Benjamin Lee House

33 Bond Street | NoHo | built 1831

Open on the map5 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. 1831

    Rubber merchant Benjamin F. Lee buys the new house, and his wife's portrait becomes famous

    Builder Timothy Woodruff finished the 25-foot-wide brick house in 1831, and Benjamin F. Lee and his wife Jane Lawrence bought it. Lee had made a fortune in the early vulcanized-rubber business, and Jane was known as a celebrated beauty. Her portrait, The White Plume, by the painter Charles Cromwell Ingham, who helped found the National Academy of Design, caused a sensation. The Lees put the house up for sale in January 1834, having lived there only about three years.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1889

    February

    A hotel keeper's wife is accused of buying this house with money taken from his safe

    Catharine Taylor bought No. 33 in 1885 for $16,000 as an investment, then put the title in her sister Margaret Barnes's name in 1888. Her husband Washington H. Taylor, who ran a hotel on Park Row, knew nothing of the deals. In February 1889 he found that his safe had been emptied of a huge sum, left her, and sued both women to recover property bought with his money, No. 33 among it.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1897

    August 11

    A burglar alarm saves a feather factory from fire after the flames cut its wire

    Joseph Lowenstein ran a feather business at No. 33, where freshly dyed feathers were spread out to dry. Early on August 11, 1897, a fire started in that room and climbed the woodwork to the office above. It snapped the thin wire of the new electric burglar alarm, and the bell rang at the alarm company, which sent private detectives who found a fire instead of thieves and called the firemen. Lowenstein's loss was held to roughly $64,000 in today's money.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1908

    November 28

    A fur thief sentenced to a year in prison escapes and is caught sneaking back into a Bond Street fur factory

    Harry Gorrfine and an accomplice failed in a November 1908 robbery of David Birnbaum's fur factory at No. 33, and each was sentenced to a year in prison. Gorrfine soon escaped. On the afternoon of Saturday, November 28, about two weeks after the first attempt, a detective saw him slip back into the building. Gorrfine was seized in the hallway with a large bundle, and officers then caught two more thieves upstairs, where furs worth $10,000 had been bundled for removal.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1911

    Architects raise the old rowhouse to four stories as a loft building

    The 1830s house had stood as a three-and-a-half-story home with a peaked roof. In 1911 the architects Cleverdon & Putzel raised it by a floor, giving the building four stories, and built new brick front and rear walls with stone lintels. The Landmarks Preservation Commission notes that furriers and hat makers occupied it until at least 1929, and that by 1970 it was turning into art studios and live-work space.

    “In 1911 Cleverdon & Putzel raised the building to four full stories and redesigned both the front and rear facades.”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

Further reading

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All 222 buildings with stories in NoHo