Adorama building

45 West 17th Street | also 42 West 18th Street | Flatiron | built 1908

Open on the map7 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. 1907

    January 11

    Steel millionaire Henry Phipps buys the Hoyt house and carriage house on this lot

    The lot held the four-story 45 West 17th Street home of Goold Hoyt and his wife Camilla, a daughter of General Winfield Scott, with a two-story carriage house behind it on 18th Street. Henry Phipps, who had made a fortune in steel with Andrew Carnegie, bought the house and stable on January 11, 1907. Two months later he announced that a six-story loft building would replace them.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1908

    George Crawley, a house guest of Phipps, designs a Gothic terra cotta loft building

    Phipps hired George A. Crawley, whom he had hosted at a leased Scottish castle in 1903, to design the loft building, estimated at $90,000. Crawley faced the 18th Street front in white terra cotta with a four-story arch around big factory windows, and the 17th Street back got plain beige brick. It was finished in 1908.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1908

    Apparel and dry goods firms fill the new loft building as the Ladies' Mile fades

    The first tenants were garment and dry goods firms. Riverside Silk Works occupied the block-through store, while Eastern Supply Company made women's hats, Ben Schiff & Bros. made clothing, and Massachusetts Thread Mills leased lofts. The shopping district around the building was already declining, and the last holdout, the Siegel-Cooper department store, closed in 1918. The importers Sgueglia, Grondona & Co. went bankrupt in 1922, apparently the last apparel occupant.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1930

    The Yiddish anarchist periodical Freie Arbeiter Stimme makes the building its home

    In the 1930s the building housed the Freie Arbeiter Stimme, the longest-running Yiddish-language anarchist periodical in America, first published in 1890. The Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, at its 1920 convention, had called it a courageous champion of working people. It often ran literary pieces, including extracts from Alexander Berkman's Now and After: The ABC of Anarchism.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1948

    January 9

    The National Committee for Labor Palestine at 42 West 18th Street answers an FBI-inquiry request

    In January 1948 the Arab Higher Committee Delegation asked the FBI in writing to investigate Zionist groups it said were raising money for arms, naming the National Committee for Labor Palestine, then based in this building. On January 9 the committee replied with a statement from West 18th Street. It said it had existed in the United States for 25 years and had nothing to do with terrorist organizations.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  6. 1964

    January 13

    A federal grand jury indicts the Manhattan Brush Company in a 175-count Navy paintbrush case

    The Manhattan Brush Company leased the building in the 1950s and won 11 government contracts in 1958 and 1959 to supply paint brushes to the Navy. A federal grand jury indicted the company on 175 counts on January 13, 1964, accusing it of defrauding the government of $234,838. Assistant U.S. Attorney John W. Mills called the brushes worthless.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  7. 1988

    Adorama, the camera dealer founded by Holocaust survivor Mendel Mendlowits, moves to 18th Street

    Adorama began in 1974 as a camera shop founded by Mendel Mendlowits, a Holocaust survivor. It opened its Adorama Rental Company on West 18th Street in 1982, and in 1988 the business relocated to this address. The company registered adorama.com in 1997 and launched a photo printing service the same year.

    Source: Wikipedia

Further reading

Nearby

All 20 buildings with stories in Flatiron