Club Stables
15 Downing Street | West Village | built 1832
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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.
- 1832
Coal-company executive James Votey builds a three-story stable on the lot
James Votey, born in Halifax in 1805 and a vice-president of the New-York and Schuylkill Coal Company, owned the lot from 1825 and built a brick-faced stable there around the time of his 1831 marriage. It was only 19 feet wide, with one bay door and a pedestrian door, storage on the second floor and rooms for a stable hand above. He sold it in 1832.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1854
The Club Stables boards neighborhood carriages and horses
No. 15 became a boarding stable called the Club Stables, run by a man named Sawyer, where local residents kept vehicles and horses. A New York Herald advertisement on April 12, 1854 offered two light wagons built to order, to be sold cheap because their owner was leaving for Europe. Similar sale notices followed in 1855 and 1856, including a bay horse that would make a lady's saddle horse.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1861
A neighboring brewery takes over the stable as part of its complex
In December 1861 William Martin and George Kinnier took over the New York Steam Brewery next door and renamed it the United States Brewery. The works ran through the block from Carmine Street to Downing Street, and the Club Stables was soon absorbed. The old stable kept housing the firm's trucks and horses, and was used as offices; in 1890 William Kirk's children sublet it to the Champion Brewing Company.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1892
The owner converts the old brewery building back to a stable with 17 stalls
After the Kirk family cancelled the Champion Brewing lease in 1891, they hired architect A. T. Norris in July 1892 to turn No. 15 back into a stable. Most work was interior, though the truck bay was widened. That October an advertisement for the new stable promised 17 stalls, a carriage hoist and a wash stand, and it was still advertising 20 stalls in 1912.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1939
Junk dealer Michael De Vito is arrested for buying 700 pounds of stolen railroad brass
By the 1920s the former stable was a junk shop run by the De Vito family. In September 1939 detectives arrested Michael De Vito, who was running the business for his ill father, after finding about 700 pounds of brass fittings and ball bearings stolen from the Jersey Central Railroad. He said he did not know the brass was stolen, and Baltimore authorities also wanted him for a parole violation.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
Further reading
- The 1832 Club Stables - 15 Downing StreetDaytonian in Manhattan
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