew York Public Library

75 Essex Street, 1928.

Designed by the architects Rose & Stone, this Italianate-style building is the only one of its kind on the Lower East Side. When construction completed in 1890, the Eastern Dispensary relocated to the building from its previous headquarters on Grand Street. The dispensary was established in 1832 to provide the city's most vulnerable with medical care, during a massive cholera epidemic. Financed through private donations but with operations funded by the city, the facility offered more than just healthcare. It functioned as one of the city's "milk laboratories," providing sanitary milk for infants. Later renamed Good Samaritan Dispensary, the operation served the Lower East Side for over 60 years.

When the dispensary closed in 1955, due to unpaid taxes, the Bell Yarn Shop moved in for a brief period in the 1960s. By 1985, the Eisner Brothers from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, purchased the building, opening a sportswear store on the ground floor.

The future of this historic building has been the subject of debate since 2014, when the Landmarks Preservation Commission rejected a request for Landmark designation. The property, celebrated as a "testimony to social reformers in the late 19th and early twentieth centuries," has been pulled on and off the market since the LPC ruling. If the building is sold, it is the Eisners' stated priority to make sure that it is "left as is on the outside."

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