Port Warehouse Building

54 Laight Street | Tribeca | built 1870

Open on the map5 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. 1830

    Medicine-chest maker Christopher Lord lives in a house on the site of 54 Laight Street

    Before the warehouse, 54 Laight Street was one of the brick-faced homes that filled the street after Trinity Church laid out St. John's Park by 1810. Christopher Lord, who manufactured medicine chests, lived there in the 1830s, and by 1846 it was home to the well-to-do George W. Prescott, whose private stable stood down the block at No. 48. This was an earlier building on the site.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1870

    Henry J. Meyer hires George W. DaCunha to build a Rundbogenstil warehouse on Laight Street

    Ship chandler Henry J. Meyer, enriched by his Civil War business, commissioned architect George W. DaCunha in 1870 to replace the old houses at 54, 56 and 58 Laight Street. DaCunha also acted as builder. The five-story red-brick warehouse drew on the German Rundbogenstil, and instead of costly materials the brick itself carries the ornament: arched moldings over the windows, a stepped band under the cornice and a blind round panel in the pediment.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1871

    December 2

    Burglars hide in the new Meyer warehouse and carry off $14,000 in silks

    Late in November 1871 a young woman rented a top-floor room in the tenement next door at 60 Laight Street, which stood fifteen feet higher than Meyer's bonded warehouse. Over the weekend of December 2, some of the thieves hid inside before closing time and passed the plunder out through the roof scuttle. The thieves got away with $14,000 in goods, among them 47 bolts of silk belonging to the wholesale firm H. B. Claflin & Co. Police found a ladder, dark lantern and burglar's tools in the room, but the trail went cold after the goods were traced to a West 13th Street house.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1897

    Baker & Williams shutters its warehouse and keeps the goods dry during a fire next door

    After Meyer's death in 1877 the Laight Street warehouse passed to Baker & Williams, one of the city's largest bonded storage firms. In the summer of 1897 a fierce fire nearly destroyed the R. E. Dietz Company factory next door, which stretched to Greenwich Street. Baker & Williams employees closed the shutters and locked the doors at once, and an insurance inspector later found the stored dry goods untouched by water.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1925

    September 28

    Gunmen hijack a Port Warehouse truck loaded with $30,000 of cigarettes

    On September 28, 1925, Port Warehouse driver Henry Harrison left the Laight Street building for Brooklyn's Bush Terminal. Near his destination, four men in a car forced his truck to the curb. Two of them climbed in with pistols and drove him to Ebbets Field, where they threw him out, while the others made off with the truck as hundreds of dock workers looked on. Its cargo of cigarettes was valued at $30,000.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

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