Charles Tousley House

280 Bleecker Street | West Village | built 1848

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. 1848

    Hardware merchant Charles Tousley replaces an older house with a four-story house and store

    Around 1848 Charles Tousley bought the property, tore down the old building and built a modern four-story house-and-store. Its residential entrance beside the shop copied the doorways of the high-stooped Greek Revival houses then going up, with sidelights, pilasters and a transom. Tousley ran his hardware store below while his family lived above until they moved to New Jersey in 1851.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1861

    September 3

    A customer tries the old confidence game on the dry goods store and is arrested

    On September 3, 1861 a woman named Ann Grafton picked out $16 of fabric at William E. Lawrence's dry goods store and asked that it be delivered to her boarding house. When the delivery boy arrived she grabbed the parcel, claimed she needed to show it to her sisters and slipped out another exit. The messenger caught on quickly, and The Sun reported she was arrested.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1897

    August

    A high-end butter store opens and is put up for auction within weeks

    A grocery opened here in August 1897 and lasted only about a month. By September 9 an announcement in The New York World advertised an auction of its fittings, which included an ash butter ice box, two marble counters (one fronted with a mirror, the other 16 feet long) and an oyster counter, plus hams, cheese and tubs of butter. The costly fixtures may have helped sink the business.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1908

    A bakery with new bake ovens takes the shop, starting a long run of food businesses

    In May 1908 owner Annie E. Pell had the building remodeled for a baker, with new windows, interior walls and bake ovens. A. Saliani opened a confectionery in 1929 that became the Village Ice Cream Parlor and lasted through 1959, when Al & Anne's Luncheonette took over. Eateries have filled the ground floor ever since.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1998

    December

    Fish opens as a restaurant that also sells raw fish

    In December 1998 a restaurant named Fish opened in the storefront. The Villager noted that it served seafood, sold it uncooked and had a raw bar, and joked that the name was the obvious choice. Fish stayed until February 2025, and the space is now a Slutty Vegan restaurant.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

Nearby

All 1,156 buildings with stories in West Village