187 Christopher Street

also 388 West Street | West Village | built 1938

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. 1834

    Pieces of the 1834 Greenwich Market stood on this corner before the present building

    This was an earlier building on the site. Before 1937 the site at West and Christopher Streets was occupied by three structures: No. 388, a three-story brick commercial building of 1886 for the lawyer Joseph B. Ireland, and Nos. 389 and 390, wood-framed buildings that formed two of the three surviving parts of the 1834 Greenwich (Weehawken) Market house. The Annin family owned No. 390 from 1850, and Alexander Annin was listed there as a ship chandler in 1851.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  2. 1938

    A baking executive replaces three buildings with a one-story store block, the last built in the district

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    Benjamin Gottfried of the Gottfried Baking Co. acquired Nos. 388-389 in 1937 through his Silver Dollar Properties and first meant to build a gas station. In December 1937 architect William Shary filed instead for a one-story commercial building, finished in about three months. It was the last structure built in the historic district; the Annin family kept its lot until 1953, and the whole site was not under one owner until 1996.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  3. 1983

    Badlands, a gay bar whose weekend crowds filled the street, opens at the corner

    From the 1930s to the 1960s the building held Harry's Men's Shop, which sold supplies to seamen. The West Beach Bar & Grill, mainly gay, ran here in the 1970s, and by 1983 the corner was Badlands, a gay bar open until 1991. The Landmarks report says its weekend crowds spilled onto all the surrounding streets, and the bar was widely known across Greenwich Village.

    “In the 1980s, it was widely known in Greenwich Village as the popular gay bar Badlands, whose crowds on the weekends would spill out onto all of the surrounding streets.”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

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