Elizabeth Home for Girls

307 East 12th Street | East Village | built 1920

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. 1892

    December 13

    The Children's Aid Society opens the Elizabeth Home for Girls

    Architects Vaux & Radford, led by Calvert Vaux, designed the Victorian Gothic home for the Children's Aid Society, which named it for the late Elizabeth Davenport Wheeler. Housing up to 50 residents, it trained destitute girls in dressmaking, sewing, laundry work, typewriting and housekeeping, aiming to place graduates in jobs or reunite them with family.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1909

    November

    Superintendent Elizabeth S. Hurley dies after 55 years with the Children's Aid Society

    Elizabeth S. Hurley had managed the Elizabeth Home for Girls since it opened, helping an estimated 20,000 girls pass through its training programs. She died in November 1909, ending a tenure that had shaped the institution for its first two decades.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1930

    Naturopath Benedict Lust buys the building for his school of naturopathy

    The Children's Aid Society sold the former girls' home in 1930 to Benedict Lust, who opened his American School of Naturopathy and Chiropractic inside. In 1935 Lust and two of the school's officers were arrested and charged with unlawfully granting chiropractic degrees.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1946

    November 1

    The Florence Crittenton League opens Barrett House for troubled girls

    On November 1, 1946, the Florence Crittenton League opened Barrett House in the building as a home for girls aged 16 to 21, some of them runaways. It remained for decades, and by 1980 neighbors were complaining to The New York Times about noise and violent behavior there. In 1983 the building was converted to co-operative apartments.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 2008

    March

    The city designates the building a landmark

    The Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the former Elizabeth Home for Girls a New York City landmark in March 2008. The Queen Anne building of pressed brick and sandstone had kept much of its original stepped gable, sandstone entry and hipped dormers through years of use as a girls' home, a hotel, a naturopathy school, a shelter and, by then, co-op apartments.

    Source: buildingblocks.villagepreservation.org

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