185 Christopher Street

West Village | built 1837

Open on the map3 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. 1837

    Former mayor Stephen Allen puts up a warehouse beside his Weehawken Street lots

    Stephen Allen, mayor of New York from 1821 to 1824, bought this lot in 1829 and had a warehouse built around 1837. A sailmaker by trade, he had become wealthy in banking and insurance and had pushed the city to build the Weehawken Market in 1834 and later to sell it. His earliest known tenants here were the flour-and-feed dealers Roome & Curtis, from 1844 to 1847.

    “Allen constructed a warehouse on this lot around 1837. Known early tenants were [Edward A.] Roome & [Benjamin F.] Curtis, feed and flour (1844-47)…”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  2. 1871

    A new owner converts the warehouse into a six-family tenement with a ground-floor saloon

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    Stephen Allen drowned in the 1852 Henry Clay steamboat disaster, and his heirs sold the property at auction in 1871 to James Lee for $8,500. Lee, probably the Scottish-trade commission merchant who helped bring about the Washington statue in Union Square, had architect William E. Waring extend the building at the rear and convert it into a tenement for six families above a store. For roughly 50 years the ground floor housed saloons, beginning with Henry Engelking in 1873.

    “Commercial tenants for the next 50 years, until Prohibition, were liquors/ saloon businesses, beginning with Henry Engelking (1873-78)…”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  3. 1985

    The Dugout bar opens in the building and later is the historic district's last gay bar

    A 1961 purchase by William and Edith Anderson turned the lower floors into the offices of their contracting firm, R. Anderson & Son. In 1978 a new owner took the property and in 1980 converted it into a restaurant and bar with apartments above. By about 1985 the bar was the Dugout, which the Landmarks report calls the historic district's only remaining gay bar; it operated until around 2005.

    “This is the location of the historic district's sole remaining gay bar, the Dugout (c. 1985-2005).”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

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