Avignone Chemists building
281 Avenue of the Americas | also 226 Bleecker Street | West Village | built 1929
Open on the map4 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.
- 1929
Avignone Pharmacy moves into a new building at Sixth Avenue and Bleecker after its old shop is demolished
In 1929 the Avignone family, who ran a pharmacy, put up a two-story building at 281 Sixth Avenue (226 Bleecker Street) and moved in. Their earlier home at 59 MacDougal Street had been demolished to make way for a wider Houston Street. Brothers Horatio and Frank Avignone built the new store, which has changed little since.
Source: Village Preservation
- 1929
The architect credited with the Avignone drugstore building is listed as a public school teacher
Alfred G. Dorsch is named as architect of the neo-Classical building at 281 Sixth Avenue, designed in 1929 as a drugstore with offices. Little is known of his training, and the census lists his occupation as public school teacher; in 1920 he taught shop. The owner was the Belvedere Land Company, owned by the Avignone family.
“…the United States Census records list his occupation as public school teacher, records for 1920 note that he taught shop.”
- 2007
Three partners renovate the pharmacy and rename it Avignone Chemists
After Frank Avignone's son Carlo ran the store, the Grassi family took over and it traded for a time as Avignone Love Health & Beauty. In 2007 Abe Lerner, Andrew Fruchtman and John Duffy renovated the shop and renamed it Avignone Chemists. The store displayed old apothecary jars, mortars and pestles, and a prescription book from the early 1900s found in the basement.
Source: Village Preservation
- 2015
Avignone Chemists closes after its landlord triples the rent
Avignone Chemists, which the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation had honored with a Village Award in 2013, closed in April 2015. A new landlord had bought the whole Bleecker Street block between Sixth Avenue and Carmine Street and tripled the rent on the 1,700-square-foot space. The pharmacy had described itself as the independent anti-chain pharmacy.
“In April 2015, Avignone Chemists closed down, after the entire block of Bleecker Street... had been bought by a new landlord who tripled the rent…”
Source: Wikipedia
Nearby
- 228 Bleecker Street1 entry
- 26 Carmine Street1 entry
- 30 Carmine Street2 entries
- Downing Street Playground32 Carmine Street | 4 entries
- 13 Downing Street2 entries
- 34 Carmine Street2 entries