23 Park Place Building

23 Park Place | also 20 Murray Street | Tribeca | built 1857

Open on the map5 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. 1857

    February 1

    Lathrop, Ludington & Co. move into a new dry goods store at 23 and 25 Park Place

    In 1855 Dr. Valentine Mott, who owned 25 Park Place, leased the site for eleven years to the dry goods merchants Richard D. Lathrop and Charles H. Ludington. The lease required a five-story store with marble fronts and iron pillars by November 1857. Edwin Bruton Strange owned 23 Park Place, and by 1853 the two old houses there had been joined as a hotel, the Clifford House. The firm announced it would move from 16 Cortlandt Street into the finished store on February 1, 1857.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  2. 1857

    Samuel A. Warner gives twin Park Place stores Italian palazzo fronts and Badger cast-iron storefronts

    Warner, who specialized in large stores for dry goods merchants, adopted the Italian palazzo style made popular by A. T. Stewart's store on Broadway. The second-floor windows alternate triangular and segmental pediments, a reference to the Farnese Palace in Rome. The cast-iron storefronts, with fluted Corinthian columns, came from Daniel D. Badger's foundry. A party wall divides 23 from 25 Park Place, but the through-block pair reads as a single building on both Park Place and Murray Street.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  3. 1860

    February

    A Georgia newspaper urges readers to boycott Lathrop, Ludington & Co. for opposing the Southern position

    New York's dry goods trade was tied to Southern cotton, and many merchants openly sided with the South. Lathrop, Ludington & Co. did not: in February 1860 The New York Times reprinted a piece from the Atlanta paper Southern Confederacy that urged readers to boycott the firm and other New York wholesale houses it called enemies of Southern institutions. Within two years Richard D. Lathrop was listed on the pro-Union National War Committee of the Citizens of New York.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  4. 1870

    September 27

    Seed dealers B. K. Bliss & Son hold a grape exhibition in the store at 23 Park Place

    In 1869 the seed distributor B. K. Bliss & Son put on a strawberry exhibition in its store here. The next year it announced a similar show of grapes with $250 in prizes. The New York Times reported on September 28, 1870 that the spacious store had been crowded the day before with grape growers and connoisseurs viewing some 500 specimens on the tables.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1921

    The New York Daily News leases both Park Place buildings

    From 1921 until early 1930 the New York Daily News, founded in 1919 as the city's first tabloid, rented both 23 and 25 Park Place. It was the only time the two buildings had a single tenant since the dry goods era. The paper's own Daily News Building at 220 East 42nd Street was completed in 1929-30.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

Further reading

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