Fleitmann & Co. Building

484 Broome Street | also 59 Wooster Street | SoHo | built 1891

Open on the map4 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. 1864

    Brothers Ewald and Hermann Fleitmann open a silk-importing business at 490 Broome Street

    The Fleitmann brothers arrived from Germany in 1864 and set up their silk importing firm on this corner of Broome and Wooster. By 1890 the firm, Fleitmann & Co., counted among the city's biggest commission merchants, and it kept four branch offices besides the Broome Street store. The much larger building they leased that year rose on the site of their original shop.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1891

    German-born architect Alfred Zucker finishes a Romanesque Revival warehouse crowded with carved beasts

    Alfred Zucker, like the Fleitmanns a native of Germany, designed the six-story building in the Romanesque Revival style. Its ground floor has two huge three-story arches, and stone carvers covered the facade with grotesques, including snarling winged creatures and serpents swallowing their own tails. One of the beasts looks more like a house cat than a monster.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1901

    April 1

    A boiler explodes in the basement and scalds a young fireman to death

    The building ran on several large boilers in the basement. On April 1, 1901, engineer Richard Kruse, 50, failed to notice pressure building in one of them, and it blew while 28-year-old fireman Henry Otten stood on the far side. Otten was scalded to death. Kruse, who leaped out through the engine room door, was arrested by two detectives and technically charged with homicide.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1914

    September

    American Tobacco Company leases the vacant Fleitmann building

    Fleitmann & Co. arranged in 1912 to move to a new building at Fourth Avenue and 26th Street, and the Broome Street warehouse then sat empty for nearly a year. A wood-stock firm leased it in December 1913 but did not last a full year. In September 1914 American Tobacco took the 52,000 square feet and stayed for years, until the property was sold in 1946 to Art Craft Finishers.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

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