Christodora House

143 Avenue B | also 601 East 9th Street | East Village | built 1928

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Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.

  1. 1927

    December 18

    Ground is broken for a 16-story Christodora House facing Tompkins Square

    On December 18, 1927, The New York Times reported that ground had been broken at Ninth Street and Avenue B for a new Christodora House, because the old house at 310 East Ninth Street was proving inadequate. The 16-story plan included a pool, a gym, music-school classrooms and rooms for clubs and games. The settlement kept operating from the old address while the tower rose.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1928

    The Christodora settlement house opens its tower on Tompkins Square

    Designed by Henry C. Pelton and paid for largely by Arthur Curtiss James and his wife at a cost of more than $1 million, the Christodora tower was completed in 1928. The settlement house offered a gym, swimming pool, music school and theater along with education and health services for poor and immigrant residents. The city took the building in 1948 for $1.6 million and left it largely empty for years.

    Source: Wikipedia

  3. 1928

    Henry C. Pelton's red-brick tower gets terra-cotta medallions and Romanesque-style parapet bands

    Henry C. Pelton designed Christodora House as a red-brick building with brick-clad steel piers that sit slightly proud of the wall. The two-story entrance on Avenue B has terra-cotta medallions and grotesques around a limestone frame with fluted pilasters. Bands of Romanesque-inspired ornament along the top trace the parapets.

    Source: buildingblocks.villagepreservation.org

  4. 1948

    The city takes over Christodora House through condemnation

    Financial troubles force the Christodora's board to sell the settlement house to New York City for $1.6 million through condemnation proceedings. Officials plan to use the building, whose lower floors held a gym, pool, music school, and theater when it was built two decades earlier, to house delinquent boys under the Department of Welfare. For unclear reasons, the tower instead sits empty or underused through 1956.

    Source: Wikipedia

  5. 1969

    Community groups, including the Black Panthers, use Christodora House until it is condemned

    Ephemeral New York, citing a 2005 Villager article, says that after the city took over, community and political groups, among them the Black Panthers, kept using the building through the 1960s. Water damage to its electrical system led to its being condemned around 1969. The building was then abandoned during the 1970s.

    Source: Ephemeral New York

  6. 1975

    The city sells Christodora House for $62,500

    The city sold the building in 1975 for $62,500. Unsanctioned community activities had gone on in its lower floors in the mid-1960s, and police raided and closed it in 1969. It then changed hands many times, and by 1986 it was being converted into condominiums.

    “The city sold the property for $62,500 in 1975.”

    Source: Wikipedia

  7. 1986

    Developers convert Christodora House into condominiums

    After the city sells the shuttered Christodora House for $62,500 in 1975, following a 1969 police closure over unauthorized activity, developers convert the tower into condominiums in 1986. Proto-punk musician Iggy Pop becomes one of its residents, and the conversion is later cited as an early sign of the East Village's gentrification, feeding tensions that erupt in the 1988 Tompkins Square Park riot.

    Source: Wikipedia

  8. 1988

    August 7

    The Tompkins Square Park riot spills over to the newly converted condo tower

    After a period of community use and police raids in the 1960s, the city sold the building in 1975 for $62,500, and by 1986 it was being converted into condominiums. It became a symbol of the neighborhood's gentrification. During the riot in Tompkins Square Park on August 7, 1988, protesters turned on the Christodora and its new residents.

    Source: Wikipedia

  9. 1993

    Iggy Pop, a Christodora resident, acknowledges in 1993 that living in a nice building irritates people

    Ephemeral New York counts Iggy Pop among the semi-famous and famous people who have lived in the Christodora condominium since the 1988 Tompkins Square Park riots. In a 1993 mini-documentary tour of the East Village, Pop acknowledged that his living in a nice building irritates a lot of people.

    Source: Ephemeral New York

Further reading

Nearby

All 572 buildings with stories in East Village