Parker Building

225 Park Avenue South | also 111 East 18th Street, 104 East 19th Street, 102 East 19th Street | Gramercy | built 1910

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.

1900
The Parker Building opens as a publishing-trade office tower
Architect William Birkmeier's 12-story Commercial Renaissance Revival building rose on a limestone base over a steel frame. Early tenants included the weekly magazines Judge and The Outlook, the newspaper Broadway Weekly, and Oriental rug importer Myran Karaghensian.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
1908
January 10
A fire guts the Parker Building and kills three people
The blaze began in the Detmer Woolen Company on the sixth floor and within an hour had spread through every floor above the fourth. A collapsing floor swept two firefighters and an insurance patrolman to their deaths, and about fifty firefighters had to scramble out before the building was reduced to its steel skeleton.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
1910
The gutted building is rebuilt as the Pocono Building
Reconstruction after the 1908 fire finished in 1909 and 1910 and the building reopened under a new name. Its tenant roster shifted from publishing firms to the apparel trade, filling with silk merchants and hosiery manufacturers.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
2001
The Port Authority sets up temporary headquarters in the building
After the destruction of the World Trade Center, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey leased roughly 315,000 square feet combined in this building and the adjacent 233 Park Avenue South as its temporary headquarters, remaining until 2015.
Source: Wikipedia

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