397 Bleecker Street

West Village | built 1853

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. 1853

    Crockery dealer John B. Walton puts up a row of Italianate houses

    John B. Walton, a crockery dealer, had the row at Nos. 393-397 built in 1852-53, in a plain version of the Italianate style. No. 397 carries a cornice on paired brackets like that of the corner house, No. 399, which Walton also owned. The ground-floor stores were later turned into apartments.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  2. 1866

    March

    A flour company sues Nelson Beecher for copying a rival's self-raising flour packaging

    Nelson Beecher, who lived here when it was numbered 379, had moved his business from feed to flour. In March 1866 Hecker Brothers, makers of the so-called self-raising flour, sued him, claiming his packaging and labels imitated theirs closely enough to cause serious injury. The judge disagreed with them in the end.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1929

    The row becomes two-family homes called Bleecker Gardens, with a wading pond out back

    In 1929 Walton's four houses were turned into two-family homes: the shop fronts were bricked over and every house got two duplex apartments. Called Bleecker Gardens, the group shared a back yard with a wading pond and a children's playground, according to later court papers. Graham R. Taylor, an editor and Commonwealth Fund publications director, lived in one apartment in the 1930s.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1956

    Landlord Werner Wolff loses a court fight over an illegal conversion and the tenants stay

    Werner Wolff bought No. 397 in 1946 and turned the upper duplex into two units without plans or city approval. When he tried to evict the top-floor tenant in 1954, the case drew in the Department of Buildings. Wolff was fined, and in 1956 the court let the tenants stay, saying a landlord cannot use removal of tenants to fix a predicament he created himself.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

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