147 Wooster Street
SoHo | built 1876
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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.
- 1876
A marble store at 147 Wooster Street is finished for owner Jarvis Slade
Work on the four-story, three-bay store began on June 22, 1876, and finished on October 1 of that year, with J. C. Hoe & Co. as builder. The Landmarks Preservation Commission records the original owner as Jarvis Slade and notes he may have been the father of the architect, Jarvis Morgan Slade. The building was planned as a store.
- 1876
J. Morgan Slade gives 147 Wooster a neo-Grec facade in marble rather than cast iron
Slade drew on French Renaissance sources for the front of this four-story building, but built it in marble except for the cornice. The ornate detail is of a sort usually seen on cast-iron fronts: rusticated piers, arched ground-floor openings split by columns with fleur-de-lis banding, balustrade-like window panels, and a pediment over the second-floor center window.
“…carried out in marble (with the exception of the cornice) the elaborate detail is of the sort one would expect to find on a cast-iron facade…”
- 1882
Jarvis Morgan Slade, architect of 147 Wooster, dies at age 30 after a short, busy career
Slade, who lived from 1852 to 1882, learned his profession under Edward H. Kendall and set up his own practice about 1873, specializing in commercial buildings. The Landmarks Preservation Commission counts several works by him in the SoHo district, including 147 Wooster Street of 1876 and the cast-iron corner building at 109-111 Prince Street and 119 Greene Street, which it calls his best.
“Jarvis Morgan Slade had one of the most promising architectural careers in New York City before his unexpected death at the age of thirty.”
- 1977
René Moncada opens René's Gallery in the ground floor of 147 Wooster Street
Moncada, a former Venezuelan baseball pitcher turned artist, rented the ground-floor storefront and renovated it as a gallery that showed mostly his own work. It became known as the I Am the Best Artist gallery, after his SoHo murals, and hosted fashion shows and performance events. He and his wife lived in the rear and built a sleeping loft above. They were pushed out in 1999 and moved to Brooklyn in 2001.
Source: Wikipedia
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