Geraldine Building

5 East 16th Street | Union Square | built 1892

Open on the map6 entries

Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.

  1. 1886

    Two mansions on the site are turned into studios and offices

    Owner Mary A. Lyddy hired architect W. Jones in February 1886 to convert the houses at 5 and 7 East 16th Street to studio and office space. Two-story iron storefronts replaced the high stoops. Five years later she tore both houses down. These were earlier buildings on the site.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1892

    January

    Alfred Zucker's eight-story Geraldine Building opens for printers and publishers

    Mary Lyddy named her new $120,000 loft building the Geraldine, but the name did not catch on. Alfred Zucker gave it a brownstone Romanesque Revival base and Renaissance Revival upper floors. Guastavino tile arches were used because the neighborhood's publishers needed floors that could carry heavy printing presses. The building was completed in January 1892, and printers and publishers moved in almost immediately.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1892

    The United States Book Company runs a bookstore here and issues Conan Doyle and Barrie

    Among the building's first tenants were the weekly magazine The Illustrated American and the United States Book Company, which kept a bookstore on the premises. Its 1892 releases included The White Company by Arthur Conan Doyle, plus three new titles by J. M. Barrie, among them the successful The Little Minister.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1909

    Four floors are added and joined internally to 85 Fifth Avenue

    In 1909 the owner hired the firm of Israels & Harder to raise the building four floors by taking off the parapet. They copied Zucker's overall design but not the ornament of the lower floors, so the addition is easy to spot. At the same time, the top floors were connected inside to 85 Fifth Avenue.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1919

    November 12

    Burglars dynamite safes on four floors and muffle the blasts with bolts of cloth

    On the morning of November 12 a foreman found the fourth floor in disarray after thieves blew open the safe of Golinko & Marks, children's clothing makers. The burglars also forced safes on the fifth, sixth and seventh floors, using bolts of cloth to deaden the explosions. Police thought one thief hid in the building until after hours and let in his confederates.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  6. 1922

    July 2

    The Socialist Party nominates Edward F. Cassidy for governor at a convention in the building

    On July 2, 1922, the Socialist State convention met at 5 East Sixteenth Street, as The New York Times reported the next day. It named Edward F. Cassidy, a former alderman who had been the party's candidate for mayor the year before, as its candidate for governor. The building's other tenants at the time were mostly apparel firms.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

Nearby

All 28 buildings with stories in Union Square