5 Morton Street

West Village | built 1872

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.

1872
Silver plater John H. Muegge builds 5 Morton Street in 1872, one of the Village's oldest tenements
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John H. Muegge, a German-born silver plater, built this neo-Grec building with its twin at no. 7, designed by Julius Boekell, before the 1879 tenement law. It had two shops below and two families per floor, with no air shafts or indoor plumbing. In 1880 fifteen families lived here, mostly German, French, Irish and English, including a milkman, a wine bottler, a cooper and a seamstress.
“…constructed in 1872 as a pair with no. 7 Morton Street for German-born silver plater John H. Muegge…”
Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission
1930
By 1930 ten of the fifteen families at 5 Morton Street are Italian immigrants
By 1930 ten of the fifteen families living here were first-generation Italian immigrants. The census lists residents including a candy store proprietor, a fruit cart peddler, a chandelier electrician, a hotel chambermaid and a paper-factory boiler worker among the residents. In 1953 the building's storefronts were removed and the ground floor was converted from shops to apartments.
Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

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