101 7th Avenue South

also 70 Grove Street | West Village | built 1899

Open on the map4 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. 1888

    March 30

    Colden Robinson slashes his wife's throat and wounds her sister at 70 Grove Street

    On March 30, 1888, an argument in the house that stood on this lot before the present building, probably then a rooming house, ended with Colden Robinson cutting his wife Sarah's throat with a razor and wounding her sister, Elizabeth Whitehurst, who had tried to step in. His first-degree murder trial opened on June 27, with Whitehurst dressed in deep mourning as the first witness. Three days later he was found guilty and sentenced to hang.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1899

    Small & Schuman replace the old house with a five-story tenement and a ground-floor store

    Maria Fossier bought No. 70 in 1899, tore down the old house and hired Small & Schuman to design a five-story brick tenement 22 feet wide. It cost $15,000 and included a ground-floor store, which was leased to the furniture retailer M. Cowperthwait & Co. for several years. Fossier's finances were stretched, and the building was sold at auction in April 1901.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1919

    September 27

    Half the facade is sliced off for Seventh Avenue and then rebuilt with a diagonal wall

    When Seventh Avenue South was cut through, No. 70 lost half its front, leaving just 9.5 feet on Grove Street and a raw gap where the corner had been. Owner May C. Fay had to choose between demolition and rebuilding, and on September 27, 1919, the Record & Guide reported architect George McCabe's plans to rebuild the diagonal wall. The patched corner got grouped windows with embossed metal panels.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1993

    January 3

    The Down Beat opens in the ground-floor store as an intimate jazz club

    New York magazine called Down Beat an intimate new jazz club on January 3, 1993, and at the end of the year the Times named it a favorite of the hard-bop mainstream. A week later Times critic Peter Watrous welcomed it as an addition to what he saw as the jazz capital of the world. It occupied the ground-floor space after a 1972 renovation created an eating and drinking establishment there.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

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