106-108 East 13th Street is a two-story firehouse constructed in 1928 for the NYFD (originally Hook & Ladder Co. No. 3).

A plaque on the building notes that Greenwich Village Mayor James J. Walker was responsible for its construction.

NYC Mayor James J. Walker, 1926 Walker was a protege of New York Governor Al Smith who lived nearby at 51 Fifth Avenue, while Walker lived most of his life, including during his mayoralty, on St. Luke’s Place. 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. 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.

International Workers Order emblem, 1930-1939 Congressman Vito Marcantonio of East Harlem served as the IWO’s vice president and the leader of its Garibaldi Society. A protégé of Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, Marcantonio served as a critical link between the IWO and the federal government. 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. Within the IWO, Marcantonio supported civil rights 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.

Vito Marcantonio, 1949 Marcantonio was furthermore a strong opponent of the brutal internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. He received a number of letters of thanks for his efforts, including one from George Yoshioka, a War Relocation Camp Internee who wrote to Marcantonio from a camp in Amache, Colorado. Additionally, Congressman Marcantonio proposed a bill to remove the ban on Asian naturalization, receiving an acknowledgement of gratitude from the Japanese American Committee for Democracy. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

70 Fifth Avenue was home to the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief or the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief (later Near East Relief and now the Near East Foundation, the oldest nonsectarian international development organization in the U.S. and only the second humanitarian organization chartered by Congress), founded by Henry Morgenthau Sr., the American ambassador to the Ottoman Empire during World War I.

Henry Morganthau Sr., c. 1913 Morgenthau was the most prominent American political figure to speak out about the Armenian Genocide. He was also the father of Henry Morgenthau Jr., FDR’s Treasury Secretary, and grandfather of Robert M. Morgenthau, the district attorney of Manhattan for 35 years. Today, Near East Relief is credited with saving over a million lives, including 130,000 orphans. The Near East Foundation’s Near East Relief Digital Museum commemorates America’s historic response to the Armenian Genocide by preserving, reconstructing, and sharing the rich history of the relief effort. This history is also showcased in the documentary film They Shall Not Perish. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

59 Fifth Avenue was also home to several members of a family who played an important role in New York and the nation’s politics. William H. Osborn (1820-1894) served as an adviser to New York State Governor and 1876 Presidential popular vote winner Samuel J. Tilden, Osborn is often credited with playing a key role in procuring and providing the evidence which led to Tilden’s exposure of Boss Tweed’s corruption and the downfall of the Tammany Hall ring.

William Church Osborn, c. 1910-1915 Osborn’s son, William Church Osborn (1862-1951) grew up and lived at 59 Fifth Avenue. Though never elected to office, he played a prominent role in New York State politics during his lifetime. In 1894 and 1904 he ran for New York State Senate as an Independent Democrat, and sought the governorship in 1918. In that bid he was endorsed by Franklin D. Roosevelt and put forth at the Democratic convention by Samuel Seabury, but lost the nomination to Roosevelt’s rival Alfred E. Smith (who would come to live just a few doors down from Osborn’s childhood home at 49-51 Fifth Avenue). Though unsuccessful in his bids for elected office, he nevertheless had a profound and lasting impact upon New York State government. He served as president of the Society to Prevent Corrupt Practices at Elections, and chairman of the New York State Democratic Committee. In perhaps his most impactful role, in 1932 he founded the Citizens Budget Commission, serving as its president and chair. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

57 Fifth Avenue was the home of Robert B. Roosevelt (1829-1906) in the mid-to-late 19th century. Roosevelt was the brother of Theodore Roosevelt Sr., uncle of President Teddy Roosevelt, and great uncle of Eleanor Roosevelt. An early and influential conservationist, he is credited with imbuing in his nephew Teddy his dedication to the conservation cause. A Democrat, he nevertheless was a fiercely loyal Unionist during the Civil War, co-founding and helping to lead the Loyal National League, which was established to support the war effort and the maintenance of the Union, and particularly to channel support for Northern and Border State Democrats to the Union (the League was located at 813 Broadway, an extant building also within the proposed historic district).

Robert B. Roosevelt, 1860-1875 After the Civil War, Roosevelt was elected to Congress and eventually appointed Ambassador to the Netherlands (the Roosevelts were of Dutch lineage). Unlike many New York Democrats at the time, he was a staunch opponent of the corrupt Tammany Hall machine, and successfully worked towards its demise. Roosevelt was a trustee representing New York City in the building of the Brooklyn Bridge, and was instrumental in the establishment of paid Fire and Health Departments in New York City. He founded and led for twenty years the New York State Fishery Commission, an early conservation group, and introduced the bill in Congress which established the United States Fish Commission. Shortly after its incorporation in 1884 he also became President of the New York Association for the Protection of Game, whose establishment in 1844 has been described as “the first active steps looking towards game protection in the United States.” Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

Upon its opening in 1929, one of the 51 Fifth Avenue's first residents was Alfred E. Smith, who had just lost the 1928 Presidential campaign to Herbert Hoover.

Alfred E. Smith, 1905-1945 Smith nevertheless holds his place in history as the first Catholic major party candidate for President of the United States.

The Empire State Building, 1932 While living here Smith was the President of Empire State, Inc., the firm which built the Empire State Building in just 13 months, with construction commencing on St. Patrick’s Day 1930 and reaching completion on May 1, 1931. The building remained the tallest in the world from 1931 until 1973, or forty-two years – the longest any building has held that title during the skyscraper era. 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. . . .

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.

Logo for the Progressive Labor Party In 1960, Farrell Dobbs, the presidential candidate of the Socialist Workers party, appeared at a rally at the Albert Hotel. 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.” Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

Around 1842, Cornelius Van Schaak Roosevelt (1794-1871), grandfather of President Theodore Roosevelt purchased at foreclosure the land along Broadway between East 14th and East 13th Streets. At the southwest corner of 14th and Broadway, he built his mansion with gardens extending behind.

Cornelius Van Schaak Roosevelt Following Cornelius’ death in 1871, the family mansion was razed, but his heirs retained ownership of the property and formed the Broadway Improvement Company for the purposes of real estate investment and development.

Robert B. Roosevelt, 1860-1875 In January of 1893, The New York Times announced that the Roosevelt Company would be constructing an eight-story office building at 841 Broadway, at the northwest corner of Broadway and East 13th Street. With Stephen D. Hatch as the architect, the design of this loft building included modern amenities such as three elevators and electric lighting.

James A. Roosevelt, 1896-1899 Completed in the spring of 1894,.the cost of the was $500,000, with James A. Roosevelt and Robert Barnwell Roosevelt (Cornelius’ sons) as principal owners, and W. Emlen Roosevelt, John Roosevelt, and Frank Roosevelt as investors. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

Over the years, a number of political figures stayed at the now-demolished St. Denis Hotel.

Ulysses S. Grant, 1870-1880 General Ulysses S. Grant stayed here after the Civil War to write his memoirs but before becoming president.

Chester A. Arthur, 1882 President Chester A. Arthur stayed here.

Mary Todd Lincoln, 1846-1847 Mary Todd Lincoln also stayed here.

Abraham Lincoln funeral procession, 1865 While some literature claims that Abraham Lincoln stayed here, and he certainly visited the area, including speaking at the nearby Cooper Union, this has not been substantiated. His funeral procession and his body did however go past the hotel in 1865.

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. . . .

836-838 Broadway had been the home of Judge James Roosevelt (of the Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Delano Roosevelt family) and had been Justice of the Supreme Court, United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York and a member of Congress.

Judge James Roosevelt, 1855-1865 His was one of the last homes that remained on this stretch of Broadway, which had become increasingly commercialized, when he died in 1875. In 1876 his family developed the site with the cast-iron building seen here today. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

814 Broadway was home during the Civil War of the Republican Central Club, an organization which advocated for not allowing the southern states to secede and to fight the Civil War to both save the Union and end slavery. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .

The publishing company The Academy Press was located at 112 Fourth Avenue. While operating out of this building, it published a number of texts, including a book by South Dakota’s first Senator, Richard F. Pettigrew. The book, originally published as Triumphant Plutocracy: The Story of American Public Life From 1870 to 1920 and later retitled Imperial Washington, was a searing indictment of the American political system and the direction of the country in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, especially as it regarded capitalism and imperialism.

Richard Pettigrew, 1913 Pettigrew, a lawyer, surveyor, and land developer, was a representative for the Dakota Territory in the U.S. Congress who became a Senator once the Dakotas joined the Union as states. A quixotic and iconoclastic figure, he left the Republican Party in 1896 over the party’s support for adopting the gold standard. Pettigrew was a vocal opponent of the United States’ takeover of Hawaii and the Philippines against the will of the native peoples of those islands, though he paradoxically supported the taking of native American lands here. In 1917 while being interviewed for the Argus Leader, Pettigrew said the First World War was a capitalist scheme intended to further enrich the wealthy, and he urged young men to evade the draft. A felony indictment was then brought against Pettigrew for suspicion of violating the Espionage Act of 1917, the same charge for which Socialist leader Eugene V. Debs was then serving a ten-year Federal prison sentence. Pettigrew assembled a high-powered legal defense team headed by his close personal friend, prominent attorney Clarence Darrow. The trial was repeatedly delayed, and the charge against him finally dropped. Pettigrew had the indictment document framed prominently displayed in his home next to a framed copy of the United States Declaration of Independence, where it remains to this day as part of the Pettigrew House & Museum in South Dakota. Some notable quotes from Triumphant Plutocracy include: • "Capital is stolen labor and its only function is to steal more labor" • "The early years of the century marked the progress of the race toward individual freedom and permanent victory over the tyranny of hereditary aristocracy, but the closing decades of the century have witnessed the surrender of all that was gained to the more heartless tyranny of accumulated wealth. • "Under the ethics of his profession the lawyer is the only man who can take a bribe and call it a fee" • "The sum and substance of the conquest of the Philippines is to find a field where cheap labor can be secured, labor that does not strike, that does not belong to a union, that does not need an army to keep it in leading strings, that will make goods for the trusts of this country" • Of the Republican Party (which he left) "It had come into being as a protest against slavery and as the special champion of the Declaration of Independence, it would go out of being and out of power as the champion of slavery and the repudiator of the Declaration of Independence." • "The Russian Revolution is the greatest event of our times. It marks the beginning of the epoch when the working people will assume the task of directing and controlling industry. It blazes a path into this unknown country, where the workers of the world are destined to take from their exploiters the right to control and direct the economic affairs of the community." Pettirgrew also produced The Course of Empire, An Official Record by Senator R. F. Pettigrew, a collection of his speeches delivered in Congress 1893-1901 condemning American imperialism in Hawaii, the Philippines, and at home.

"The New York Evening Call" issue, 1908 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. 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. 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. . . .

Andrew Jeffries Garvey owned 110-112 East 13th Street until his death in 1897. Garvey was deeply ingrained in New York’s corrupt Tammany Hall political machine, which defined the city and state’s Democratic Party for decades. In the mid-nineteenth century, William M. Tweed was the boss of this network, holding a number of prominent government positions and maintaining an impenetrable “Ring” of support. Tweed’s Ring controlled the distribution of goods and services throughout the state, and made significant profits overcharging for construction work. Garvey was a primary figure in the Ring, participating in one of its greatest frauds: the erection of the Tweed Courthouse at 52 Chambers Street beginning in 1861. According to the building’s 1984 individual NYC landmark designation report, an estimated nine million dollars in graft went into the courthouse's construction, and seemingly every major contractor involved in the project submitted fraudulent bills. Garvey, known as the “Prince of the Plasterers,” received an especially large sum proportional to the work he executed. When Tweed was finally forced to go to trial in 1873, Andrew Garvey gave astonishingly direct and damning evidence against the political boss, contributing to Tweed’s conviction. Fascinatingly, the downfall of Tweed and his Ring can also be attributed in part to cartoonist Thomas Nast of Harper’s Weekly, who brought public attention to their deceitful activities. Considered the father of the political cartoon, Nast was educated at the nearby National Academy of Design at 58 East 13th Street. Click here to send a letter supporting landmark designation of this and other historic buildings south of Union Square. . . .