Tompkins Square Lodging House for Boys

295 East 8th Street | East Village | built 1886

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. 1886

    Calvert Vaux designs a lodging house for homeless boys on East 8th Street

    The Children's Aid Society commissioned Calvert Vaux and George Kent Radford to design a shelter and industrial school for newsboys and street orphans, funded by a $50,000 trust from Mrs. R. L. Stuart. The Queen Anne and Victorian Gothic building opened on East 8th Street in 1886, offering mandatory washing stations, a reading room and vocational classes.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1891

    The lodging house serves nearly 20,000 meals a year at its peak

    During its busiest years, from 1886 to 1891, the shelter registered 1,147 boys and served close to 20,000 meals annually, part of the Children's Aid Society's push to get homeless newsboys and street children off Manhattan's streets and into schooling.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1925

    The former boys' shelter becomes a Hebrew school and yeshiva

    After serving as a school for children with heart conditions from 1910, the building was taken over in 1925 by the Talmud Torah Darghei Noam Hebrew school, later becoming the East Side Hebrew Institute yeshiva. It served the neighborhood's Jewish community until falling vacant in 1974.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 2000

    May 16

    The city designates the former lodging house a landmark

    The Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the former Tompkins Square Lodging House for Boys and Industrial School a New York City landmark on May 16, 2000, protecting the High Victorian Gothic building designed decades earlier by Vaux & Radford.

    Source: Wikipedia

  5. 2003

    Filmmaker Roland Legiardi-Laura restores the derelict shelter as apartments

    The Institute abandoned the building in 1974 as the surrounding neighborhood declined, and it sat empty for years afterward. Filmmaker Roland Legiardi-Laura purchased the landmarked structure and began its restoration in 2003, converting it into apartments and returning the Gothic-detailed building to active use.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

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