Knickerbocker Ice Company stable
17 Leonard Street | Tribeca | built 1856
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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.
- 1844
Armed intruders tie up Edmund Gilbert in the earlier house that stood on this lot
An earlier house stood here, home to the Gilbert family. After Edmund Gilbert inherited from his mother in 1843, two men rushed into his parlor on the evening of March 3, 1844. They covered his face with a pillow, gagged and bound him, and took two sovereigns and small change. They also stole a few silver spoons and missed the real money, which the brothers had already handed to a manager.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1856
The Knickerbocker Ice Company replaces the house with a stable for its wagons
The ice company demolished the Gilbert house and finished a three-story brick stable here in 1856, with living space above. The company's headquarters was at 432 Canal Street, and in 1863 the New York Times called it the largest ice firm in the city. It tried to sell the Leonard Street building in 1872 and finally sold it in June 1875 to Horace K. Thurber for $20,000.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1894
A delirious tenant leaps from a window and crashes through the police station skylight
On the evening of July 1, 1894 laborer Michael Powers, a top-floor tenant, drank heavily and sprang out of a rear window shouting that two men were after him. He landed on the roof of the neighboring Leonard Street police station and fell through its skylight, unhurt, into a room where police were watching a doctor treat a stabbing victim. Doctors diagnosed delirium tremens, and he was held at Bellevue as an attempted suicide.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1933
Prohibition agents raid a three-story bootleg distillery in the old stable
After weeks of smelling molasses, Martin O. Hanson and six agents battered down the door on January 10, 1933. Acid fumes from an overturned container of sulfuric acid, which left one man inside stupefied, had been meant to let the other bootleggers escape out the back. Agents found two 5,000-gallon stills in the basement and three 20,000-gallon vats of fermenting molasses on the second floor, which they called the largest distillery found in the area in a year.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 2013
City inspectors evacuate the building, called teetering on collapse
After the neighborhood's revival, No. 17 stayed derelict. Between 1998 and 2013 its owner was fined nearly $40,000 for violations, and in December 2013 the Department of Buildings evacuated it while he was asking $15.7 million. It sold in January 2015 for $11.2 million.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
Further reading
- Horses, Heartbreak, and Bootleg Whiskey -- No. 17 Leonard StreetDaytonian in Manhattan
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