Institute for the Crippled and Disabled
400 1st Avenue | also 394 1st Avenue | Kips Bay | built 1931
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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.
- 1931
Jeremiah Milbank pays for the Institute's building, letting it triple its services
The financier Jeremiah Milbank, who had funded the Institute for Crippled and Disabled Men since World War I, pays for the building at 400 First Avenue in 1931. The Historic Districts Council says the structure let the institute expand its services threefold. It was built around vocational training and employment, with work rooms, classrooms, recreation rooms, an employment bureau and a dormitory floor.
Source: hdc.org
- 1931
Ralph Walker designs the building, a rare nonprofit commission for the corporate architect
The Institute's new building, built in 1931, is designed by Ralph Walker of Voorhees, Gmelin and Walker, whom the American Institute of Architects named Architect of the Century in 1957. His work includes the Barclay-Vesey Building and 1 Wall Street. Most of Walker's clients were corporations, so a project for a nonprofit stands out in his career, the Historic Districts Council notes.
Source: hdc.org
- 1931
Lewis Mumford praises the new building's plain design in The New Yorker
In December 1931, Lewis Mumford writes in The New Yorker that the Institute's new home is plain, simple, elegant and workmanlike, with generous window space and a fine handling of standard materials. He prefers it to Ralph Thomas Walker's design for the Irving Trust Company Building.
“In December 1931, Lewis Mumford wrote favorably about the design of ICD's new home in The New Yorker…”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1954
The building adds an occupational therapy center and turns the dormitory floor into offices
Plans filed in 1952 by Voorhees, Walker, Foley & Smith lead to renovations completed in 1954. The third and fourth floors become an occupational therapy center, the seventh floor is converted to offices, and the eighth floor becomes offices and classrooms.
“…the renovations were completed in 1954, which converted the third and fourth floors into the occupational therapy center, the seventh floor into offices…”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1973
The Institute sells the building to the city for $2.5 million for Junior High School 47
After weighing a lease to the Veterans Health Administration and a sale for a school for the deaf, the Institute sells 400 First Avenue to New York City in 1973 for $2.5 million. The city plans to use it to expand Junior High School 47, while the Institute, by then renamed the International Center for the Disabled, consolidates into its building at 340 East 24th Street.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2025
Preservationists ask the city to evaluate the building as an individual landmark
On March 5, 2025, the Historic Districts Council and the Rose Hill/Kips Bay Coalition send the Landmarks Preservation Commission a request to evaluate 400 First Avenue, once home to the Institute for the Crippled and Disabled, as an individual landmark. It is one of seven sites for which they filed requests, and the commission gave it a "May Merit" response.
Source: hdc.org
Further reading
- 400 First AvenueWikipedia
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