Edward Ridley & Sons Department Store Buildings
315 Grand Street | also 317 Grand Street, 66 Allen Street | Chinatown | built 1886
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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.
- 1848
Edward Ridley opens a small shop at 311½ Grand Street, near this site
Edward Ridley, born in England in 1816 and trained as a lawyer, closed a dry goods store in 1843 because of debt and took his family to Albany in the mid-1840s, where they ran another. In 1848 or 1849 he moved to New York and leased space at 311½ Grand Street, near Allen Street, to sell millinery and dry goods. The business later grew into the Lower East Side's largest department store.
- 1886
The Ridley brothers file plans for a cast-iron store addition by Paul F. Schoen
In late February 1886 Edward A. and Arthur J. Ridley filed plans for a new store at 315-321 Grand Street, designed by Paul F. Schoen. The permit put its cost at $75,000 for a 68-foot-tall building of brick, iron and timber on a 112-by-70-foot site. Builder William Shears started in late April, and the Buildings Department recorded the work as finished on December 3, 1886.
- 1932
Widening Allen Street turns 315-317 Grand into a corner building
The widening of Allen Street from 50 to 138 feet cleared buildings along its east side, reaching the block next to the old Ridley store by 1932. That left 315-317 Grand Street as a corner building with a new side wall. The Allen Street front was rebuilt between September 1932 and February 1934 in tan brick with simple Art Deco details, probably by architect John N. Linn with engineer Max Siegel.
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