114 Franklin Street

Tribeca | built 1868

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. 1850

    A rooming house stands on the lot before the current building

    Before the present loft went up, an older house occupied the lot at 114 Franklin Street. It had been there for decades and was run as a rooming house during the 1850s. By April 18, 1868, when the New York Herald carried a notice offering the lot for sale, it was empty, and the building that now stands here was completed the same year.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1868

    Importer Elliot Cowdin builds a marble-faced loft here as an investment

    Elliot C. Cowdin, whose own firm imported French fancy goods, bought the empty lot and hired Benjamin W. Warner to design a five-story store and loft building, finished in 1868. Cowdin never moved his business in. The design is a twin of No. 112 next door, completed just before by Warner's brother Samuel, though Benjamin is the architect of record. One early tenant was the dry goods importer Louis Weddigen & Co.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1897

    February

    A whalebone importer appears to be an innocent pawn in a bills-of-exchange fraud

    In February 1897 Ferdinand May was arrested after selling Weil, Auerbacher & Co. $222,310 in bills of exchange drawn on Freeman D. Marckwald, a whalebone importer at 114 Franklin Street. May had claimed Marckwald held half a million dollars of whalebone in storage, but Marckwald testified that none had ever been stored with him. May went to prison and nothing suggests Marckwald was involved, yet he soon sailed for Europe, and by October 1898 a deputy sheriff had taken control of his business.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1918

    February

    A German-run umbrella-handle importer is liquidated and its assets seized as enemy property

    Schussel & Manly, importers and makers of umbrella handles and canes, opened offices at No. 114 in late 1911. Edward Max Schussel's partner was a woman, Gertrude A. Manly. In February 1918 a trade paper reported the firm retiring, but it was actually liquidated under an enemy trade license, and the Alien Property Custodian took its assets under the Trading With The Enemy Act. Schussel and Manly both moved back to Germany.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 2011

    April

    Theater Bar opens on the ground floor, inspired by Vienna and its nightlife

    After a 2008 renovation gave the upper floors one apartment each, Albert Trummer told New York Times writer Florence Fabricant in March 2010 that his planned Theater Bar would draw on Vienna and its nightlife of the 1930s and 1940s. The venue opened in April 2011. Earlier ground-floor tenants had included the Bromm Gallery by 1977 and Grace Bar and Restaurant in 1999.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

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All 564 buildings with stories in Tribeca