New Era Building
495 Broadway | also 66 Mercer Street | SoHo | built 1893
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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.
- 1840
The American Art Union is recorded at 497 Broadway, now part of the New Era Building lot
The Landmarks Preservation Commission's lot-by-lot notes on Broadway for the SoHo-Cast Iron district list 497 Broadway, now inside this building's footprint, as the site of the American Art Union in 1840. Next door at 495, the same notes place a group called the Sketch Club in 1846. They also record a Grover & Baker Sewing Machine Company building of 1860, designed by George Johnson for Badger's Architectural Iron Works.
“§495 - site of "Sketch Club" in 1846; §497 - site of American Art Union in 1840.”
- 1847
The newly founded Century Association takes its first rooms above a picture store at 495 Broadway
The Century Association, the arts and literary club that still meets in Midtown, held its first meeting on January 13, 1847, after a merger of the Sketch Club and the Column Club. Its earliest quarters were at 495 Broadway, over Del Vecchio's picture store, in an earlier building on the lot where the New Era Building now stands. The name came from the first one hundred men invited to join. By 1857, with membership grown to 250, the club incorporated and bought a permanent home.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1893
Alfred Zucker's eight-story New Era Building is completed for Augustus D. Juilliard
The Landmarks Preservation Commission's survey dates construction from May 2, 1892, to March 30, 1893. Architect Alfred Zucker designed the store building, which runs through the block to Mercer Street, for owner Augustus D. Juilliard. It rises eight stories, with a facade of brick, stone and terra cotta, iron spandrel panels and a copper roof.
- 1927
A basement fire at the Butler Brothers building burns unnoticed for two hours and collapses eight floors
Butler Brothers, an early mail-order firm that had taken over the loft building soon after it opened, was just beginning to franchise its Ben Franklin Stores when fire struck. The blaze started among crates in the basement shipping room and ran for two hours before anyone noticed, causing about a million dollars in damage. Three unprotected hollow cast-iron columns buckled in the heat, and eight floors at the Mercer Street end partly gave way.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1994
The Swiss Institute moves into a third-floor loft here and stays until 2011
From 1994 until September 2011 the third-floor loft of the New Era Building was home to the Swiss Institute Contemporary Art New York, which then relocated to 18 Wooster Street nearby. By then the tenants were a mix of fashion, publishing, fitness and retail businesses, far from the printing company the lofts were first meant for.
Source: Wikipedia
Further reading
- New Era Building (New York City)Wikipedia
Nearby
- 499 Broadway1 entry
- 491 Broadway1 entry
- 448 Broome Street2 entries
- 72 Mercer Street1 entry
- 489 Broadway2 entries
- 450 Broome Street2 entries