William S. Bancroft Grocery Store
43 MacDougal Street | SoHo | built 1847
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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.
- 1851
William S. Bancroft runs a grocery and liquor store at MacDougal and King Streets
A Greek Revival store-and-house was completed around 1846 on the northwest corner of MacDougal and King Streets. By 1851 William S. Bancroft ran a grocery on the ground floor, listing himself as a seller of groceries, wines, ale, cider and porter, and his family lived above. In 1853 he opened a second shop at Houston and MacDougal and moved the family there, leaving his employee Spencer Heacock to run the original store. A string of grocers followed through the 1890s.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1913
A teenager trails bomb suspects to the restaurant at 43 MacDougal
By 1910 the ground floor held a restaurant, probably doubling as a neighborhood social club, in years when the Black Hand terrorized well-off Italians. After a bomb went off near Second Avenue in September 1913, nineteen-year-old Max Goldstein followed two men for eight or ten blocks and watched them enter it. He fetched the police, who surrounded the place and let him pick out Giuseppe Donnaruna and Louis Lameri. The Evening World told the story on September 25, and papers elsewhere called Goldstein a boy detective.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1977
Citizens for a Better Village runs lunches and craft workshops for neighborhood children
By 1977 the ground floor housed Citizens for a Better Village, an Italian-American social club run by John 'Happy' Ferri. In April 1977 The Villager reported on its summer lunch program, and the next March on an arts and crafts workshop for children aged 6 to 12. Borough President Andrew Stein's office shared the space in 1978.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1986
Officers in police and FBI jackets wreck the Citizens for a Better Village club without a warrant
Around 6:10 p.m., men described by Ferri as wearing NYPD badges and FBI jackets entered the club without a search warrant and smashed flowerpots, glassware and fixtures. It was one of 31 raids on Italian-American social clubs that night, and state and city officials criticized them as discriminatory. The club soon moved out and the building sat vacant for about two decades until its 2016 restoration.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
Further reading
- The William S. Bancroft Grocery Store - 43 Macdougal StreetDaytonian in Manhattan
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