181 Sullivan Street

Greenwich Village | built 2006

Open on the map4 entries

Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.

  1. 1921

    Jimmy Kelly opens a Prohibition-era speakeasy in an old rowhouse that later becomes a famous theater

    The building that stood here began as one of a row of Greek Revival rowhouses on Sullivan Street's east side, developed in the 1830s, and by about 1900 held a blacksmith shop with apartments above. In 1921, during Prohibition, a speakeasy opened at the address under Jimmy Kelly, a Lower East Side native whose birth name was John De Salvio. Kelly was also an important captain of the Tammany Democratic machine in the Village.

    Source: Village Preservation

  2. 1957

    August

    Lee Paton and David Long turn Jimmy Kelly's old nightclub into the Sullivan Street Playhouse

    In 1957 the off-Broadway producers Lee Paton and David Long took a lease on the old Jimmy Kelly's nightclub and remodeled it as the Sullivan Street Playhouse. It opened in August with a revival of Sweeney Todd, a 19th-century melodrama. The conversion was part of a wave in the Village, where nightclubs, cellars and lofts became low-rent theaters after Actors Equity agreed in 1949 to let members work off-Broadway for reduced pay.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  3. 1960

    May

    The Fantasticks opens at the Sullivan Street Playhouse and runs for 42 years

    The musical The Fantasticks opened here in May 1960 to glowing reviews and became what the landmarks commission calls a village institution. It ran for 17,162 performances, closing in January 2002 after 42 years, and its early casts included future stars such as Kristin Chenoweth, Glenn Close, F. Murray Abraham, Elliott Gould, Liza Minnelli and Jerry Orbach. The theater then sat vacant until 2005, when the building was converted to residential use.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  4. 2005

    The old theater building is gutted and rebuilt as a glass-fronted condominium

    After the Sullivan Street Playhouse went dark, Village preservationists opposed plans to radically alter the building. In 2005, though, an extreme alteration turned the old Greek Revival rowhouse from the 1800s into a luxury condominium with a glass front. The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation later noted the loss in a retrospective on the playhouse.

    Source: Village Preservation

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