The Jennings Building

10 East 14th Street | also 5 East 13th Street | Greenwich Village | built 1930

Open on the map7 entries

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

  1. 1879

    September 13

    Five floors of the partly demolished McCurdy mansion collapse, and the buried workmen are dug out alive

    An earlier building on the site, Robert S. McCurdy's Union Square mansion, was being altered for linen dealer James McCutcheon. At about 12:40 p.m. on September 13, 1879, five of its floors fell on masons and laborers; four workers were missing. The Times blamed the neighboring site at No. 8, where builder J. J. Marsh had reused unsafe floor beams from the demolished Aldrich mansion. Rescuers sawed through timber and found the men, none seriously hurt.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1884

    December 20

    W. Jennings Demorest converts No. 10 East 14th Street into stores, offices and studios

    Demorest had led the commercial takeover of Union Square, and by 1881 had converted some fourteen private houses into stores. The Record and Guide of December 20, 1884 said he planned two separate stores on the ground floor of No. 10, with offices and studios above. The building's cast-iron facade has engaged Corinthian columns, incised floral piers and a heavy cornice, now topped by a penthouse.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1887

    January 26

    A salesman who lost a $2 commission fires a revolver at his boss and is tackled by a piano dealer

    Daniel Galway sold clothing on commission for Henry S. Tappan's Metropolitan Manufacturing Company. When a customer returned a cloak, Tappan withheld the $2 commission, and on January 26, 1887 Galway stormed in and was ordered out. He drew a gun and fired, wounding Tappan's right hand, then ran toward University Place, threatening anyone who interfered. Piano dealer C. B. Dickinson, who had joined the chase, grabbed and disarmed him.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1891

    June 19

    Clarissa Lathrop opens the Lunacy Law Reform League and Anti-Kidnapping Union in Room 6

    On June 19, 1891, Clarissa C. Lathrop opened offices here for the Anti-Kidnapping Union and the Lunacy Law Reform League, inviting anyone who feared being sent to an asylum to ask for an investigation. She said the league had about a dozen cases open. In October she arranged the release of Cincinnati candy maker John B. Ransley, whom his mother and sister had seized in Newark and sent to an asylum after he married.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1893

    Milt R. Goodkind, inventor of a coin-operated newspaper dispenser, works from the building

    In 1893 the building housed Milt R. Goodkind, who invented a newspaper vending machine that took coins. The Sun described his device as an eight-foot hardwood cabinet topped by a clock, thermometer and calendar, with a mirror and nickel slots below. It also carried railroad time cards, directories of churches and theaters, two writing desks, a letter box and files of the previous day's papers.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  6. 1894

    The New York City Woman Suffrage League moves its headquarters here to campaign before the constitutional convention

    In 1894 the New York City Woman Suffrage League, led by Lillie Devereux Blake, moved to 10 East 14th Street, in the middle of the high-end shopping district, to reach wealthy women as the state prepared to revise its constitution. A May 7 rally at Cooper Union announced the office would stay open all summer. The league gathered 332,000 petition names and over $10,000 for lobbying, and won the right to send delegates, though the convention narrowly declined to back a suffrage amendment.

    Source: Village Preservation

  7. 1897

    December 13

    A top-floor painter known as the snake artist is hospitalized, leaving about 15 snakes loose in his studio

    Charles H. Higley lived and worked in a top-floor studio, where about 15 snakes roamed free. He fed them live mice and twisted them around models for his paintings, earning the nickname "the snake artist." When he entered New York Hospital with lung inflammation on December 13, 1897, The Sun reported that nobody in the building wanted to go into the room where the reptiles were kept. Who eventually cleared them out is unknown.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

Nearby

All 518 buildings with stories in Greenwich Village