Baumann Brothers Furniture and Carpets Store
22 East 14th Street | also 26 East 14th Street, 25 East 13th Street, 21 East 13th Street | Greenwich Village | built 1881
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Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1846
The Arlington House hotel stands on part of the lot, once Henry Spingler's farm
A Greek Revival hotel called Arlington House went up in 1846 on the northern part of this lot. The land had been part of Henry Spingler's farm, dating from the late eighteenth century, and Spingler's heirs in the Van Beuren family kept it. In 1880 James McCreery bought the southern part of the parcel and leased the northern strip from them. This was an earlier building on the site.
“The northern portion of this parcel, the site of the Greek Revival style hotel Arlington House (1846), was once part of the farm of Henry Spingler…”
- 1881
James McCreery's $75,000 cast-iron store opens, though he never uses it for his own business
The architects D. & J. Jardine filed plans in November 1880 for a five-story cast-iron-fronted store on McCreery's 14th Street lot, running through the block to 13th Street, with an estimated cost of $75,000. Construction lasted from December 1880 to September 1881, with Samuel Lowden as mason, and the building had an elevator to the second floor. McCreery never used it for his own business and leased about two-thirds of it to Baumann Brothers. Two other early tenants in Nos. 24-26, Flint & Warren and E. D. Bassford, both failed within a couple of years.
“It is unknown whether McCreery planned to relocate his own firm here, but he never used the building for his own business.”
- 1881
The mayor returns McCreery's bay-window request after he had blocked his neighbors' bays
While the Jardines' new store rose at Nos. 22-26, the owners of Nos. 28 and 30 next door asked the Board of Aldermen for projecting shop windows. The requests were refused because McCreery would not consent to bays. In May 1881 McCreery himself applied for bay windows on his three stores, and on May 28 Mayor William R. Grace sent the resolution back unsigned. He cited the neighbors' complaint that bays would hurt their plain-fronted stores.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1881
A cast-iron front mixing neo-Grec, classical and Queen Anne motifs, with sunflower panels, goes up on 14th Street
The wide cast-iron facade was manufactured by the West Side Architectural Iron Works to the Jardines' design. It combines classical columns and swags, neo-Grec incised ornament and Queen Anne style patterning, including panels of sunflowers. The Landmarks Preservation Commission calls it one of the Jardines' and one of the city's most inventive and ornamental fronts, and a signal work of the Aesthetic Movement.
“The wide cast-iron front facade of the Baumann Brothers Furniture and Carpets Store (1880-81) is one of the firm's and one of the city's most inventive…”
- 1881
Baumann Brothers open an artistic furniture and carpet showroom at Nos. 22 and 24
Albert and Ludwig Baumann, Bohemian Jewish immigrants who had been making furniture since about 1870, moved their firm here from 32 West 14th Street. The New York Times reported on September 2, 1881 that their new store had opened to the public the day before. They advertised the biggest and most varied stock of cabinet furniture, draperies, carpets and rugs, likening the warehouse to an Eastern bazaar.
“…the new and attractive store of the Messrs. Baumann Brothers, dealers in artistic furniture and carpets, at Nos. 22 and 24 East Fourteenth-street, [which] was opened to the public yesterday…”
- 1884
Baumann Brothers lease McCreery's whole building for what the Times calls the city's largest retail furniture house
By the end of 1883 the firm had spread into No. 26 and was advertising itself as the biggest, most complete home-furnishing house in America. In January 1884 it leased the whole building from James McCreery, giving a showroom 75 feet wide and about 210 feet deep through to 13th Street. The furniture was made by the firm itself, and its stables on East 12th Street stored stock. Baumann Brothers left for Sixth Avenue in 1897.
- 1900
Woolworth's opens its fourth Manhattan store here, drawing about 25,000 people in a crush
F. W. Woolworth took the whole ground floor and basement, and the June 1900 opening drew a crowd of about 25,000. The New-York Daily Tribune reported that several women fainted in the crush. The store was hailed as the largest ten-cent store in the world and had a pipe organ for music. In 1910 it added the chain's first lunchroom, a Refreshment Room at the back, and Woolworth's stayed until 1928.
“…it attracted a throng of some 25,000 people…”
- 1904
A 14th Street teenager who skips work for a river excursion boards the General Slocum and does not return
Albert Greenwall, a teenage employee in this building, stayed away from work on Wednesday, June 15, 1904. He joined his friend John Ell, 14, and about 1,300 other passengers on the General Slocum, bound for a picnic grove up the East River. The steamer burned to the waterline within about 15 minutes and only 321 people survived. John Ell later told investigators the fire burst out of the furnace room.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1913
A pipe attributed to strikers crashes through a window where garment workers sleep to avoid union threats
During a long apparel strike, the tenant Hornthal, Benjamin & Riem gave its non-union workers beds in the loft so they would not have to go out at night. Shortly after midnight on February 28, 1913 a bomb went off outside the sleeping quarters of another apparel firm on West 15th Street. At about 2:00 a.m. a pipe a foot long was hurled through a second-floor window here, and garment strikers were blamed. Police from the Mercer Street Station calmed the workers and an officer dropped the pipe in a bucket of water.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1930
The Delehanty Institute opens a gym and classrooms here to train police and fire candidates
From 1930 to 1963 the upper floors housed a gymnasium and classrooms for the Delehanty Institute, which prepared candidates for the Police and Fire Departments, and in 1941 a running track was put on the roof for it. The ground floor was meanwhile occupied by successive five-and-ten-cent chains, and in 1955 a furniture seller, Bon Marche, moved in.
“…the building housed a gymnasium and classrooms for the Delehanty Institute, which trained candidates of the Police and Fire Departments…”
- 1936
Sulphur dioxide leaks from the basement of the five-and-ten and overcomes twenty employees
During the rush hour on June 5, 1936, fumes from an ice cream cooler in the basement of the five-and-ten store seeped upward unnoticed for about 45 minutes. Twenty employees collapsed, and three ambulances and three emergency squads came. The porter James Evans ran down and shut off the cooling plant, and was overcome himself on the way back up. Part of the vacant second floor was used to treat victims, who were not thought to be seriously ill.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 2008
The city designates the Baumann Brothers store a landmark after six years of hearings
The Landmarks Preservation Commission held hearings on the store in September 2002 and June 2003, and again on September 16, 2008, before designating it on November 18, 2008. Twelve people spoke in favor, including a representative of owner New School University, but a co-owner of the ground story spoke against designating that portion. By then the upper floors were an annex of Parsons School of Design and the ground floor held a drugstore.
Further reading
- The Baumann Bros. Bldg.- No. 22-26 East 14th StreetDaytonian in Manhattan
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