2 Fifth Avenue

2 5th Avenue | also 14 Washington Square North, 2 West 8th Street, 21 MacDougal Alley | Greenwich Village | built 1952

Open on the map5 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. 1840

    Richard Upjohn designs a brick and marble mansion for William C. Rhinelander at 14 Washington Square North

    An earlier building on this site: the Rhinelander mansion stood where Fifth Avenue meets Washington Square North, on land Mary Rogers Rhinelander had inherited. William C. Rhinelander hired Richard Upjohn, who was also designing the rebuilt Church of the Ascension up the avenue. The house, finished in 1840, was four bays wide on the Square and three stories over a basement, with a columned portico reached by a wide marble stoop and a cast-iron balcony across the parlor windows.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1856

    John Taylor Johnston, the Met's first president, builds a marble house with a picture gallery at 8 Fifth Avenue

    An earlier building on this site: the four-story, marble-faced house that stood where Fifth Avenue meets Eighth Street on the southwest corner was built in 1856 for John Taylor Johnston. Johnston, a railroad man and collector, was a founder of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and its first president. His house had its own picture gallery, and two similar houses stood alongside it to the south, one built for Rhinelander Stewart in 1857.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  3. 1916

    December 19

    Rita Lydig, tenant of the old Rhinelander mansion, hosts an afternoon reception for Sarah Bernhardt

    An earlier building on this site: after Serena Rhinelander died in 1914, the family leased No. 14 Washington Square North to Rita Lydig, a divorced socialite who sat for Boldini, Sargent and Steichen and was reportedly called the most picturesque woman in America. On December 19, 1916, she held a reception there for the actress Sarah Bernhardt. In 1918 the house also launched a $200,000 campaign for the New York Infirmary for Women and Children.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1951

    February

    The Rhinelander houses on Washington Square North come down despite a years-long campaign to save them

    A developer's syndicate bought the Rhinelander property in 1944 to build a 19-story apartment house, and demolition began in 1945 before protests suspended it. After Sam Rudin's group bought the site in January 1950, a new Washington Square Committee formed to save the houses, backed by the Municipal Art Society and national preservation groups. The houses were demolished in February 1951, a loss that later fed the push for a landmarks law.

    Source: nypap.org

  5. 1952

    Emery Roth & Sons build a 20-story apartment house with a five-story wing to fit in with the Washington Square row

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    Designed in 1950 and finished in 1952, the building has a 20-story bulk on Fifth Avenue and a low wing facing the Square, kept to five stories so it would be in scale with the row of mansions to the west. It replaced five townhouses built between 1835 and 1852. The Landmarks Preservation Commission's 1969 report calls the low wing an excellent compromise, though it says a design review board might have improved the details.

    “…designed in 1950 by Emery Roth & Sons and built in 1951-52…”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

Further reading

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All 518 buildings with stories in Greenwich Village