297 Church Street

Tribeca | built 1870

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. 1869

    October 29

    Architect William T. Bure files plans for a five-story store at 297 Church Street

    Until late 1869 the lot between White and Walker Streets held a one-story wooden building. Merchant Claus Puckhafer, who never ran a business here himself, hired architect William T. Bure to design a five-story brick store as an investment. Plans were filed on October 29, 1869, and the building was finished the next year.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1870

    A Second Empire loft with a Jackson Burnet storefront rises on Church Street

    The new loft was only 22 feet wide, with a cast-iron base and upper stories faced in stone. Its curved-cornered window openings, flanked by carved pilasters, and its heavy bracketed cornice with an arched center bay mark it as Second Empire. The foundry mark of G.R. Jackson Burnet & Company on the storefront shows who made the ironwork.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  3. 1884

    Welsh-born dry-goods magnate Owen Jones owns the building when he dies

    Owen Jones, who was born in Wales in 1815, bought the five-story marble-front warehouse at a public auction held on October 22, 1880. He had come to New York as a teenager, worked as a dry-goods clerk and built a large store on Eighth Avenue. He died in 1884, four years later, with an estate estimated at $2 million.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1892

    August 26

    A shirtwaist maker headquartered here is accused of luring families to a starving New Jersey town

    Jacob Zion ran the New York Ladies' and Boys' Waist Manufacturing Company from this building. In 1892 he sold lots near Camden, New Jersey, to about thirty Russian Jewish families, promising them work in his factory there. The New York Herald reported on August 26 that the settlers, called Ziontown's residents, were close to starvation and denounced Zion as a swindler.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1905

    January 24

    A restaurant fire on Walker Street spreads into 297 Church Street

    Early on January 24, 1905, flames broke out in the basement Cosmopolitan Restaurant at 35 Walker Street. A police officer smelled smoke but firefighters took about twenty minutes to find the blaze below street level. It climbed into the neighboring building and then reached the first and second floors of 297 Church Street, damaging all four tenants, though the building survived.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

Nearby

All 564 buildings with stories in Tribeca