Merchants' Print Works
418 West 14th Street | also 416 West 14th Street, 414 West 14th Street | West Village | built 1900
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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.
- 1874
Aaron H. Wellington builds a cotton-printing factory for his Merchants' Print Works
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Aaron H. Wellington, whose Merchants' Print Works stood at 69 Worth Street in 1870, bought 416-418 West 14th Street in 1873. In 1874 he built a four-story, 50-foot-wide cotton print works and a one-story stable here, designed by S.W. Johnson, one of the earliest surviving factories in the district. In 1887 he added a five-story warehouse at No. 414, on land leased from William Astor.
- 1906
Poultry dealer August Silz, a Paris-born popularizer of the guinea hen, takes over the building
August Silz, born in Paris in 1874 and an immigrant of 1898, bought 416-418 in 1906 for his poultry firm A. Silz, Inc. In 1921 the New York Times called it one of the biggest poultry and game breeders and distributors in the United States, and it supplied hotels, clubs, restaurants, steamships and the military. The paper also credited him with popularizing the guinea hen with New York diners. When he died in 1921, hotels across the city were ordered to fly their flags at half mast.
- 1932
A bank forecloses on the Silz building and hands it to the Bradish Johnson estate as lease payment
The County Trust Co. of New York foreclosed on 416-418 West 14th Street in 1928. The bank later put up a new building on the northeast side of Eighth Avenue and West 14th Street, and in 1932 it gave this property to the Estate of Bradish Johnson as partial payment of its lease. In 1949 the building was acquired by firms of the meat dealer Louis Meilman.
“When the bank constructed a new building at the northeast corner of Eighth Avenue and West 14th Street, it gave partial payment of their lease…”
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