144 Duane Street

Tribeca | built 1860

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.

1860
Dry goods importers Benkard & Hutton make 144 Duane Street their headquarters from 1860 to 1873
The building was the centerpiece of a trio of stores built in 1859-60 for James Benkard and Benjamin Hutton. Their firm imported and wholesaled French, German and English fabrics and was the American agent for several leading French textile makers. They worked from number 144 until 1873, and leased the neighboring stores at 142 and 146 to other dry goods houses. Benjamin Hutton later added a building at 106-108 Reade Street as an extension of the store.
Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission
1920
Shoe companies and printers occupy 144 Duane Street, from Brown Shoe in the 1920s to Goodyear Shoe in the 1950s
After Benkard & Hutton left, 144 and 146 Duane Street remained under one owner and had many of the same tenants into the 1950s. The printers Behl Printing Co. and Louis A. Levin worked there. Wholesale shoe firms came too: Brown Shoe and Nunn-Bush in the 1920s, then Polly Preston Shoes and Bond Shoe in the 1940s, and the rubber-footwear division Goodyear Shoe Company in the 1950s. When the report was written the Goodwear Shoe Co., a children's shoe wholesaler, was a tenant, as it had been since the 1940s.
“…the Brown Shoe Co. and the Nunn-Bush Shoe Co., Inc. in the 1920s, Polly Preston Shoes and the Bond Shoe Co. in the 1940s…”
Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

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