Josiah Purdy House

143 Spring Street | also 93 Wooster Street | SoHo | built 1818

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. 1818

    Josiah Purdy builds a three-story frame house with a brick front at Spring and Wooster

    In 1818 the south side of the block between Wooster and West Broadway filled with Federal houses, and Josiah Purdy built his own at the corner of Spring and Wooster. Spring Street had earlier been Brannon Street, named for a man who owned a garden or orchard in the area, and was renamed for a spring that supplied drinking water. The ground floor probably held a store from the start, with working-class tenants above.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1882

    A "so-called doctor" practicing upstairs is found to have no license

    Dr. F. Eliseo Marini ran a medical practice from the upper floors in 1882. Two complaints reached Dr. Frederic R. Sturgis, who headed the County Medical Society and found that Marini was unlicensed. After what one medical journal called a protracted trial, Marini was found guilty and fined $50. He was practicing again two years later.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1926

    January 17

    An Italian clerk living upstairs is arrested for pursuing the woman from a Red Cross poster

    Rudolph Raymondi, a clerk who took a small room here in 1924, had come from Italy after seeing a Red Cross poster in Rome and deciding to find its model. After two years of searching, he saw her portrait displayed by a Fifth Avenue photographer and got her address. The Bronx woman, who was married, went to the police, and on January 17, 1926 he was arrested for annoying her.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1978

    The old corner saloon becomes the Tennessee Mountain restaurant

    In 1978 the ground floor was renovated again, this time into a restaurant and bar spanning the first and second floors. Tennessee Mountain stayed a SoHo destination for decades. An architect's 2006 renovation turned the building into a modern retail space, and the old rear store was lost.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 2011

    May

    Crocs takes over the old Tennessee Mountain corner and puts up a new front

    Forgotten New York's 2011 tour of SoHo argued the Spring and Wooster corner building may be the neighborhood's oldest, since records show an 1818 date. The author knew it as the home of the barbecue joint Tennessee Mountain. By May 2011 the Crocs shoe company had taken over, adding a new brick front to the wood-frame building.

    Source: Forgotten New York

Further reading

Nearby

All 736 buildings with stories in SoHo