Clinton Hall (Mercantile Library building)

21 Astor Place | also 13 Astor Place, 136 East 8th Street, 454 Lafayette Street | NoHo | built 1892

Open on the map4 entries

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

  1. 1850

    The Astor Place Opera House on this site closes and the Mercantile Library takes it over

    The site of 13-25 Astor Place first held the Astor Place Opera House, outside which an infamous 1849 riot grew out of a rivalry between two Shakespearean actors. After the opera house closed in 1850, the Mercantile Library soon took over the building and renamed it Clinton Hall. Between 1890 and 1892 the Clinton Hall Association tore it down and put up the present library and office building.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  2. 1892

    The Clinton Hall Association completes a Romanesque Revival library and office building at Astor Place

    George E. Harney designed the building, and the McCabe Brothers built it between 1890 and 1892 for the Clinton Hall Association. The association put its Mercantile Library, started in 1820 by clerks of downtown merchants, on the sixth and seventh floors, where it held over 245,000 volumes. Stores and offices took the remaining space, and the Astor Place Bank occupied the ground floor by 1896.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  3. 1904

    The new Astor Place subway station gets an exit straight into the Mercantile Library

    When the city built the Astor Place subway station in 1904, it included an exit from the platform up into the library above. The doorway on the southbound side is now tiled over, but the name Clinton Hall is still visible above it. The Mercantile Library remained on the site until 1932, when it moved to 47th Street.

    Source: Ephemeral New York

  4. 1940

    Local 65 of the United Wholesale and Warehouse Union owns and occupies the Astor Place building

    By the 1940s the union Local 65 owned the building and used it as its base, staying until at least the mid-1960s. Two stories were added on top in 1926. Earlier, the Clinton Hall Association had owned it through at least 1920, when the Alexander Hamilton Institute leased space here.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

Further reading

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