Ideal Hosiery Building

339 Grand Street | also 57 Ludlow Street | Chinatown | built 1833

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.

1833
John Jacob Astor builds a row of five Federal houses
Real estate magnate John Jacob Astor erected this Federal-style house by 1833 as one of five nearly identical brick rowhouses on Grand Street, each with Flemish-bond brickwork and a peaked, dormered roof. It survives today as the last of the five still largely intact.
Source: Wikipedia
1837
November
A London milliner opens a hat shop in the storefront
Milliner Mrs. M. D. Hodge, newly arrived from London, ran a hat shop out of the ground-floor storefront starting in 1837, advertising her "elegant Chenille hats" in the Morning Herald that November. The building's storefront has drawn a changing parade of small merchants ever since.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
1950
The Astor family sells the building after 120 years
Edward W. de Nottbeck sold the house to the 339 Grand Street Corporation in 1950, ending 120 years of ownership by descendants of John Jacob Astor. The Ideal Hosiery Company leased the storefront that same year, putting up the bright red sign that gave the building its name, and bought the property outright in 1965.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
2013
October 29
The city designates the building an individual landmark
The Landmarks Preservation Commission designated 339 Grand Street an individual New York City landmark on October 29, 2013, citing it as a rare surviving example of Federal-style architecture on the Lower East Side.
Source: Wikipedia

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