450 Avenue of the Americas

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.

1891
Ralph Townsend replaces a former church with a Romanesque loft building
In 1891 the former Shiloh Presbyterian Church property at Sixth Avenue and 10th Street was demolished and replaced with a six-story store and loft building designed by Ralph S. Townsend. He built it in a late, commercial take on Romanesque Revival, with a striped stone-and-brick base. By 1898 grocer and liquor dealer Henry B. Cowels leased the ground-floor store, and the lithographers Julius Bien & Co. were in the building in 1904.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
1933
January 26
The John Reed Club opens a left-wing art show that draws 3,000 visitors
The John Reed Club, formed by Communist-leaning artists and writers, rented space in the building from 1932 until it disbanded in 1935, holding exhibitions, lectures, and social events. Its show "The Social Viewpoint in Art" opened on January 26, 1933. By February 25, more than 3,000 people had visited it.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
1987
The upper floors are converted into 33 apartments
A dance school and factory space had filled the upper floors for years, and the ground floor held the jazz supper club Hopper's from 1976. A 1987 renovation turned the upper floors into 33 apartments. By 1997 a Jefferson Market grocery occupied the ground floor, and it remained there at least through 2008.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

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