109 Washington Street
Financial District | built 1915
Open on the map3 entries
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.
- 1885
Lawrence O'Connor builds a tenement at 109 Washington Street
Irish immigrant Lawrence O'Connor, who works at a liquor store, buys the foreclosed tenement in 1881, then demolishes it four years later and hires architect John P. Lee to erect a five-story replacement. Faced in Philadelphia brick with neo-Grec trim, the building originally holds nineteen three-room apartments for working-class families in the Little Syria district.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1895
Syrian merchants run import shops from the ground floor
Between the 1890s and 1920s, Syrian-descended merchants operate a cigar factory, a cotton, silk and dry-goods export business, and a textile shop from the building's ground-floor storefront, part of the thriving Little Syria commercial strip along Washington Street. The four upper floors continue to house immigrant families in three-room flats.
Source: Internet Archive
- 1907
The tenement is retrofitted under the new Tenement House Law
Responding to the 1901 Tenement House Law's stricter light and sanitation rules, the owners add new air shafts and install indoor toilets in 1907. Irish and German families give way over the following decades to Czech, Slovak, Polish and Austrian tenants, and by 1940 only about forty residents remain in the building.
Source: Wikipedia
Further reading
- 109 Washington StreetWikipedia
- 109 Washington St.Place Matters
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