Carter Hall

10 Washington Place | Greenwich Village | built 1900

Open on the map6 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. 1846

    November

    Cornelius Vanderbilt's four-story brick mansion on this lot is finished

    An earlier building on the site: Vanderbilt began the 40-foot-wide house in May 1845 and it was finished by November 1846. The Times put its cost at about $55,000, plus $9,500 for the land. His office stood directly behind it on West Fourth Street, and the parlors, dining room and library occupied the ground floor.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1877

    January 4

    Commodore Vanderbilt dies in his Washington Place mansion after eight months confined at home

    An earlier building on the site: Vanderbilt, who had married his cousin Frank Crawford Armstrong in 1869 after Sophia's death, died here on January 4, 1877. Crowds gathered on the street outside, and the house passed to his widow. She died in 1885, and in 1890 the mansion was sold to a merchant who planned to tear it down.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1891

    Richard Berger replaces the mansion with a six-story loft of limestone, cast iron, brick and terra cotta

    Brothers Isaac and Henry Meinhard bought the Vanderbilt house and had Berger design a loft and store building, finished in 1891. Cast-iron window frames allowed wide glass walls for light, and brick suggested two-story pilasters on the fourth and fifth floors. A row of arched openings with terra-cotta medallions crowned the top.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1892

    February 2

    A new elevator operator is caught between shaft and car platform soon after the building opens

    Benjamin Mingoltie had been hired to run the elevator in the new Washington Place loft. On February 2, 1892 he was caught between the shaft and the car platform. The Times reported that a doctor at St. Vincent's Hospital doubted he would recover.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1920

    June

    Hat-trimming importer Roberts, Cushman & Co. buys the building it had rented since 1900

    The firm imported millinery trimmings and ran hat-band mills in New Jersey, and it leased the whole building from the Meinhards in 1900 before purchasing it in June 1920. It sold in 1929, stayed on as a tenant, and bought the building back after a foreclosure in 1936. A Times item then noted the buyer had used much of it for 45 years.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  6. 1972

    NYU restores the loft for its Institute of Afro-American Affairs, home to the journal Black Creation

    By 1972 New York University owned the building and had it restored with direction from Philip Johnson and Richard Foster. It became home to the Institute of Afro-American Affairs, which published the quarterly Black Creation and a review of black arts and letters under editor Fred Beauford. In the 1980s the journalism department moved in, and the building is now called Carter Hall.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

Nearby

All 518 buildings with stories in Greenwich Village