159 Mercer Street

also 161 Mercer Street | SoHo | built 1854

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

  1. 1854

    James Swan builds a steam-powered factory that houses the McNab, Carr brassworks

    In 1854 James Swan put up a factory on the site of two earlier houses, then numbered 131 and 133 Mercer Street; the street was renumbered in 1886 and the building became 159-161. The new brassworks McNab, Carr & Co. moved in and won awards at the 1857 American Institute exhibition for gauge cocks, stop valves and a panel of brassware. A steam plant at the rear powered the building's tenants.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1874

    September 23

    A boiler-room fire guts the rear of the Mercer Street factory and prompts a cast-iron makeover

    At 1:45 a.m. on September 23, 1874 fire broke out below a saw mill in the building, with no one inside. The flammable contents fed the flames, which gutted the rear building. Neighboring Firemen's Hall likely saved the rest, and the owners put the damage at $12,000. Repairs included a new cast-iron storefront by Ayers & McCandless, and the foundry probably also supplied the bold lintels and large cornice.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1883

    June 8

    Feather dealer Robert Cunningham vanishes from a Brooklyn ferry and a Pinkerton suspects a faked suicide

    Robert Cunningham, a feather dealer with an office in the building, left work on June 8, 1883, and a man leapt from a Hamilton Ferry boat; only a hat with a note bearing his name was recovered. With a $25,000 life insurance policy at stake, detective Robert Pinkerton suspected a hoax. But Cunningham's body was later found in the East River, and the family got no insurance money.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1905

    June

    Straw-goods merchant Charles Burr dies at the Union League Club after eating tainted clams

    Charles Burr and his brother Walter ran J. S. Plummer & Co., importers of straw goods, which leased the whole building. In June 1905, with his family out of the city, Charles stayed at the Union League Club. He ate heartily at a Mystic Shriners outing at College Point, fell ill the next day and died at the club the following Monday night. The clams were blamed.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1960

    Painter Gene Vass and his wife Joan, later a knitwear designer, make an early SoHo loft home at 159 Mercer

    Gene Vass, an Abstract Expressionist painter and sculptor, won the Prix de Rome and lived in Rome in 1959. The couple returned to New York in 1960 and became part of the first group of artists and intellectuals to create SoHo's loft community. Their home at 159 Mercer could be reached only by the original freight elevator. Joan Vass later launched her own knitwear label in 1977.

    “Their home at 159 Mercer Street was accessible only by the building's original industrial freight elevator.”

    Source: Wikipedia

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