100-102 West Houston Street

100 West Houston Street | Greenwich Village | built 1890

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. 1890

    November 21

    Charles Rentz files plans for a six-story warehouse at 100-102 West Houston Street

    On November 21, 1890, architect Charles Rentz filed plans for a six-story stone-and-iron warehouse with elevators and engines for Levy & Co., at a stated cost of $45,000. Finished in 1891, it was built as two mirror-image halves in a restrained Romanesque Revival, with brick above a cast-iron base, a three-story pier ornamented with anchor plates, and an arched top floor under a bracketed cornice.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1895

    March 25

    A gas meter explodes under firefighters at a bonnet-frame shop

    Early on March 25, 1895, fire broke out in the fifth-floor shop of Peter J. Brett, who made bonnet frames with ten male employees. After firemen put it out and were clearing debris, a gas meter exploded and hurled objects past their heads without injuring Captain Johnson or his seven men. The blast started a second, worse fire, and Brett's losses reached $10,000.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1900

    Hat-trimming makers fill the loft building around 1900

    Early tenants were mostly tied to the millinery trade. Eugene Razetti, Sardi & Valente and Rossig Bros. all made artificial flowers and foliage for women's hats, and Sardi & Valente employed 17 women and 3 men. Other tenants included the Standard Embroidery Company and M. Friedman & Co., umbrella-handle makers who arrived in 1892; a trade publication called Friedman the oldest firm of its kind in the city in 1905.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1920

    August 22

    Burglars hit the building eight times in eight months

    For reasons the source does not explain, 100-102 West Houston Street was a repeated target in 1920, with eight break-ins between January and August. Two of them hit the Conway Import Company, an olive-oil importer. On August 22 a safe was ripped open, though the thieves failed to get through its inner door.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1985

    A 1985 conversion turns the old loft building into six co-op apartments

    A conversion completed in 1985 turned the former loft building into six cooperative apartments, and the cornice was possibly removed then. The Savoy Provision Company, which had moved in during the Depression years, stayed until the early 1980s. The ground floor became a restaurant again, as it had been in 1908; Fratelli Cangiani opened there in June 1988.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

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All 518 buildings with stories in Greenwich Village