Michael Puels Building

285 Bleecker Street | West Village | built 1874

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. 1874

    August 26

    Butcher Michael Puels dies before his five-story building is finished

    In March 1874 the Bavarian-born butcher Michael Puels, 38, had architect Julius Boekell file plans for a five-story store and tenement to hold his shop and rental apartments. Puels died on August 26, a few months after ground was broken. His widow Clara carried on with the construction and moved into one of the apartments, where she would live for more than thirty years.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1874

    Julius Boekell's Italianate tenement carries its owner's name in the cornice

    Julius Boekell designed this Italianate tenement with a ground-floor shop for Michael Puels, a Bavarian butcher. It rises five stories, with segmental-arched windows under bracketed lintels topped by foliate ornaments. The galvanized-iron cornice has an arched pediment bearing the raised letters 'M. Puels, 1874'. The 1880 census counted nine families here, including the widow and children of Puels.

    “Julius Boekell in 1874. It was constructed for Michael Puels, a Bavarian butcher…”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  3. 1906

    April

    The building changes hands four times in ten months

    After Clara Puels sold the building on April 3, 1906, it changed hands again within days: Louis P. Dowdney held it three days before selling to Denis M. Gallo, who sold to Camille Sisti and Giacinta Rubino on April 17. They resold it to Lorenzo and Lucia Ciaffone in February 1907. The surnames of the buyers reflect the neighborhood's heavily Italian population, and the Ciaffones kept the building for over a decade.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1976

    June 4

    Alfredo Viazzi opens Tavola Calda da Alfredo, praised by Mimi Sheraton

    In 1976 the chef Alfredo Viazzi opened his restaurant Tavola Calda da Alfredo in the store space. On June 4 of that year the New York Times food critic Mimi Sheraton called him a maestro and wrote that his cooking was soul-satisfying. The restaurant remained until Viazzi's lease ran out in 1989.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1989

    Ottomanelli & Sons moves in, returning the shop to a butcher's

    Onofrio Ottomanelli bought the building in 1964. His butcher shop, Ottomanelli Brothers, had begun in 1900 and had been at 281 Bleecker Street since 1957. When Viazzi's lease ran out in 1989, the family moved into the ground floor of 285, restoring the butcher shop that Michael Puels had intended more than a century earlier. O. Ottomanelli & Sons is still there.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

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