The Brevoort

11 5th Avenue | also 7 East 8th Street, 5 East 8th Street, 9 East 8th Street | Greenwich Village | built 1953

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. 1851

    James Renwick Jr. presumably designs the house at 21 Fifth Avenue later known as the Mark Twain house

    An earlier building on this site: the brick house at No. 21 Fifth Avenue, with round stone arches over its windows and fine ironwork, went up in 1851. It was presumably designed by James Renwick Jr. for his family's estate, on land his grandfather Henry Brevoort had willed to his mother. The Landmarks Preservation Commission's report calls it the 'Mark Twain House', where Twain is reputed to have stayed during the winter of 1904, and notes that it has since been razed.

    “…the house was built and presumably designed by her son, James Renwick, Jr., the noted architect, for the Renwick estate.”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  2. 1854

    The Brevoort Hotel is made by joining three Fifth Avenue town houses, and a fourth is added later

    An earlier building on this site: the original Brevoort Hotel was created in 1854 by combining three houses, the Beckwith house at No. 9, the Barnes house at No. 11 and the Livingston house at No. 13. Solas Wood's house at No. 15 was later raised to the same height and the four were put under one heavy bracketed cornice, with a new broken pediment at the center. The hotel was razed in 1953 for the apartment house that took its name.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  3. 1902

    Raymond Orteig buys the Hotel Brevoort and opens a French cafe with a Parisian-style sidewalk terrace

    An earlier building on this site: in 1902 the restaurateur Raymond Orteig bought the Hotel Brevoort and modeled it on French precedents. The Cafe Brevoort on its ground floor and basement served French cuisine to patrons including Mark Twain, Edna St. Vincent Millay and Eugene O'Neill, and it had a Parisian-style sidewalk cafe, a new feature at the time. The hotel's barber, Henri Grechen, worked there from 1901 to 1938 and cut Twain's hair while the writer lived nearby at 21 Fifth Avenue.

    Source: westviewnews.org

  4. 1927

    June 27

    Charles Lindbergh receives the $25,000 Orteig Prize at the old Hotel Brevoort

    An earlier building on this site: the Hotel Brevoort, which stood at the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue and Eighth Street for about a century before it was replaced by the apartment house that took its name. The $25,000 prize had been offered by the French-born hotelier Raymond Orteig, who owned the Hotel Lafayette and operated the Brevoort. Lindbergh was given it at the Brevoort on June 27, 1927, two weeks after the city's ticker-tape parade for his flight.

    Source: Village Preservation

  5. 1958

    October

    Buddy Holly and his wife move into apartment 4H at the Brevoort and record songs there

    Buddy Holly and Maria Elena Santiago, his wife, left Lubbock, Texas, for New York in October 1958 and took apartment 4H in the then-new Brevoort. In December 1958 and January 1959 he wrote and recorded a series of songs on a home Ampex tape recorder in the apartment, among them 'Peggy Sue Got Married' and 'Crying, Waiting, Hoping.' Fellow musicians such as Phil Everly and Waylon Jennings stopped by, and Holly liked to play with young musicians at the Washington Square Park fountain.

    Source: Village Preservation

Further reading

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