Dr. Cornelius Walke House

213 2nd Avenue | also 251 East 13th Street | East Village | built 1900

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.

1848
September 6
Cyrus Hitchcock buys a corner house for his daughter's newlywed household
Around the time his daughter Hannah married Dr. Cornelius Calvert Walke on September 6, 1848, Cyrus Hitchcock bought the Italianate house at the northwest corner of Second Avenue and East 13th Street. The couple moved in, though Hitchcock kept title to the property. Walke ran a private practice and served as a censor of the New York Medical College. The Walkes left in 1869.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
1906
Henry and Lena Walter buy the building and have architect Louis C. Maurer redo the storefront
Henry and Lena Walter bought the building in 1906 and soon hired architect Louis C. Maurer to alter the interior walls and the storefront. The stoop was probably removed then, and the residential entrance moved to the side street. A Walter drugstore had occupied the ground floor since 1897 and was still there in 1941.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
1980
The ground floor becomes the Nightingale, a dive bar with live bands
By the early 1980s the old drugstore space had turned into the Nightingale. Steven Blush's book New York Rock describes a long bar, a small low stage, and a back pool table, with Blues Traveler, Spin Doctors, and Joan Osborne playing there. A 1990 New York Times review noted the bare, wood-paneled walls. The bar closed in 2013 after nearly four decades in the space.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

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