253 Church Street
Tribeca | built 1866
Open on the map3 entries
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.
- 1865
Samuel D. Babcock leases two frame-house lots and builds a five-story brownstone store
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On January 1, 1865, Henry R. Dunham leased his two properties on this lot, each holding a frame dwelling, to Samuel D. Babcock. The lease obliged Babcock to erect brick or stone buildings of at least four stories across the whole frontage within seven years. He put up a five-story, brownstone-fronted store and loft building in 1865-66, and a sixth story was added in 1896.
- 1927
A new brick facade replaces the fire-damaged front of 253-255 Church Street
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In 1927 the architect Jean Jeaume remodeled the building for its owner, Ravinia Realty Corp., giving it a brick front in an early-twentieth-century commercial style. The new facade replaced the nineteenth-century one, which fire had damaged. It has eight window bays per floor above a double-height base, and the top story dates from an 1896 alteration by Oswald Wirz for the Fred A. Miller estate.
- 1927
Cotton goods and gauze bandages are manufactured in the remodeled building
At the time of its 1927 remodeling, the building was used to manufacture cotton goods and gauze bandages. When the Landmarks Preservation Commission wrote its 1992 report on the Tribeca East Historic District, the ground floor was commercial and the floors above were in residential use.
“In 1927, at the time of its remodeling, this building was used for the manufacturing of cotton goods and gauze bandages.”
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