Delaplaine House

134 Bowery | Little Italy | built 1900

Open on the map7 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. 1795

    Quaker Samuel Delaplaine donates land for St. Philip's Church and a Black burial ground

    Samuel Delaplaine, the Quaker whose family occupied the Bowery houses at 134 and 136, gave land in 1795 for St. Philip's Church, the city's first Black Episcopal congregation, which first stood on Centre Street. He also gave lots he owned on Chrystie and Rivington Streets for a burial ground for Black New Yorkers. Ephemeral New York adds that he reportedly wrote an abolitionist verse manifesto in 1793.

    Source: Ephemeral New York

  2. 1798

    Samuel Delaplaine has a Federal-style house built at 134 Bowery

    The Bowery Historic District nomination dates the pair at 134 and 136 Bowery to about 1798 and ties both to Samuel Delaplaine. They keep steeply pitched roofs, dormer windows and Flemish-bond brickwork, and No. 134 has gable-end chimneys and pedimented dormers with an ogee motif in the tympanum. Later changes included removing the portico, adding walnut trim to the storefront and refacing the lower floors in polished granite.

    “…built ca. 1798 for Samuel Delaplaine and still exhibit steeply pitched roofs with dormer windows and Flemish-bond brickwork…”

    Source: National Register nomination

  3. 1830

    From the 1830s, 134 Bowery rents rooms to circulating libraries, printers and booksellers who promote abolition

    A Place Matters nomination, citing city directories, says the Delaplaine family rented rooms at 134 Bowery between the 1830s and the 1860s to firms that sold or printed anti-slavery material, among them circulating libraries, printers and booksellers. Its notes name James Shaw's circulating library in the 1830s and, in the 1850s and 1860s, the stationers and printers L. H. and Effingham Embree. Effingham Embree belonged to the Manumission Society, which his father Lawrence helped found.

    Source: Internet Archive

  4. 1872

    A YMCA and the Carmel Chapel open at 134 Bowery

    Place Matters says that from 1872 134 Bowery housed one of the first YMCAs in New York, together with the Carmel Chapel and the New York City Mission. The groups served poor people who drifted to the Bowery after the Civil War, offering their help regardless of country, creed, color, sex or age. The district nomination dates the Carmel Chapel to 1872 and the City Mission to 1882.

    Source: Internet Archive

  5. 1910

    A card-game tantrum ends in a shooting at 134 Bowery

    After a stretch as a bookstore, millinery, gunsmith and daguerreotype shop, 134 Bowery held a cigar-rolling factory and a billiard-table manufacturer by the turn of the twentieth century. ARTnews reports that in 1910 the address was the scene of a violent shooting that began with a tantrum over a card game.

    Source: artnews.com

  6. 1963

    Sculptor Eva Hesse sets up her studio in the half-story of 134 Bowery

    The nomination for the Bowery Historic District records that Eva Hesse (1936-1970) had her art studio in the half-story of 134 Bowery from 1963 until her death in 1970. The artist Billy Apple also worked in the building in 1964-65. In 1964 the city gave official permission for residential occupancy of the third floor alongside an artist's studio on the same level.

    Source: National Register nomination

  7. 2015

    December

    Curator Alexander Shulan opens LOMEX gallery in Eva Hesse's old studio

    In December 2015 curator Alexander Shulan opened LOMEX in apartment 4S, the sloped-roof space where Hesse had worked. His first show, A Wasteland, ran through January 17 and hung work from the old beams, since the hooks Hesse screwed into the ceiling were still there. He named the gallery for the Lower Manhattan Expressway, the Robert Moses highway that would have cut across Broome Street.

    Source: artnews.com

Further reading

Nearby

All 76 buildings with stories in Little Italy