119 Mercer Street
SoHo | built 1891
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.
- 1891
Annie Lecour builds a Romanesque Revival loft building for millinery and fur firms at 117-119 Mercer
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Annie Romel Lecour hired architect George Provot in 1890 to design two five-story buildings at 117 and 119 Mercer Street, built for about $30,000 and finished on New Year's Eve 1891. The street was the center of the millinery and fur trades, and early tenants included makers of artificial flowers and feathers such as Julius Weille & Co. and Edward B. Goodman & Co. Provot's design mixes Romanesque and Renaissance Revival, with bearded faces in the spandrels.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1898
A young woman dies at 117-119 Mercer Street, and the building's engineer is held on suspicion of homicide
On Sunday, January 2, 1898, 24-year-old Ellen Ryan went with building engineer Martin Farrell to the closed building, where she died. Farrell said she screamed while he tended the engine, but the policeman found her body in the cellar, and Farrell admitted he had dragged her there first. A surgeon noted her crushed abdomen and head bruises, and police held Farrell on suspicion of homicide.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1903
Detectives foil a robbery plot at 117-119 Mercer Street
A security guard, 23-year-old Edward De Veau, plotted to rob Jerome Lewis of Lewis, Hurwitz & Co., the petticoat makers who leased space here. A co-worker told police, and county detective Mullen posed as the hired thug. On November 4, 1903, De Veau handed Mullen a lead-filled hose near Mercer and Spring Streets, and he was arrested at the building. Convicted on November 24, he was sentenced to ten years; the firm's secretary Ella Egan was released but fired.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
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