Thurber, Whyland & Co. Building

16 Hudson Street | also 30 Hudson Street | Tribeca | built 1915

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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. 1873

    January 14

    Grocer Horace K. Thurber buys nearly a whole Tribeca block and has a wholesale warehouse built at 16 Hudson Street

    Horace K. Thurber paid $19,000 in 1873 for almost all of the block between Hudson, Duane, West Broadway and Reade Streets. He hired architect Charles F. Mengelson to design a red-brick warehouse for his wholesale grocery firm, completed in 1874. That year Thurber retired from daily work and the business became Thurber, Whyland & Co., with branch offices in France and London.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1874

    Charles F. Mengelson gives 16 Hudson Street a neo-Grec facade with loading bays and a clock

    The six-story warehouse of 1873-74 stretches along Hudson, Reade and West Broadway, with wide ground-floor loading bays framed in brick and stone. Brick pilasters divide the upper floors, and a round opening for a clock, now sealed, sits at the third story on Reade Street. The sixth story was rebuilt in 1921 and the storefronts replaced.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  3. 1888

    July

    A shipping clerk is caught stealing barrels of sugar from the Thurber, Whyland warehouse

    James Brady, a shipping clerk at the grocery firm, arranged for goods to be shipped to his own address in Jersey City. His shipments grew too large to ignore, and detectives traced them. On July 3, a two-horse wagon marked with the firm's name delivered 22 barrels of refined sugar to police headquarters on Mott Street as evidence in his trial.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1890

    November

    Thurber, Whyland sells a coca wine containing a set amount of cocaine, and a doctor praises it

    The firm kept a full-time chemist who made drugs and flavorings, among them a Wine of Coca advertised in 1890 as a restorative tonic. On November 2 of that year Dr. William A. Hammond told the New York Neurological Society that most coca wines were impure. He praised the firm's chemist and noted its wine held a fixed proportion of cocaine.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1894

    June

    Thurber, Whyland & Co. fails after the Panic of 1893 and is reorganized as the American Grocery Co.

    By December 1893 the firm's finances were unclear, and Frank Thurber said he was busy trying to reorganize the company. Even with weekly sales equal to about $3.5 million today, it failed. In June 1894 it reemerged as the American Grocery Co., and Thurber stayed on only as a director, no longer an officer.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  6. 1921

    February 8

    A four-alarm fire in a shoe factory at 16 Hudson Street fills lower Manhattan with toxic smoke

    A blaze broke out around 6 p.m. in the space of the Merriam Shoe Manufacturing Company, where the glues and chemicals of shoe manufacturing made a toxic smog. Smoke drifted into the Chamber Street subway station and troubled commuters heading home. Damage was put at $100,000, and a month later a syndicate led by Louis B. Brodsky and Samuel Augenblick leased the building to convert it to offices and stores.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  7. 1943

    February 4

    A tenant at 16 Hudson Street is indicted for selling wartime-rationed tires

    United Industries Company, a tenant of the former grocery warehouse, was accused by the Office of Price Administration of selling tires to people not entitled to buy them. A federal grand jury indicted the firm on February 4, 1943. The next year the shoe wholesaler Brust Footwear, also in the building, was among 32 firms ordered to stop selling shoes outside rationing rules.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  8. 2011

    David Bouley and the Tsuji Culinary Institute open Brushstroke at 30 Hudson Street

    The Japanese restaurant opened in 2011 on Hudson Street between Reade and Duane Streets, offering a kaiseki tasting menu and a sushi selection. It grew out of a partnership between chef David Bouley and the Tsuji Culinary Institute. The New York Times awarded it two stars.

    Source: ny.eater.com

  9. 2018

    September 29

    Brushstroke serves its last dinner at 30 Hudson Street after a rent increase

    Bouley quietly stepped aside in late spring 2018, leaving the Tsuji Culinary Institute as sole owner. The restaurant closed on September 29 after seven years, and its chef, Isao Yamada, blamed a rent increase whose size he would not disclose. In its last week it sold sake and wine at half price.

    Source: ny.eater.com

  10. 2018

    January

    Actor Josh Hartnett sells his top-floor loft at 16 Hudson Street for $3.55 million

    Tribeca's rise as a celebrity neighborhood brought at least one well-known resident to the building after its 1984 conversion to apartments. Josh Hartnett lived in a top-floor loft and sold it in January 2018 for $3.55 million.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

Nearby

All 564 buildings with stories in Tribeca