32 Gansevoort Street

West Village | built 1910

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.

1893
Lawyer John B. Ireland builds a five-story warehouse on Gansevoort Street
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John Busteed Ireland, a lawyer from Washington Square who managed extensive Greenwich Village real estate, built this warehouse in 1893 to designs by Charles R. Behrens. Two years later another Ireland building by Behrens, on West Broadway, collapsed, and the architect was held partly responsible. The Gansevoort Street building was changed in quick succession: to a store-and-loft building in 1894, a factory in 1896 and a lodging house in 1901.
Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission
1904
A lodging-house operator buys the building, and wholesale grocers later lease it for decades
In 1904 the Ireland family sold the building to Angelino Sartirano; his firm, Sartirano & Co., ran many lodging houses around Manhattan. Maps of the 1910s and 1920s label it the Wena Hotel. Fair Lennon & Co., wholesale grocers, leased it from 1906, bought it in 1924 and stayed until 1950.
“Maps from the 1910s and 20s indicate that it was called the Wena Hotel.”
Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission
1961
The building becomes a store and fine-arts studios, with the sculptor Paul Frazier as a tenant
The 1950s left no directory listings for the building after the grocers moved out. A 1961 alteration turned the building into a shop and fine-arts studios, and the sculptor Paul Frazier became a tenant, alongside the fruit merchants Gaetano Calarco & Co.
Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

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