40 White Street

Tribeca | built 1867

Open on the map5 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. 1858

    January 13

    A sailor boarding at the old house on this lot is found fatally stabbed in front of the Astor House

    By the late 1850s the dwelling that stood here before the present building was a low-level boarding house with frequent violence. The New York Times reported that James Roberts, a Philadelphia sailor boarding at No. 40, was found fatally stabbed in front of the Astor House on January 13, 1858. Five weeks later three female boarders were arraigned for beating another boarder and sticking her with a penknife.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1867

    Cloth merchant Benjamin Marks builds a five-story Italianate and Second Empire loft

    Benjamin Marks, a cloth merchant with a William Street business, put up this five-story, 25-foot-wide store and loft building in 1866-67. Its front, which appears to be marble, stacks segmentally arched openings with scrolled keystones, pilasters and engaged columns. The landmarks commission treats it as a combination of the Italianate and Second Empire styles.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  3. 1887

    March 23

    The Rothschild brothers' dry goods firm fails, and its stock turns out to be shipped away

    In early 1887 H. B. Claflin and Company, a major wholesaler, sent a man to check on Charles M. Rothschild and Company over a past-due bill and found the shelves mostly bare. A sheriff confirmed the goods had been shipped to friends in other cities, and The Times ran the headline Startled By A Failure on March 23. A third brother, Abraham, reopened as Meyer Rothschild and Company, and he was arrested that August after creditors attacked the new business.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1889

    November 26

    Shirtmaker Marcus Brown learns his son Harry has drained the firm, headlined Ruined By His Son

    M. Brown and Company was a reliable shirt maker founded around 1869 by Marcus Brown. In 1887 he made his son Harry a junior partner in charge of finances. By November 1889 his nephew Samuel discovered that Harry had siphoned off an estimated $70,000 to $80,000, putting some into a Michigan copper mine that proved a scam. Harry fled, and at a creditors' meeting on November 26 Marcus was allowed to continue the business.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1980

    Reese Williams founds Tanam Press at 40 White Street, which later publishes Theresa Cha's Dictee

    Tanam Press was founded at 40 White Street by Reese Williams in 1980. It published writing and audio by artists, plus anthologies and book-art experiments. Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Williams's classmate in the UC Berkeley MFA program, became an editor, and the press issued her poetry collection Dictee in 1982. Artists published include Richard Prince, Susan Sontag and Werner Herzog.

    “Tanam Press was an American publishing house founded by Reese Williams in 1980, at 40 White Street in Lower Manhattan, New York City.”

    Source: Wikipedia

Further reading

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