177 Christopher Street
West Village | built 1900
Open on the map3 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.
- 1884
A four-story factory is built for a marine coppersmith and plumbing firm
William J. Fryer Jr. designed the neo-Grec factory in 1883-84 and the mason Richard Shapter built it on land owned by John Alden Spooner. Its tenants were H. C. & J. H. Calkin, whose city-directory listing included ship furnishing, galley stoves and patent metallic life rafts. The Landmarks report calls them the first of the district's significant late-19th-century maritime businesses, set near the Hudson River piers. The street number was 167 until 1885.
- 1905
A former congressman's marine plumbing firm ends its lease after two decades
Hervey C. Calkin, who owned the firm with his brother Judson, was born in Malden, New York, came to the city in 1847 and worked at the Morgan Iron Works before dealing in metals. He served in Congress from 1869 to 1871. Calkin retired in 1904, and the firm's lease on this building ended the following year. Heating contractor William J. Olvany, Inc. took over the space, staying until 1918.
“He was elected a U.S. Congressman in 1869-71. ... H. C. Calkin retired from the firm in 1904, and the lease here ended the following year.”
- 1920
The Oelhaf family buys the building, later home to its marine repair firm
In 1920 Carl F. and Mary Oelhaf bought No. 177. Carl, born in Germany, emigrated in 1880 and ran Meier & Oelhaf Co., which sold marine plumbing supplies and later did ship repair; the firm appears at this address in directories from 1929. Carl died in 1940 and the property passed to the family in 1942. The firm stayed on Christopher Street until 1984, when William Gottlieb bought the holdings.
“Meier & Oelhaf Co. was listed at No. 177 in city address directories from 1929 until the early 1950s, as a marine repair firm.”
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