Eighth Ward Hotel
188 Spring Street | SoHo | built 1824
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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.
- 1832
Captain John F. Davis turns the house into the Eighth Ward Hotel, a Tammany tavern and polling place
Davis, an officer in New York's 1st Regiment of U.S. Volunteers and a devoted Tammany Hall man, took a lease on the house in 1832. He made the ground-floor store a tavern and meeting room for ward Democrats, known as Captain Davis's Large Room, and rented out the upstairs rooms as the Eighth Ward Hotel. The Evening Post reported on November 6, 1832 that the hotel would be the ward's polling place.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1834
Eighth Ward Democrats meet here to back Martin Van Buren and accuse their opponents of buying votes
At a meeting on March 14, 1834, the ward's Democrats adopted resolutions calling Vice President Martin Van Buren a true Democrat. They also denounced their political rivals for boasting of a large fund raised to sway voters, which they said showed how little the rivals understood the character of the American people. The gathering shows how the Spring Street tavern doubled as a party clubhouse.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1844
A Tribune reporter mocks a speaker defending tavern keepers at Captain Davis's Large Room
The anti-Tammany New-York Tribune sent a reporter to a meeting here on June 25, 1844, where a Dr. Chetou addressed saloon owners worried about the city's temperance-leaning mayor. The paper reported him claiming that liquor sellers had more money tied up in their trade than all the stock speculators on Wall Street, and recalled an earlier attempt, in 1828, to ban Sunday sales. The story presented the speaker in an unflattering light.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1868
A piano maker's former employee is arrested for selling 150 pounds of stolen gong bells for $10
Charles J. Holder's piano shop, which was making celestas (bell pianos) by 1868, worked from the rear building at 188 Spring Street. On May 3, 1868 the New York Herald ran the headline "A Musical Offender" over the arrest of Henry Ennver, 21, a recent Holder employee, for taking 150 pounds of gong bells. Ennver admitted the theft and said he had sold the metal for just $10.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1881
A Board of Health inspector charges milk dealer Lewis Eckhardt with watering down his milk
Frederick Eckhardt turned the ground-floor shop at 188 Spring Street into a milk business in 1879, and by 1880 Lewis Eckhardt ran it while Frederick handled the family's real estate. The Evening Post reported on July 23, 1881 that Health Board inspector Dr. John B. Isham had accused Eckhardt of adulterating his product. Isham told the court that a third of the cream had been taken out and water added, at about eleven percent.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1917
The Seung Gong family runs a laundry in the shop and lives in the rooms above
By the years of the First World War the house had been refaced in brick and lost its dormer. In the ground-floor shop, Seung Gong ran a laundry, and his family lived on the upper floors. A Chinese-run laundry remained in the space through the Second World War.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
Further reading
- The Eighth Ward Hotel - 188 Spring StreetDaytonian in Manhattan
- The missing 1824 row house on Spring StreetEphemeral New York
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