Matthew Kane's corner house

308 West 13th Street | also 351 West 4th Street | West Village | built 1868

Open on the map4 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. 1868

    D. & J. Jardine design a Second Empire corner house for sashmaker Matthew Kane

    The five-story corner building was designed in 1868 by the Jardine brothers for Matthew Kane, a sashmaker, as the end of a row of mansard-roofed houses on West 4th Street. Its side entrance is numbered 351 West 4th Street, and stores occupy the ground floor on the 13th Street side. With corner quoins and tall chimneys, the Landmarks Preservation Commission says it recalls Parisian town houses of the 1860s.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  2. 1897

    August 26

    A grocer here declines to press charges against a hungry man who took six brooms

    The shop space at 308 West 13th Street, once a printer's, was Hugh McCreedy's grocery in 1897. When 44-year-old John Martin, a homeless man, walked off with six brooms, he was caught nearby and brought before Magistrate Simms. Martin explained he was hungry and wanted a night's lodging and a meal, and McCreedy chose not to press the charge, so he was released.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1922

    January 28

    Six-year-old Evelyn Rice, a resident, is killed when a truck jumps the curb outside a movie theater

    The Rice family lived in the house in 1922. On January 28 Evelyn Rice's mother took her to a nearby movie theater. As the audience left at 14th Street and Eighth Avenue, a truck driven by 20-year-old John Hayes swerved onto the sidewalk and plowed through the crowd. Evelyn was pushed into its path and killed, and four other people were hurt.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 2004

    A renovation seals the old storefront and a hair salon takes the space

    The corner had held a restaurant in the 1950s and early 1960s, and its large store windows were boarded over as early as March 1933. A renovation completed in 2004 turned the upper floors into two apartments, one of them a triplex, and bricked over the storefront. The ground-floor space then became the Thomas Heinz Salon, which The New York Times described as tiny and extremely private.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

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