359 Broadway (Mathew Brady's studio)

359 Broadway | Tribeca | built 1852

Open on the map7 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. 1852

    James Thompson builds a stone-fronted Italianate saloon building at 359 Broadway

    Saloon keeper and confectioner James Thompson put up the five-story building in 1852, when this stretch of Broadway north of City Hall was becoming the city's main shopping street. He kept a saloon in the building until 1860, much as the better-known Taylor's Saloon next door at No. 365 drew shoppers by serving about three thousand people on an average weekday. Portrait galleries of the period occupied upper floors lit by skylights, and this building would soon house one of the most famous.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  2. 1853

    March 19

    Mathew Brady opens a new gallery on the top three floors of 359 Broadway

    After the 1851 London World's Fair, where his daguerreotypes won a first prize and three medals, Brady opened a new gallery here on March 19, 1853. By 1854 the earlier gallery he kept farther downtown had shut. Visitors entered from the street between display cases of photographs and climbed to a reception room hung with satin and lit by gilt chandeliers, with portraits of presidents, nobles and generals on its walls. Two operating rooms opened off the reception room, and the fifth floor held a skylit studio for special lighting effects.

    “Brady opened a new gallery at 359 Broadway on March 19, 1853, and by 1854 he had closed his gallery further downtown.”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  3. 1856

    Brady's studio sells portraits of the 1856 presidential candidates and has 26 full-time workers by 1858

    By the middle of the decade the gallery was a working business as well as a showroom. According to a history of the building, Brady photographed the 1856 presidential candidates and sold copies at 359 Broadway for about three dollars each, and by 1858 he employed twenty-six people full time.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1881

    December 24

    A Christmas Eve fire damages the building in 1881

    On December 24, 1881, a destructive fire struck 359 Broadway, which by then was renting space to dry goods firms such as Schultz & Co. and to the umbrella dealer Alvah Ball & Co. Damage was estimated at $250,000. The fire came about three decades after James Thompson built the five-story building.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1886

    September

    Dr. L. C. Warner of Warner Brothers buys 359 Broadway and rents space to textile firms

    In September 1886 the building was sold to Dr. L. C. Warner, a founder of the manufacturing firm Warner Brothers. He leased space in it to underwear and textile companies. By then the fashionable portrait galleries that once drew visitors to this block of Broadway had given way to the garment trade.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  6. 1989

    December

    The owner's sons plan to demolish the Brady building, then fight its landmarking

    Textile importer Maurice Russo bought 359 Broadway in 1972. After he died in 1988, his sons planned to demolish it and build a commercial tower of 15 to 30 stories. When the Landmarks Preservation Commission held hearings in December 1989, Albert Russo went to the Library of Congress to try to disprove the Lincoln connection that preservationists were citing, and he told a Newsday reporter that Brady's photographs were his legacy, not an old textile building.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  7. 1992

    April

    A judge confirms the landmark status of the Brady building after a long fight with its owner

    The Landmarks Preservation Commission designated 359 Broadway a city landmark in 1990, citing both Brady's studio and the building's varied window treatments on each of its five floors. The owner contested the designation, and in April 1992 New York State Supreme Court Justice Karla Moskowitz upheld it. She found it clear that the building had been judged important for its architecture as well as its history from the start.

    “…decided in April that it was "clear that the building was considered from the first on architectural as well as historical grounds.”

    Source: Wikipedia

Further reading

Nearby

All 564 buildings with stories in Tribeca