359 Avenue of the Americas

also 357 Avenue of the Americas | West Village | built 1910

Open on the map4 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. 1832

    Henry Bayard builds a brick rowhouse south of Barrow Street

    Henry Bayard built a Federal-style brick house, numbered 55 Sixth Avenue until 1925, just south of Barrow Street. An 1834 auction notice described a two-story house with slate roof, 11 rooms (six with fireplaces), a subcellar, and an attached brick building at the rear.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1863

    The rowhouse is remodeled into a storefront

    Around 1863 the ground floor of the house became commercial space, and the stoop was removed so the first floor sat at street level. Pressed-metal lintels went over the windows and an Italianate cornice with scrolled brackets topped the front, possibly at the same time that the attic was raised to a full floor.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1922

    Local lore places the Red Head speakeasy behind bricked-in windows here

    Ephemeral New York reports that cousins Jack Kriendler and Charlie Berns launched the Red Head in 1922 to pay for college, disguising it as a tea house that served alcohol in teacups. The second-floor windows at 359 Sixth Avenue were bricked in and painted over. F. Scott Fitzgerald is said to have been a regular. The cousins closed the Red Head in 1925 and later opened the club that became the 21 Club in Midtown.

    Source: Ephemeral New York

  4. 1965

    McBell's Irish Pub anchors the storefront for three decades

    After mid-century restaurants such as Emma's Rotisserie in 1941 and Ernesta's, Ida and Ed McLaughlin and Frank Campbell opened McBell's Irish Pub here in 1965. It lasted more than three decades. The storefront later held the Spanish restaurant Tertulia, opened in 2011, and the Nikkei restaurant Llama San in 2019.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

Nearby

All 1,156 buildings with stories in West Village