The Workingmen’s Cooperative Publishing Association, affiliated with the Socialist Party of New York, was located at 112 Fourth Avenue. The organization published The New York Call, a socialist daily newspaper that ran from 1908 until 1923. The New York Call bears tremendous significance as the first English-language daily affiliated with the Socialist Party in New York, and only the second in the country. As early as 1919, its offices were at 112 Fourth Avenue.

"The New York Evening Call" issue, June 20, 1908 The New York Call was targeted in a number of ways throughout its existence. In 1917, the Postmaster General of the United States determined that the newspaper violated provisions of the Espionage Law, prohibiting it from second-class mailing status. On May Day 1919, according to accounts published in The New York Tribune and The New York Call itself, the newspaper’s office at 112 Fourth Avenue was violently attacked by an organized mob of 100 soldiers, sailors, and marines who chose several known Socialist targets, the most serious of these attacks was at the offices of The New York Call, where at least 12 people were seriously injured, and police reportedly did little or nothing to stop the violence.

"The Masses" cartoon by Robert Minor, 1916 Robert Berkeley "Bob" Minor (1884 – 1952), also known as "Fighting Bob," was a political cartoonist, a radical journalist, and a leading member of the American Communist Party. He became the highest paid cartoonist in America, but left that lucrative work to join left-wing publications and causes, including The New York Call newspaper, which was located here. He eventually ran for multiple political offices in New York and in other parts of the country. Minor attended the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris to hone his craft as an artist. Upon his return to the United States in 1914, Minor, already an ardent leftist, began to make a series of provocative cartoons for the New York World attacking both sides of the European conflict for their imperialism. As the World’s editorial policy shifted towards support for the allied side in the war, Minor was pressured to change the content of his cartoons. He refused, and left the World for The New York Call. He also began contributing anti-war cartoons to Max Eastman's The Masses. Minor's cartoons would later provide a basis for the United States government's prosecution of The Masses for violation of the Espionage Act of 1917, eventually leading to the demise of the magazine. Minor was sent as a war correspondent of The Call to Europe, eventually also writing about the revolutionary movements in Europe for both the Call and the successor to The Masses, The Liberator. In Soviet Russia he met Lenin and wrote anti-war propaganda for distribution to English-speaking troops involved in the invasion of Soviet Russia. While in Paris in 1919, Minor was arrested and charged with treason for advising French railway workers to strike against the shipment of munitions to interventionist forces in Soviet Russia. Minor was shipped out to Germany, where he was confined in the American military prison at Coblenz, Germany for several weeks, eventually gaining his release due in large measure to political pressure exerted by his family in America. From 1923 to 1924, Minor sat on the Executive Committee of the Friends of Soviet Russia, the American affiliate of the Comintern's Workers International Relief organization. Minor was responsible for the Party's "Central Committee for Negro Work," and oversaw the Communists attempts to build unity with Marcus Garvey and his "Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League." Minor had been disappointed by the watering down of the "Negro Equality" proposal the Communists submitted to the founding convention of the Farmer–Labor Party in 1924. He believed the party leadership under William Z. Foster "went along with ... concessions in the hope of mollifying antiblack southern farmers and AFL leaders with an eye toward future cooperation." On March 6, 1930, Minor was part of a great series of demonstrations of the unemployed conducted around the United States under the guidance of the Communist Party. Minor was arrested at the demonstration held in Union Square in New York City, a rally which ended in a riot pitting marchers and police. Minor was arrested in conjunction with these events, together with his Communist Party comrades William Z. Foster, Israel Amter, and Harry Felton. The four were sentenced to 3 year terms in the New York state penitentiary. Bob Minor ran for elective political office a number of times. In 1924 he ran for U.S. Congress in Illinois as a candidate of the Workers Party for an at-large seat. In 1928, he ran on the Workers (Communist) Party ticket for U.S. Senator from New York. He ran for Congress from New York in 1930 and again ten years later. He also ran for Mayor of New York City in 1933, and in 1936 he headed the state Communist ticket as the party's candidate for Governor of New York. On the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, Robert Minor went to Spain and helped to organize the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, a unit of international volunteered that helped the Spanish Popular Front government in the battle against General Francisco Franco and his Nazi-supported fascists. Minor suffered a heart attack in 1948 and was bedridden during the time of McCarthyism when his fellow leaders of the American Communist Party were arrested and imprisoned. Owing to his frail health, the United States government chose not to proceed against him. He died in 1952. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

The International Workers Order (IWO) was located at 80 Fifth Avenue for its entire lifetime, from 1930 until 1954. This progressive mutual-benefit fraternal organization was a pioneering force in the U.S. labor movement, and took some incredibly powerful positions for civil rights. For a quarter of a century, the IWO fought relentlessly for racial equality, interracial solidarity, industrial unions, and social security programs that would protect working-class people.

The International Workers Order originated within the Jewish Workmen’s Circle, but split off from its parent organization shortly after its founding in 1930. Over the course of its lifetime, the IWO offered a vast array of resources to its members. These included low-cost health and life insurance; medical and dental clinics; foreign-language newspapers, cultural, artistic, and educational activities; schools; cemeteries; a summer camp; and so much more. The IWO’s leaders operated under the principle that there would be “No Jim Crow in the IWO,” and at its height, the consortium included 188,000 members from many political, ethnic, and racial backgrounds.

International Workers Order emblem, 1930-1939 In addition to operating as an interracial organization, the IWO supported campaigns such as the federal anti-lynching bill, the permanent Fair Employment Practices Committee, the integration of the armed forces, the elimination of Jim Crow segregation in public facilities, and the protection of black voting rights. It also organized rallies in defense of the “Scottsboro Boys,” the nine black teenagers who were falsely accused of rape and sentenced to death in 1931. The IWO furthermore demanded the integration of Major League Baseball, segregated beaches, and the Stuyvesant Town co-ops in New York City. The IWO’s campaigns were also instrumental in the development of the Social Security Act, the National Labor Relations (Wagner) Act, and other New Deal reforms.

Vito Marcantonio, 1949 Congressman Marcantonio of East Harlem, who served as the IWO’s vice president and the leader of its Garibaldi Society, was a critical ally for the organization. He introduced legislation drafted by the IWO to implement workplace-safety laws and universal health care, and to bar discrimination against Jewish, Italian, and black individuals in war work. Beyond its extensive participation and leadership in the civil rights movement, the IWO recruited its members into industrial unions, and organized workers in packinghouses, steel mills, and automobile companies, among other places. For this work, the IWO received congratulations from Philip Murray, the president of the Steel Workers Organizing Committee and then the Congress of Industrial Organizations. From its beginning, the IWO was the frequent target of House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) investigations, and in 1954 the organization was disbanded following legal action undertaken by the state of New York. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

In the mid-twentieth century the building at 74 Fifth Avenue housed Adelphi Hall, a noted venue for film showings, lectures, and other gatherings related to left-wing causes.

Paul Roberson, 1942 It received multiple mentions in FBI files on figures including Paul Robeson, and in House Un-American Activities (HUAC) documents from the era for investigations of allegedly pro-Communist, pro-Soviet, and pro–Cuban events and activities there. \[Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square.]\(https://bit.ly/southofunionsquare . . .

In 1979 publisher Hamilton Fish moved his magazine The Nation, the oldest continuously published weekly in the country, to 72 Fifth Avenue. First founded in 1865, The Nation covered culture and politics, and called itself “the flagship of the left.” The choice of this location was unsurprising given the area’s history not only as a center of publishing but of left-wing political activity. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

Over its one hundred eight years of existence, 70 Fifth Avenue was the site of a staggering array of political organizing and social activism, frequently intertwined with the world of publishing, as was common in the area. According to Gloria Garrett Samson in her book The American Fund for Public Service: Charles Garland and Radical Philanthropy, 1922-1941, 70 Fifth Avenue was “a haven for radicals and liberals.”

Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) pamphlet, c. 1966 Organizations located here included the NAACP; the American Union Against Militarism; the National Civil Liberties Bureau (which became the American Civil Liberties Union); the League for Industrial Democracy, founded by Upton Sinclair and led by Norman Thomas, which in the 1960s became Students for A Democratic Society, or SDS, and published The Socialist Review from this address; the Citizen’s National Committee for Sacco-Vanzetti; the American Friends of Spanish Democracy; the Press Writers Union; the League for the Abolition of Capital Punishment; and the New York City Teachers Union.

Roger Baldwin While at 70 Fifth Avenue, the American Fund for Public Service was headed by Roger Baldwin. Baldwin was a co-founder and the director of the ACLU for its first thirty years of existence.

"Ulysses" by James Joyce, 1922 He directed the organization’s litigation in the landmark Scopes Monkey Trial, the Sacco and Vanzetti Case, and the challenge to the ban on James Joyce’s Ulysses.

Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom logo 70 Fifth Avenue was also home to the headquarters of many notable peace organizations, including the Woman’s Peace Party’s New York Office, headed by Crystal Eastman. The Woman’s Peace Party had its roots in the August 1914 Woman’s Peace Parade which followed the beginning of World War I and which was intended to call attention to the horrors of the European conflagration. After the parade, the Woman’s Peace Party of New York was established in November of 1914. This was followed by a January 1915 convention of feminists and peace activists from across the country held in Washington D.C., which resulted in the formation of the Woman’s Peace Party by Jane Addams, Carrie Chapman Catt, and Fanny Garrison Villard (the daughter of Henry Lloyd Garrison), of which the Woman’s Peace Party of New York became a regional chapter. The WPP published its periodical Four Lights from its 70 Fifth Avenue offices.

Crystal Eastman, 1914 The WPP eventually became the American chapter of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, which has chapters in 37 countries, and is the oldest women’s peace organization in the United States. The WPP is considered one of the first manifestations of the modern peace movement in America, which employed direct action tactics towards its mission. Prior peace organizations typically limited themselves to more genteel behind-the-scenes lobbying and attempts to influence public opinion in print and oratory.

The “Scopes Monkey Trial.” Clarence Darrow (standing) interrogates William Jennings Bryan (seated), 1925 The New York City Teachers Union was formed at a mass meeting held in 1913 organized by 20 socialist New York City teachers. Originally the organization was called the Teachers League, and Henry Linville was named as the union’s president. In 1916, the Teachers Union banned together with seven other local teacher unions, forming the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). The publication The American Teacher, started in 1912 by Linville and several others, became the voice of the larger organization. The same year the AFT was founded, the Teachers Union and The American Teacher’s offices moved to 70 Fifth Avenue, while AFT offices were located in Chicago. The New York City Teachers Union was the AFT’s largest local chapter, and remained at this address until the Teachers Union split in 1935. The Teachers Union had intimate connections and shared a common cause with many of the other organizations located in this building at this time. John Dewey, one of the founders of the Teachers Union, was also a founding sponsor of the NAACP and an officer of the League for Industrial Democracy. Members of the Teachers Union collaborated extensively with these neighboring organizations, along with The Woman’s Peace Party and the ACLU. In fact, it was Linville who recruited John Scopes to challenge the law against teaching evolution in Tennessee public schools, and who invited the ACLU to participate. The ACLU subsequently urged lawyer Clarence Darrow (a founder of the League for Industrial Democracy) to defend John Scopes in what became the landmark “Scopes Monkey Trial.” Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

Around 1920, when the U.S. Communist Party evolved from the left faction of the newly divided Socialist party, a number of schools teaching the party’s beliefs began to emerge. The New York Workers School, which developed in October 1923, was first located on University Place near Union Square, then moved to 28 East 14th Street, where the Communist Party headquarters was already located. The school sought to promote “true proletarian education” and to build a new generation of workers to advance the labor movement. Later, the school moved to another building within the proposed historic district, 35 East 12th Street.

"The Fighting Worker" issue, February 12, 1947 The Revolutionary Workers League, a radical left group formed by Hugo Oehler and active in the United States from about 1935 until 1947, was also located at 28 East 14th Street in 1936. The League published the Fighting Worker newspaper on site. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

Composer, lyricist, and librettist Marc Blitzstein lived at 4 East 12th Street in the 1950s.

Marc Blitzstein performing “The Cradle Will Rock,” January 3, 1938 Blitzstein is best known for his pro-union musical The Cradle Will Rock, directed by Orson Welles and shut down by the Works Progress Administration. He is furthermore remembered for his English translation/adaptation of The Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill; Regina, an opera for Broadway; and his orchestral work, The Airborne Symphony, which premiered under Leonard Bernstein in 1946. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

In the 1930s 28 East 12th Street housed the Fourth International Socialist Worker’s Party Bookstore.

"Ulysses" by James Joyce, 1922 Before that, in 1928, Samuel Roth’s Book Store was located here. Roth (1893-1974) was a writer, poet, publisher, entrepreneur, crusader against censorship and all-around schemer, best known for publishing unauthorized excerpts of James Joyce's Ulysses in the United States, and for being the plaintiff in a landmark case before the U.S. Supreme Court that redefined what constitutes obscene material unprotected by the First Amendment. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

By 1937, Barney Gallant opened a restaurant in the raised basement level of 86 University Place called “The Royalist.” By the early 1940s, the establishment expanded to the first floor with a cabaret. Gallant, a lifelong bachelor, was an opponent of Prohibition and had gained celebrity as the first person in New York to be prosecuted under the Volstead Act in 1919 for serving alcohol. When police prepared to arrest several of his waiters for serving alcohol, Gallant took full responsibility, refused to comply with the law, and was sent to the Tombs for thirty days. Following this, Gallant opened a series of successful speakeasies and cafes throughout the neighborhood that earned him the name “The Mayor of Greenwich Village.” Originally from Hungary, Gallant was a member of the Liberal Club in the 1910s. The Liberal Club was a social, political, and artistic organization founded as a lecture society in 1912 which ran until 1918. It quickly evolved into a gathering place for free thinkers, especially those with feminist, socialist, anarchist, and bohemian leanings. Throughout its lifetime, the club was known for its experimental theater and political demonstrations. Gallant also worked for a time as the business manager of the Greenwich Village Theater, and was Eugene O’Neill’s first roommate upon his arrival to New York. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

Grove Press, called “the era’s most explosive and influential publishing house” and “the most innovative publisher of the postwar era,” produced incredibly important pieces of 20th century literature while working aggressively and effectively to transform American culture in relation to issues of censorship, sexuality, race, and class. Founded in 1947, in 1964 Grove Press moved to 80 University Place, where its Evergreen Review published an issue bearing the iconic image of Che Guevara on its cover and salutes to him inside. In response, a group of anti-Castro terrorists bombed the Press’ offices. According to a lawsuit filed in Federal Court by Rosset and Grove Press, the publishing house’s offices at 80 University Place were subject to wiretapping and sabotage by the C.I.A. The suit charged that unidentified anti‐Castro Cubans employed or controlled by the C.I.A. bombed the New York offices of Grove Press on July 26, 1968 in connection with the agency’s domestic United States operations.

"Evergreen Review" issue The agency wire-tapped the telephones of Grove Press and Mr. Rosset, collected the wiretapped information in an intelligence file, and divulged the contents to others. Impersonation and disguise were used to “infiltrate” Grove Press, and a “mail watch” was conducted against the plaintiffs that included opening and copying their correspondence. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

In the 1950s, 70 University Place was the home of the union organizer and civil rights advocate David Livingston, a confidante of Martin Luther King Jr. who arranged a meeting between King and John F. Kennedy in 1960.

United Auto Workers logo Under Livingston’s leadership, District 65 of the United Auto Workers became one of the earliest supporters of the Civil Rights movement. Livingston was also notable for his early outreach to women and marginalized communities. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

37 East 13th Street was formerly composed of a pair of rowhouses built prior to 1853.

Communist Party emblem In the 1940s the building served as the headquarters of the Communist Party, formerly located at 32 East 12th Street and 835 Broadway. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

Local 1L of the Amalgamated Lithographers of America (ALA) is located at 113 University Place. The ALA was founded in January 1915 with the incorporation of the Stone and Plate Preparers Association and the Union of Litho Workmen. The organization began even earlier as the Romar Fishing Club, a group of craftsmen who met under this guise in April of 1882. Together, they developed a plan to protect their craft and their standard of living, fighting against layoffs, piece work, wage cuts, unhealthy working conditions, and exploitation. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

97 University Place is a 10-story neo-classical style commercial building constructed in 1899 for James Stanley by William C. Hazlett.

Textile Workers Union of America emblem For at least sixty years it housed the offices of the Textile Workers Union of America. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

Over the years, the four buildings that comprised the Albert Hotel hosted many of the most prominent names in American arts, literature, music, and radical politics. In 1906, Ivan Ivanovich Norodny, the chief executive commissioner of the Russian Military Revolutionary Party, stayed at the Albert Hotel while working to establish American headquarters for the revolution. According to an article in The Gazette Montreal, he sought one million signatures for a petition to the Czar praying for liberty, justice, and amnesty. That same year, the New York Times reported a rumor that Russian author and revolutionary Maxim Gorky was staying here as well. Wolf Lindenfeld, who was a suspect in the Wall Street bombing of 1921, passed through the Hotel Albert later that year.

The “Scopes Monkey Trial.” Clarence Darrow (standing) interrogates William Jennings Bryan (seated), 1925 In 1925, John Thomas Scopes came to New York City and stayed at the Albert Hotel. Scopes, the Dayton, Tennessee school teacher who tried to teach evolution and ignited the “Scopes Monkey Trial,” came to the city to search for supporters, and here met his lawyer, Clarence Darrow. His story was subsequently portrayed in the play and film Inherit the Wind. The People’s Radio Foundation moved to the Albert Hotel in 1946. According to an account released by The Afro-American, the organization sought to “buy and set up a radio station for broadcasting programs that never get through the sponsors” and develop programs that would “stress interracial unity and the brotherhood of man.”

Photo by Berenice Abbott, 1935 In 1948, members of the amateur photographer’s group the Photo League leased space in the basement of the hotel. Members at the time included Paul Strand, Sid Grossman, Walter Rosenblum, Arthur Leipzig, Nancy Newhall, Barbara Morgan, Ruth Orkin, and Berenice Abbott. The Photo League, which operated throughout the Depression, World War II, and Red Scare periods, emerged from the worker’s movement. The photographers who were part of this group used documentary photography to draw attention to issues of class, labor, and equity. The Photo League was also a gathering place for first-generation Jewish-Americans. In 1947, as McCarthyism rose in prominence, the League was blacklisted for its alleged connection to the Communist Party. Although a number of national figures including Ansel Adams, Beaumont and Nancy Newhall, and Paul Strand stood up in support of the organization, the League was forced to disband in 1951.

"The Daily Worker" issue, March 6, 1930 John J. Huber, an undercover FBI agent in the Communist Party, attended a meeting at the Hotel Albert in 1945. Harvey Matusow, an FBI informant, attended a Communist party event here in 1950. In 1958, John Gates, the editor of the Daily Worker, the official communist daily newspaper, spoke to reporters at the Albert Hotel about his resignation from the Communist Party. Leaving the party and quitting his editorship after ten years, he said he was going to “rejoin the American people” and “find out what Americans are thinking about.” Two years later, in 1960, Farrell Dobbs, the presidential candidate of the Socialist Workers party, appeared at a rally at the Albert Hotel.

Logo for the Progressive Labor Party Then, in 1965, the Progressive Labor Party was founded here after a four-day convention. The party emerged from the Progressive Labor Movement as a party of “revolutionary socialism.” Elia Katz, author of Armed Love: Inside America’s Communes (published 1971), spoke about staying at the Albert in this book. Radical and writer Mary Heaton Vorse was also a guest at the Hotel Albert at one point.

The University Place Book Shop, one of Book Row’s longest-running shops, was also at one point located at 69 University Place. Opened by Walter Goldwater in 1932, the business was listed at 105 University Place in 1936-37, then moved to 69 University Place in 1939, and finally ended up at 821 Broadway, where it stayed from at least the 1970s through 1995. Goldwater opened the bookstore with the help of bookdealer and scout Abe Sugarman, who was also the uncle of Goldwater’s wife, Eleanor Lowenstein. Goldwater was the son of the influential political radical Dr. Abraham Goldwater, who was personally acquainted with renowned figures such as John Reed, Emma Goldman, James Weldon Johnson, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Arthur Spingarn. The University Place Book Shop was renowned for its extensive selection of books by Black authors and on the subjects of Black Studies, Caribbean Studies, and African Studies. While running the store, Goldwater sustained friendships with venerable Black authors including Langston Hughes and Claude McKay, and his customers included Historically Black Colleges and Universities such as Atlanta, Fisk, Howard, and Tuskegee Universities. In the 1950s, Goldwater issued a new edition of Du Bois’ Black Reconstruction. The bookstore’s collection also covered the topics of chess, incunabula, Russia, radicalism, communism, socialism, and the political left. Goldwater was married to Eleanor Lowenstein, the proprietor of the Corner Book Shop at 102 Fourth Avenue. The couple lived together above Lowenstein’s shop, and both were deeply involved in the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America, for which Goldwater was a founding member. Goldwater made philanthropic contributions to the Schomburg Center, another one of his frequent customers, and to the New York Public Library. Yale and Columbia Universities were also customers, and hold some of the Book Shop’s collection. When his store closed in 1995, NYU paid $47,500 for Goldwater’s collection. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

The Social Reform Club at 45 University Place boasted a membership featuring the city’s most renowned reform leaders, and attempted to confront the most pressing issues facing working people locally and internationally. The Social Reform Club was formally organized in 1894 to cultivate consciousness about, and organize around the improvement of, industrial and social conditions. As a critical part of this mission, it sought to unite working people with their allies. Poet and reformer Ernest Howard Crosby helped found the Club after a meeting with political economist and journalist Henry George in late 1894. Its first president was Charles Spahr, who worked as the author and editor of Outlook magazine. Dr. Anne M. Filiaci writes that the Social Reform Club leadership also included lawyer Edmund Kelly, former New York State Assemblymember Ernest Crosby, and Ethical Culture Society-founder Felix Adler. Labor union leader Samuel Gompers, Progressive leader Josephine Shaw Lowell, and author William Dean Howells were also part of the club’s advisory board.

Samuel Gompers, 1902 According to Samuel Gompers’ published papers, the group required that half of the members be wage earners, and the Club’s 1898 annual report — cited by the editors of Gompers’ papers — revealed that over one third of the club’s 310 members were in fact wage earners. In addition to hosting classes, lectures, and conferences, documented widely in newspapers of the time, the Club coordinated non-partisan support of legislation. Dr. Filiaci similarly emphasizes the Club’s attempt to strike a balance between exploring political ideologies and developing practical solutions. Originally, the group met regularly at rooms on Bond Street, before moving to a now-demolished building at 28 East 4th Street. Around the turn of the century, the Social Reform Club was located at 45 University Place.

Lillian Wald, 1905-1945 The Social Reform Club is mentioned in a number of biographies of New York City’s most prominent reformers, especially women, illuminating how much of an influence it had on shaping the politics and networks of these individuals. Lillian Wald; labor leader Leonora O’Reilly; philanthropist and activist Louise Perkins; Greenwich House founder Mary Kingsbury Simkhovitch; civil rights activist Mary White Ovington; socialist, suffragist, and settlement house worker Florence Ledyard Cross Kitchelt; and writer and women’s movement leader Charlotte Perkins Gilman were all associated with the Club. The Club’s membership also included labor activist and educator Edward King, attorney and activist Edward Warren Ordway, journalist Jacob Riis, economist E.R.A. Seligman, journalist and editor Albert Shaw, and public parks and settlement activist Charles Stover. Without a doubt, the Social Reform Club played a profoundly significant role in the lives of the city’s most renowned and influential reformers, and in shaping the movements in which they were involved. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

Starting in 1927, 35 East 12th Street housed the headquarters for the Communist Party of the United States; the office of Earl Browder, the party’s general secretary and a presidential candidate; the plant of the Daily Worker, the official communist daily paper; the Jewish Daily Freiheit, the Jewish communist paper; the Communist Worker’s bookshop and workers school; the Young Communist League; and the National Negro Congress.

Communist Party emblem On June 20, 1940, the building made national news when the offices of the German Consulate and the Communist party headquarters at 17 Battery Place were bombed within an hour of each other.

"The Daily Worker" issue, March 6, 1930 The address was invoked frequently in federal Red Scare hearings in the 1950s. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

In the 1930s the Workers Laboratory Theater was located at 42 East 12th Street. Distinguishing itself from the elite Broadway theaters, the Workers Laboratory Theatre hoped to engage the working class and often ventured out to union meetings, factories, and public spaces to do so. The theatre also used minimal props and sets, and often ended its performances with calls for action. From 1931 until 1933, it published the Workers Theatre magazine with a subscription cost of $1.50 per year. This building eventually became the subject of investigations by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

In the 1930s, the newspaper New Militant, the weekly organ of the Workers Party of the U.S., was published from 55 East 11th Street.

“New Militant” issue, April 13, 1935 Around the same time several Trotskyite organizations were located here. The Workers Party of the United States was established in December 1934 by a merger of the American Workers Party and the Trotskyist Communist League of America. The party was dissolved in 1936 when its members entered the Socialist Party of America en masse. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

Anvil and Student Partisan was a leading, nationally-circulated, radical student magazine published throughout the 1950s. The original publication known as Anvil was created by the New York Student Federation Against War, which was composed of social and radical campus clubs in New York City. Anvil merged with Student Partisan, published by the Politics Club of the University of Chicago, in the Spring of 1950, and became Anvil and Student Partisan. The magazine released twenty issues in total. Beginning with the Summer-Fall Issue of 1954 and through to the Winter Issue of 1958, Anvil and Student Partisan published from 36 East 10th Street.

Igal Roodenko Igal Roodenko was a printer, anti-capitalist, socialist, and anti-war and civil rights activist whose parents were Jewish immigrants from Ukraine. Over the course of his life, Roodenko participated in a number of the most significant civil rights and social justice movements of the twentieth century, including the first Freedom Ride, for which he was arrested in 1947. During World War II, Roodenko was a conscientious objector, and served 20 months in federal prison from April 1945 to December 1946. While here, he wrote letters to government officials and other figures about securing amnesty for imprisoned conscientious objectors, and received replies of support from Albert Einstein, Emily Greene Balch, Eric Sevareid, and Dorothy Thompson. From 1947 to 1977, Roodenko was on the executive committee of the War Resisters League, serving as its Chairman from 1968 to 1972. When Roodenko was released from prison, he founded the Libertarian Press with Dave Dellinger, who had also been imprisoned as a conscientious objector. In 1950, Roodenko started his own press, which he maintained for about two decades. In 1957, his business was listed at 36 East 10th Street. In his later life, Roodenko spoke openly about being gay, and supported the Gay Liberation movement. Upon his death, he was part of the group Men of All Colors Together, which confronted racism in the gay community. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

The University Place Book Shop, one of Book Row’s longest-running shops, was opened on University Place by Walter Goldwater in 1932. The business was listed at 105 University Place in 1936-37, then moved to 69 University Place in 1939, and finally ended up at 821 Broadway, where it stayed from at least the 1970s through 1995. Goldwater opened the bookstore with the help of bookdealer and scout Abe Sugarman, who was also the uncle of Goldwater’s wife, Eleanor Lowenstein. Goldwater was the son of the influential political radical Dr. Abraham Goldwater, who was personally acquainted with renowned figures such as John Reed, Emma Goldman, James Weldon Johnson, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Arthur Spingarn. The University Place Book Shop was renowned for its extensive selection of books by Black authors and on the subjects of Black Studies, Caribbean Studies, and African Studies. While running the store, Goldwater sustained friendships with venerable Black authors including Langston Hughes and Claude McKay, and his customers included Historically Black Colleges and Universities such as Atlanta, Fisk, Howard, and Tuskegee Universities. In the 1950s, Goldwater issued a new edition of Du Bois’ Black Reconstruction. The bookstore’s collection also covered the topics of chess, incunabula, Russia, radicalism, communism, socialism, and the political left. Goldwater was married to Eleanor Lowenstein, the proprietor of the Corner Book Shop at 102 Fourth Avenue. The couple lived together above Lowenstein’s shop, and both were deeply involved in the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America, for which Goldwater was a founding member. Goldwater made philanthropic contributions to the Schomburg Center, another one of his frequent customers, and to the New York Public Library. Yale and Columbia Universities were also customers, and hold some of the Book Shop’s collection. When his store closed in 1995, NYU paid $47,500 for Goldwater’s collection. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

The St. Denis Hotel, located at 799 Broadway until 2019, was once one of the most elegant and desirable hotels in the country. In the twentieth century, the hotel was converted into a modern store and office building, and in the 1920s a number of labor unions and leftist organizations moved in. The Lyceum-Literature Department of the Workers Party of America, the American Negro Labor Congress, the Miners’ Relief Committee, the the State Committee of the Communist Party, and the Workers’ Music School all resided here. The National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners, chaired by Theodore Dreiser, and the Peace Information Center, chaired by W.E.B. Du Bois, operated out of this building as well.

American Negro Labor Congress, c. 1929 A flurry of leftist publications emerged from the St. Denis during these years. The Marxist New Horizons for Youth was published out of Room 235, and the American Negro Labor Congress published The Liberator out of Room 338.

"Labor Defender" issue, September 1929 The International Labor Defense released Labor Defender from Room 430, and the W.E.B. Du Bois-founded Freedomways: A Quarterly Review of the Negro Freedom Movement came out of Room 542. The Labor Research Association also published leftist pamphlets from Room 634, which it sold for five or ten cents.

Lorraine Hansberry Mentions of the St. Denis appear frequently in the House Committee on Un-American Activities files from this period. Prominent figures of the African American civil rights movement, including Lorraine Hansberry, Malcolm X, Paul Robeson, and James Baldwin were all connected with the organizations housed in this building and deemed “subversive.” Furthermore, Lee Harvey Oswald, who assassinated President John F. Kennedy, was a member of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, located in in Room 329.

Flag of the International Brigades For about four decades, the building housed the offices of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA), established in 1978. Created to honor the legacy of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, a group of 2,800 Americans who volunteered to fight fascism during the Spanish Civil War, ALBA works to promote social activism and defend human rights. According to a 2017 article by author Jeremiah Moss, written just before the St. Denis Hotel was demolished, ALBA was run by Marina Garde. The office of the organization was in Room 341, which was filled with books about the Spanish Civil War, a bronze bust of Spanish Communist leader Dolores Ibárruri, and a map of Spain.

In late 2018, after plans were announced to demolish the historic building to make way for another tech-related development, Village Preservation staged a protest outside the building attended by hundreds of local residents. Nevertheless the city refused to act, and in 2019 the building was demolished, with the new office tower replacing it. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of extant historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

From at least 1940 until at least 1955, Dr. Otto Nathan, a professor of law and economics who fled Nazi Germany, lived at 55 East 10th Street. Nathan was a close friend and sole executor of the estate of Albert Einstein after his death in 1955. While residing here, Harris was subpoenaed and questioned by the House Un-American Activities Committee. He declined to answer questions from the committee, saying he believed that ''no Congressional committee has the right to inquire into the political beliefs of American citizens.'' In 1955, Nathan forced the State Department, by court action, to grant him a passport after he swore that he had never been a member of the Communist Party. In 1957, he won an acquittal on a contempt of Congress charge stemming from the confrontation with the House committee. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

The home of a number of garment industry manufacturing and wholesale companies throughout its early history, 832-834 Broadway was one of many sites impacted by a shirtwaist strike and picket line in 1901. This landmark act of resistance, which included 20,000 garment workers and impacted 500 companies, sparked a series of similar strikes in its wake. Strikes in this neighborhood were further bolstered in 1911 following the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire at the Asch Building, eventually leading to the formation of labor organizations such as the International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU).

Communist Party emblem From 1940 to about 1960, a series of publishing companies associated with the Communist Party U.S.A. (CPUSA) operated out of this building. The Workers Library Publishers, owned by CPUSA, became tenants in 1940, followed by New Centuries Publishers around 1945. By 1950, Mass and Mainstream had moved in. According to the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission’s designation report for the building (which became a NYC individual landmark in 2019), the latter two publishers mainly produced leaflets and pamphlets for the Party.

"The Daily Worker" issue, March 6, 1930 In 1956, The Internal Revenue Service seized books and other written material from New Century Publishers, which published The Daily Worker. In response, the publisher sued in Federal Court, forming the Independent Emergency Committee for a Free Press to pay for the court costs. The newly developed committee then held a fundraiser at 832-834 Broadway. Notably, W.E.B. DuBois was a founding member. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

In 1925, E. & R. Rosenberg had leased a space at 806-808 Broadway. Described as “one of the largest manufacturers of men’s clothing in the country,” the company did not hire union workers. This drew the attention of an armed union gang called a “visiting committee,” which sought to force the business to hire people in the union. In July of that year, six armed men arrived at 806-808 Broadway, rounded up nine workers at gunpoint, and poured sulphuric acid on $60,000 to $100,000-worth of overcoats. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

The photographer Aaron Siskind (December 4, 1903 – February 8, 1991) lived and had a studio here beginning in the 1930s, above the famed Corner Book Shop.

Aaron Siskind, 1950 A native of the Lower East Side, Siskind graduated from City College in 1926 and taught in New York’s public school system between 1926 and 1949. He first rose to prominence in the 1930s as a member of the socially-conscious New York Photo League, for which he created his celebrated photo series Harlem Document, “one of the most important visual records of Harlem during the Great Depression,” which contained many photos not published until 1981. Harlem Document was a moving series of portraits as well as scenes of street and home life in Harlem from 1932-1940. Part of a larger project initiated by the Photo League to examine urban neighborhoods, it was funded in part by the Federal Writers Project and included textual documentation of the community and its subjects as well. This was quickly followed by Siskind’s series “The Most Crowded Block in the World” which also focused on African American life and subjects in New York. These two projects collectively provide one of the most extensive and insightful documentations of African American life in New York and specifically in Harlem during this time. In 1936, Siskind founded the League’s Feature Group, which documented New York City, focusing especially on Harlem. Siskind’s other work for the League included projects “The Catholic Worker Movement” and “Dead End: The Bowery.” Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

This building housed the influential bi-weekly Italian anti-Fascist publication Il Mondo, which began publication in 1938. With the fall of France in 1940, many Italian anti-Fascists who had fled Mussolini and took refuge there then came to the United States, particularly New York. This led to a flowering of Italian language anti-Fascist publications, of which Il Mondo was the first, as its publishers’ escape to New York pre-dated Hitler’s victory in France. Il Mondo was also arguably the most influential of this breed of papers. Upon its launch in 1939, Time Magazine said, “The best Italian refugee and Italian-American brains in the U.S. last week launched in New York City a new anti-Fascist paper, Il Mondo ("An Italian Daily with American Ideals"). Even as it appeared, democracy won a dramatic victory over Fascism in the U.S. Italian-language press.” Il Mondo worked to influence Italian Americans to oppose the Fascist regime in Italy. It also, especially in the later war years, tried to influence American policy towards regime change and reconstruction in Italy, with an eye towards supporting social democratic forces within the country. In the years leading up to and upon America’s entry into the war, Il Mondo consistently called out Fascist sympathizers in America, and its reporting and investigation was used by both the mainstream press and the U.S. government to highlight and address creeping Fascism in the United States. One such paper which used this material was Fortune Magazine, which in 1940 called Il Mondo “the finest anti-fascist paper in the United States.” Il Mondo’s founder and publisher was Giuseppe Lupis (1896-1979), a journalist and prominent member of the Democratic Socialist Party of Italy who left Italy in 1926 along with many prominent Italian leftists and anti-Fascists in the face of Mussolini’s crackdown on political opponents. After the war he returned to his homeland and was elected to the Italian National Assembly as a Socialist representing Ragusa in southern Sicily. He went on to hold various offices and served in various government positions in Italy, including as Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

Abbie Hoffman (November 30, 1936 — April 12, 1989) was a political activist and 1960s counterculture icon. Hoffman is well known for founding the Youth International Party, called the “Yippies,” a political group without official membership or leadership. He was also part of the “Chicago 7,” a group of activists who coordinated anti-Vietnam war protests at the Democratic National Convention in 1968 and were indicted by a grand jury the following year. The defendants used the trial as a way to draw attention to their cause over six months, coordinating demonstrations and appearances by celebrity activists.

Abbie Hoffman, 1989 According to FBI files on Hoffman, he was residing at 114-116 East 13th Street as of December, 1970. The book Assault on the Left: The FBI and the Sixties Antiwar Movement by James Kirkpatrick Davis and Edwin Hoyt states that Hoffman and his wife Anita lived in a rooftop apartment in this building. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

109 East 12th Street is a 5-story residence with commercial ground floor uses constructed in 1854.

Transport Workers Union of America emblem In the 1930s and 1940s, it served as a meeting house for the Transport Workers Union. The union was founded by Michael J. Quill in New York in 1934, at the height of the Great Depression, to organize the city’s transit workers. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

The Delehanty Institute, once the city’s leading civil service school, was started by Michael J. Delehanty. A former deputy sheriff and attendant in the State Supreme Court, Delehanty envisioned that the Institute would provide students with a civil service education that included mental preparation in addition to physical preparation. His approach was unprecedented, and went on to transform the quality of civil service examinations and civil service education more broadly. According to a 1941 profile of Delehanty in The New Yorker, the school had graduated 350,000 students by that time. It further boasted that approximately 90 percent of the city’s policemen and 80 percent of its firemen were graduates of the Institute. Delehanty’s school, it stated, had a larger enrollment than all the city’s other civil service schools combined. A 1955 historic map shows the building at 117 East 11th Street labeled as the “Delehanty Institute.” The building is further referred to as the “Delehanty Electronics School” and “the television-repair school, the Delehanty Institute” in 1961 and 1976 publications, respectively. The Delehanty Institute also occupied 126-128 East 12th Street, where it trained women in mechanical work critical to the defense industry during the Second World War. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

Webster Hall was designed in 1886-87 by architect Charles Rentz. In its early years, Webster Hall was a center of leftist, anarchist, and union political activity, and gathering place for the city’s working class, whether it was for union rallies or for evening entertainment. In 1888, the Brooklyn Eagle described Webster Hall as “a big, bare, dingy place, where all the year round discontented men meet to discuss their wrongs and sympathize with one another, and where secret societies and political organizations, labor unions and similar associations make a business of pleasure. It is a grimy neighborhood, where the rattle of trade continues all day and leaves poverty to toss itself to sleep at nightfall.”

"The Masses" issue, June 1914 The hall hosted notable figures including labor leader Samuel Gompers, who came for a meeting of striking brewery workers in 1888, as well as social activists like Emma Goldman, Margaret Sanger, and Dorothy Day. The Progressive Labor Party was formed Webster Hall in 1887, and the founding convention of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America took place here in December 1914. In 1913, the Greenwich Village-based socialist magazine The Masses held a fundraiser at this location, sparking Webster’s Hall’s next era, in which it became a home for masquerade balls. These events attracted a bohemian crowd throughout the Prohibition period. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

64-66 Fifth Avenue was the first home of the Martha Graham dance studio where Anna Sokolow, “the rebellious spirit” of modern dance, practiced and worked.

Anna Sokolow in Kaddish, 1945. Courtesy of the Sokolow Dance Foundation. . Anna Sokolow was a member of the Martha Graham Dance Company from 1930-1939, which was located at 64-66 Fifth Avenue. Sokolow was the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants. Her mother Sarah worked in the garment trade, where she was active in both the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) and the Socialist Party. Through her mother’s work, Sokolow became invested in improving the conditions of workers.

Program from Anna Sokolow's official debut on November 14, 1937. . Anna Sokolow was highly motivated by the labor movement during the Great Depression. She is regarded as one of the Works Progress Administration’s (WPA) ’s most exceptional figures. The work she created for the WPA spoke to social issues such as economic inequality which inspired Sing for your Supper. This work shrewdly satirized the excesses of wealthy Americans while workers waited for their due. Throughout the performance, the “Uncle Sam” character wasn’t able to hold his tune. Sokolow said “The unions were really my first audience. Poets or writers would read their work, singers and dancers would perform in their halls.” Her dance pieces connected the struggle for workers’ equality with the true and public expression of one’s self, something that truly resonated with the working class audience it came before. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .