L. Toplitz & Co. Building

113 Greene Street | also 113A Greene Street | SoHo | built 1883

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. 1873

    March 28

    Police arraign Blanch Ogden, keeper of a Greene Street brothel on this lot, with five girls under seventeen

    Before the present building, an older house at 113 Greene Street sat in the stretch of Greene Street that was one of Manhattan's notorious red-light districts. The Evening Telegram reported that Blanch Ogden, who kept a den there, was arraigned for running a disorderly house, along with five of its inmates, all girls no older than sixteen. Nine years later a brawl in the same house ended with a man struck on the head with a billet of wood.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1883

    March 31

    Hatter Lippman Toplitz opens a five-story Fernbach store and loft on the old brothel lot

    Lippman Toplitz bought the lot in 1882 chiefly for the land, as he later testified, since the old building on it was poor. Henry Fernbach designed the replacement, started that September and finished on March 31, 1883, at a cost of $32,000. It is a Romanesque Revival loft of red brick over a robust cast-iron storefront, with rosettes on the lintels and a terra-cotta cornice.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1909

    March 16

    An explosion in the neighboring factory blows out windows and panics 300 cloak workers

    A violent blast in the underwear factory behind the building, at 112-114 Prince Street, shook 113 Greene Street on March 16, 1909. Several windows were blown out. The Sun reported that about three hundred women in A. G. Mandes's cloak factory here were panic stricken, and police had to help forewomen get them down the stairs safely.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1909

    April 20

    A French silk firm learns its manager here embezzled over $55,000 before his death

    Descours Genthon Cie., a silk and chiffon firm from Lyons that operated from this address, hired Alfred Schottlaender in 1901 to run its New York business. When Schottlaender was found dead on August 17, 1908, a close look at the books turned up the theft. The Sun reported on April 20, 1909 that the firm had just disclosed that he had taken $55,043.35, concealed with false cross entries.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1991

    Anna Sui opens a boutique in the old hat store, a SoHo fixture for over two decades

    Lippman Toplitz's hat shop of 1883 gave way to the Washburn Gallery in 1981, then to the David Beitzel Gallery in 1986. Around 1991 designer Anna Sui set up her boutique there, and it remained a SoHo fixture at least until 2017. Meanwhile the upper floors had been quietly converted to artists' lofts by the 1960s, years before the city formally allowed it in 1982.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

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