32 Leroy Street
West Village | built 1890
Open on the map2 entries
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.
- 1890
Scottish-born developer William Rankin builds 32 Leroy Street as an eleven-family tenement
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William Rankin, a Scottish-born developer, commissioned this brick tenement in 1889-90 from architect James W. Cole, with builder J. W. Warner & Co. It held a basement apartment and two on each floor above, a decade after the city's first tenement house law of 1879. In 1900 the 25 residents were mostly native-born people of Irish or English parentage in skilled or civil-service jobs.
- 1930
By 1930 most residents of 32 Leroy Street are of Italian descent, and a gallery fills the basement in the 1970s
Census data shows the building's tenants were mostly native-born in 1900 and 1910, though by 1910 a significant number had Eastern European parents and worked in the garment trades. By 1930 most were first- or second-generation Italian immigrants, with occupations that included a chauffeur for a fish market and a weaver of men's clothing. In the 1970s the basement housed an art gallery.
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