220 West Houston Street

West Village | built 1900

Open on the map7 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. 1842

    Soap maker Charles S. Holt moves his family into 53 Hamersley Street and sets up his factory next door

    After his October 1842 trial for boiling rotten meat behind his Downing Street house, the tallow chandler Charles S. Holt moved his family into 53 Hamersley Street and set up his soap factory next door at No. 51. The street was later renamed West Houston, and 53 Hamersley became 220 West Houston Street in 1861. This entry describes an earlier building on the site.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1851

    The Nichol & Merklee iron foundry takes over the Hamersley Street house and factory

    By 1851 the old soap house and factory at 53 Hamersley Street housed the Nichol & Merklee iron foundry, operated by George F. Merklee and John Nichol. In 1854 Nichol partnered with George B. Billerwell, and the foundry moved east to No. 33 while the firm's offices stayed on the ground floor here through at least 1868. Upstairs rooms went to working-class tenants such as the seaman James Riley. This entry describes an earlier building on the site.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1870

    January 14

    A police sergeant's funeral is held in his rooms at 220 West Houston Street

    When Sergeant O'Connor of the police force died in January 1870, his funeral was held at his residence, 220 West Houston Street, despite the cramped conditions. The New-York Tribune said the service drew a large attendance, with the coffin carried by close friends and a platoon of the 28th Precinct following to St. Patrick's Cathedral. This entry describes an earlier building on the site.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1904

    October 12

    Waiter Francesco Bagnasco, who lives here, is found slashed on both cheeks with crosses cut beneath

    Early on October 12, 1904, police found Francesco Bagnasco, a waiter living at 220 West Houston Street, on the sidewalk at Macdougal Street and Minetta Lane, nearly unconscious from blood loss. Both cheeks had long cuts with a cross carved below them, which one officer thought was the work of an Italian secret society. Detectives followed the blood trail for over a mile to a tenement at 159 Elizabeth Street but learned nothing, and Bagnasco would not name his attackers.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1970

    The 220 Club opens in the building as a nightclub for the city's transgender crowd, and Lou Reed drops in

    After 1969 the space turned into the 220 Club, managed by Sal "Sally" Maggio and Jesse Torres. A 2014 Lou Reed biography calls it one of the best-known transgender and gay clubs of the early 1970s, with Torres as a glam host. Reed, of the Velvet Underground, was a regular, and a later biographer thought his songs Sally Can't Dance and Ride, Sally, Ride might nod to Maggio.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  6. 1977

    November 27

    Muggings and a bathroom robbery are reported at the 220 Club and outside it

    Patrons of the 220 Club ran real risks. The Villager reported that at 3:30 a.m. on November 27, 1977, seven men attacked a Long Island man in front of the building and took $300, his credit cards and wallet. On January 12, 1978, it reported that a Queens man was robbed of $3,050 in the club's bathroom by a woman who propositioned him and her male accomplice. Similar crimes continued through the 1980s.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  7. 1994

    Toukie Smith, sister of designer Willi Smith, opens the restaurant Toukie's in the building

    In the summer of 1994 Toukie Smith, a model and actress and the sister of fashion designer Willi Smith, opened a restaurant at 220 West Houston Street. The New York Times noted she gave part of the profits to the Smith Family Foundation, which aided people with AIDS and honored her brother, who died of the disease in 1987. Before that, the Ganymede Gallery had shown work here in 1992, including photographs by fifty people living with HIV/AIDS.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

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All 1,156 buildings with stories in West Village