Rawitser Building
380 Canal Street | also 297 West Broadway | Tribeca | built 1920
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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.
- 1897
Brunner & Tryon file plans for the Rawitser Building on Canal Street and West Broadway
The developers S. & H. Rawitser had the architects Brunner & Tryon draw up plans, filed on August 20, 1897, for a six-story brick building of stores and lofts on the southeast corner of Canal Street and West Broadway. It cost $100,000 and was faced mostly in brick, a cheaper choice than stone, with a chamfered corner entrance and Beaux Arts carving on the upper floors. It stands outside the Tribeca Historic District.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1920
Burglars drill a safe at the Liberty Fountain Pen Company and take gold bullion
Late on November 29, 1920, burglars climbed the fire escape at the back and got into the Liberty Fountain and Pen Company. They drilled the safe and blasted it, using a filing cabinet from the offices to muffle the noise, and ignored the silver and cash. They left with $1,800 in gold bullion, but could not open an inner box holding $6,800 more gold meant for pen making.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1947
Henry C. Roberts shows his Lincoln collection, including the first bust of Lincoln, at his Canal Street gallery
On July 28, 1947, Henry C. Roberts put his Lincoln collection on display in his ground-floor gallery and bookstore. He had paid $5 for a bust in a Salvation Army storeroom and learned it was Leonard Volk's 1860 bust, the first made of Lincoln from life. After a New York Times story drew national attention, a National Park Service official wrote in February 1949 that the Lincoln Museum in Ford's Theatre would welcome it, and Roberts donated the bust there.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1949
Bookseller Henry C. Roberts, who lectured on Nostradamus, receives a New York Times reporter on Canal Street
Henry C. Roberts, who ran the ground-floor gallery and bookstore from the early 1940s, lectured on Nostradamus and published The Complete Prophecies of Nostradamus in 1947. He said he had developed extra-sensory perception to a high degree through those studies, and a Times reporter visited his shop in 1949. The Times later called the shop a mix of bookstore and curiosity shop. Roberts announced his retirement in 1951 and died in 1966.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1980
The old gallery space becomes Smoke Stacks Lightnin', a bar popular with artists priced out of SoHo
In 1980 the ground-floor space once used by Roberts became a restaurant-bar, Smoke Stacks Lightnin', which stayed for about a decade. The New York Times critic Moira Hodgson wrote in 1981 that artists who could no longer afford SoHo had moved to Tribeca and liked it. A jazz-focused cabaret called Tsubaki House took over the space in 1990.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
Further reading
- The 1897 Rawitser Building - 380-384 Canal StreetDaytonian in Manhattan
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