1 Christopher Street

also 9 Greenwich Avenue, 11 Greenwich Avenue, 7 Christopher Street | West Village | built 1931

Open on the map5 entries

The lot about 1940
About 1940. Via 1940s.nyc
The lot about 1985
About 1985. Via 80s.nyc

The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.

Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.

  1. 1931

    Van Wart & Wien build a 16-story neo-Federal apartment house on Greenwich Avenue

    Despite the Depression, developer Eugene Silber hired Van Wart & Wien to design a tall building on the corner of Greenwich Avenue and Christopher Street. Completed in 1931, it has Federal-style details, setbacks, stone urns and an octagonal cupola, and its apartments are small, one to three rooms. Shops along Greenwich Avenue added income, and Hitchcock Pharmacy took the first one that November on a 12-year lease for a drug store and luncheonette.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1941

    June 10

    Gas fumes reveal a tenant who is a bail-jumping stock thief from Boston

    On June 10, 1941, a smell of gas led to Alfred Cohen's apartment being entered, and he was found unconscious in the kitchen with the stove jets open. Detectives found a note to his wife hinting at swindling, and the clues led them to learn he was wanted in Boston. Cohen had jumped a $10,000 bail on a grand larceny charge for stealing $62,439.23 in stocks and bonds. He was taken to Bellevue Hospital's prison ward.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1963

    November 22

    Curtis Culin, who devised the tank hedgerow plow, is found dead in his apartment

    Curtis G. Culin, a junior executive at the liquor firm Schenley, lived here by the late 1950s. As an Army sergeant in 1944 he proposed welding German beach obstacles to American tanks as plow-like snouts, to get through Normandy hedgerows. He was found dead of natural causes on November 22, 1963. Eisenhower praised the invention on CBS in June 1964, months after Culin's death.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1967

    Tony-winning actor James Patterson lives here with his wife and son

    By the late 1960s the stage and film actor James Patterson was living here with his wife Rochelle Oliver and their son John. He won an Obie in 1961 for The Collection at the Cherry Lane Theater and a Tony as Stanley in Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party. His films included Lilith and In the Heat of the Night. He died of cancer on August 19, 1972, at age 40.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 2020

    The Silber family sells the 138-unit building for $95 million

    Cecil Silber died in July 2004 at age 94; his family had owned 1 Christopher Street for seventy-two years. In 2020 Jimmy Silbert, his son, sold the 138-unit tower to a European investor for $95 million. Because the tower faces the Jefferson Market Garden, it can be seen well from a block away on Sixth Avenue.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

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