Arnold Constable & Co. store, 309-311 Canal Street

309 Canal Street | also 51 Howard Street, 53 Howard Street | SoHo | built 1857

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.

1856
The Merklee & Nichol foundry casts the Corinthian iron storefront of the Arnold Constable store
The first four floors of the Mercer Street section were built in 1856 for Aaron Arnold, in brick with stone lintels. A plaque credits the Merklee and Nichol Iron Foundry of Hammersley Street with the ground-floor iron pilasters, which have Corinthian capitals. An old lithograph shows that the second-floor central window originally rose through two stories as a Venetian window.
“A foundry plaque indicates that these iron members came from the Merklee and Nichol Iron Foundry on Hammersley Street.”
Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission
1857
Arnold Constable moves into a new white marble "dry goods palace" at 309-311 Canal Street
In 1857 the firm settled into a four-story white marble store on the corner of Canal and Mercer Streets, with frontage on Howard Street too. A few years later, as inflation hit the country, it became one of the first stores to send customers charge bills monthly instead of twice a year. The building was the firm's home until its 1869 move uptown.
Source: Wikipedia

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