52 Thomas Street

also 200 Church Street, 127 Duane Street | Tribeca | built 1928

Open on the map3 entries

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

  1. 1850

    Gas works and small houses occupy the Church Street block before the shoe warehouses

    In the middle of the nineteenth century this blockfront held two- and three-story dwellings and, at 196 to 200 Church Street, the buildings of the New York Gas Works. Redevelopment in the 1860s replaced them with five-story store and loft buildings leased to dry goods merchants. By the 1890s most tenants were boot and shoe merchants.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  2. 1917

    Shoe wholesaler J.E. Bates & Co. buys 202 Church Street and then the buildings beside it

    By 1902 Jerome E. Bates, who wholesaled boots, shoes and rubbers, was already a tenant at 202 Church Street, a building shaped like an L that also fronted on 50-52 Thomas Street. His firm bought it in 1917 and acquired 196 to 200 Church Street in 1920. It leased space to other shoe dealers, among them the Diamond Shoe Corp., a company that went on to remodel 62-66 Thomas Street.

    “Jerome E. Bates, a wholesaler of boots, shoes and rubbers, had begun leasing space at 202 Church Street…”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  3. 1928

    The Church Street subway forces a rebuild, and J.E. Bates & Co. gets a new headquarters

    When the IND subway line and the widening of Church Street in 1928-30 condemned the front fifty feet of the Bates buildings, company president Leonard Bates hired Jardine, Hill & Murdock. In 1927-28 they built a five-story store and office building that reused parts of three partly demolished mid-nineteenth-century buildings. Bates stayed until the 1940s, then sold to Spring Mills Inc., and a five-story addition was built in 1988.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

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