Star Coffee Mill Building

181 Duane Street | Tribeca | built 1865

Open on the map4 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. 1865

    Levi Rowley moves his Star Coffee Mills into a new five-story building

    Levi Rowley and his wife Mary bought an old wooden building here in 1864 and put up a five-story brick store and loft, with title in Mary's name. The architect's name is lost. Rowley headed Star Coffee Mills, founded about 1823 and among the first wholesale coffee roasters in Manhattan, and he moved it in. He sold the business in 1885, and it closed in 1920.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1891

    April 15

    A fire guts the top floors and the coffee-grinding machinery

    A patrolman spotted flames in a third-floor window early on April 15, 1891. Engine Company 27 called a second alarm, then a third. The two top stories were gutted, and about $5,000 of coffee and spices and all the grinding machinery were lost. A Benedict of the firm was too upset to estimate his losses. Repairs probably added the brick corbel cornice seen today.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1895

    August

    A gang of boys led by a 12-year-old robs the coffee store

    In late August 1895 twelve-year-old Peter Koohl led a crew of boys aged 9 to 12 on a spree of window smashing and theft. They robbed Theodore Benedict's tea and coffee store, a cigar shop and a harness shop, taking whips and sugar. Koohl overreached by stealing a peddler's horse and wagon to sell in Harlem. The boys were arrested and sent to the Gerry Society.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1943

    September 10

    Saal Bros. receives a record $250 fine for hiding heavy cream during wartime rationing

    Brothers Morris and Nathan Saal had bought the building in 1919 for their butter and egg business. In 1943 an inspector found five cans holding 200 quarts of illegal heavy cream in their egg refrigerator. Magistrate Raphael Koenig imposed a record $250 fine on September 10. He said a person would have gone to jail and that the corporation had deliberately tried to deceive him.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

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