George Cunningham Store
173 Main Street | Tottenville | built 1892
Open on the map4 entries
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.
- 1892
Georgenia Cunningham buys a Main Street lot, and a butcher shop goes up on it
Georgenia Cunningham, wife of butcher George G. Cunningham, bought the William B. Butler property on Main Street, including the Butler house now at 169 Main Street. The couple soon put up this small butcher shop on the right side of the lot, separate from the house. An 1893-94 directory lists Cunningham as owner of a Main Street meat market.
- 1892
The Cunningham Store keeps Main Street's last intact bracketed bay shop windows
The one-story Queen Anne shop has bracketed bay windows, a feature that brought a shop's display out toward the street to catch the eye of passersby. Tax photographs from 1940 show nearly every store on lower Main Street once had such windows. Others have since lost theirs or had them enclosed in aluminum, leaving 173 Main Street the only one with its windows intact.
- 1913
Insurance man Benjamin Williams buys the shop on a newly split-off lot
George Cunningham sold his house and shop on October 29, 1913, and the same day the shop's land became its own lot, sold to Benjamin Williams. Born in Newport, Kentucky, Williams sold insurance and real estate and acted for the Insurance Company of North America for more than 60 years. He helped organize the Tottenville National Bank in 1906 and later headed its board.
“On the same day the land on which the shop stood was made a separate lot and sold to Benjamin Williams.”
- 1958
After Williams's death the little shop passes to the Roselli Fuel Company
Benjamin Williams, the insurance and real estate man who had owned the shop since 1913, died on December 29, 1957. In 1958 his executor sold 173 Main Street to David Becker, who resold it only two months later to the Roselli Fuel Company.
“In 1958 Williams's executor sold the shop at 173 Main Street to David Becker, who sold it two months later to the Roselli Fuel Company.”
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