Warren Hall

162 2nd Avenue | also 166 2nd Avenue | East Village | built 1929

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.

1929
October
Emery Roth's Warren Hall rises over the rebuilt Baptist Tabernacle
Architect Emery Roth designs the 15-story Warren Hall apartment hotel above a rebuilt sanctuary for the Baptist Tabernacle, a congregation founded in 1839 that had worshipped in an 1850 Gothic Revival church on the site. The $1.2 million building opens in October, with the hotel entrance at 166 Second Avenue and the church entrance at 162. Regular services begin the following March, with six nationalities worshipping in their own languages.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
1957
The former Baptist Tabernacle sanctuary becomes the Gate Theatre
The ground-floor space once used as the Baptist Tabernacle's sanctuary is converted into the Gate Theatre. In 1959 the Gate stages a revival of the 19th-century melodrama The Drunkard, and by 1964 it shares its stage with the Cricket Theater, which premieres Athol Fugard's The Blood Knot there.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
1979
Sam Shepard's Buried Child premieres at Theater for the New City
Robert L. Steele buys both of the building's theaters in 1970, and Theater for the New City takes over the former church space in 1977. In 1979 the company stages the premiere of Sam Shepard's Buried Child, which wins the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. A reported 300 percent rent increase in 1984 forces the theater to leave within a few years.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

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