Cushman Building

174 Broadway | also 1 Maiden Lane | Financial District | built 1900

Open on the map6 entries

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. 1897

    July 21

    An earlier seven-story building on this corner comes down for C. P. H. Gilbert's 13-story Cushman Building

    The Cushman family, who owned the northeast corner of Broadway and Maiden Lane, offered the old Howard Hotel building at auction in February 1896 but withdrew it when bidding stalled at $265,000. They then hired C. P. H. Gilbert to replace it. On July 21, 1897, The Jewelers' Circular announced that the old seven-story brick building would be torn down the following week to make way for a 13-story French Renaissance structure.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1899

    Jeweler William Barthman, once an orphaned cabin boy, installs a sidewalk clock that shows the time in rotating numbers

    William Barthman, born in Hamburg in 1840, was orphaned at 11, reached New York as a cabin boy and became a jeweler, a Union lieutenant and, from 1883, a tenant of this Broadway corner. He and employee Frank Homm spent two years designing a $700 clock, set into the pavement in fall 1899. Instead of hands, revolving hour and minute numbers appeared in a sidewalk opening, which Technical World Magazine later called the most novel timepiece around.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1901

    April 26

    Diamond dealer Emil Angot buys a dram of morphine for a barroom companion, who dies, and goes to the police

    Emil P. Angot, a diamond dealer with an office in the building, left work on Friday, April 26, 1901 and headed for the Tenderloin. He told police a drinking companion, James Elliott, asked him to buy morphine and later drank it in a saloon and died. Angot went to his lawyer, then to Police Headquarters. He was arraigned for buying the poison and a drugstore clerk for selling it, but the magistrate discharged both when they gave conflicting accounts of whether the shop was open.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1920

    William Barthman buys the building he rented in, and a jeweler there recalls selling gems to Diamond Jim Brady

    In fall 1920 the D. A. Cushman Realty Company sold the building to its long-time tenant, William Barthman. The Real Estate Record noted that the sellers' ancestors had bought the parcel for 1,000 pounds in the late 17th century. Barthman put his name in bronze letters over the entrance, which is why many New Yorkers still call it the Barthman Building. Another tenant, Jung & Klitz, boasted that "Diamond Jim" Brady had bought his namesake gems from its store.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1952

    Jeweler Blase DeNatale takes diamond-studded crowns to Rome, where Pope Pius XII blesses them

    DeNatale Brothers, a jewelry firm on the building's third floor, made the jeweled gold crowns for the painting of Mary Queen of Peace at the Regina Pacis Votive Shrine in Brooklyn. In January 1952 Blase DeNatale and his wife carried them to Rome with Monsignor Angelo R. Cioffi, and Pope Pius XII blessed them. The crowns, insured for $100,000, held gold and diamonds donated by 12,000 parishioners during the war.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  6. 2004

    July 8

    An appeals court orders the Wall Street Sauna at Broadway and Maiden Lane closed

    The city's Health Department closed the Wall Street Sauna on February 2, 2004, citing high-risk sexual activity its investigators had observed since June 2003. A court let it reopen on February 11 after the owners promised new management, but an investigator reported another violation in April. On July 8, 2004, the Appellate Division, First Department voted 5-0 to let the city shut the sauna entirely, as the City Law Department announced in a press release.

    Source: nyc.gov

Further reading

Nearby

All 276 buildings with stories in Financial District