219-221 Grand Street

219 Grand Street | also 221 Grand Street, 99 Elizabeth Street | Little Italy | built 1900

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. 1883

    July

    Architect E. Sniffen designs a five-story store for builder Daniel Brickenhoff

    In July 1883 Daniel Brickenhoff, head of a construction firm, bought the site of an old three-story house at 219-221 Grand Street, and architect E. Sniffen submitted plans for a brick store of five stories costing $22,000. It combined Italianate and neo-Grec details over a cast-iron storefront. Sniffen returned in 1884 with plans, costing $25,000, to double its size along Elizabeth Street. The dentist Thomas Paine had used the earlier house as his home and office in the 1840s.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1886

    A W. L. Douglas shoe store takes ground-floor space in the 1880s

    The ground-floor store was one of several city shops run by W. L. Douglas, who founded his shoe firm in 1876 and sold his own shoes retail instead of through wholesalers. Douglas stamped his picture on the soles, and by 1900 his company was the largest shoemaker in the world. Daytonian in Manhattan reproduces an 1886 advertisement from The Sun that priced a Douglas shoe at $3.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1963

    March

    Fire leaves tenants of 221 Grand Street's twelve apartments homeless for months

    A fire in March 1963 devastated No. 221, and the twelve households living there moved in with friends and neighbors. Five months later, according to the New York Times, the building still had no water, gas or electricity, and tenants who sued the landlord to force repairs got nowhere. The city seized the building and spent $39,350 on repairs, but when tenants returned their rents rose by up to 62 percent. The city auctioned the property in 1970.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

Nearby

All 76 buildings with stories in Little Italy