541 Broadway

also 112N Mercer Street, 112 Mercer Street | SoHo | built 1869

Open on the map5 entries

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

1. 1833

   Merchant John G. Coster builds a granite mansion on the lot, designed by Davis and Town

   This was an earlier building on the site. John G. Coster, a Dutch-born merchant whose Broadway house John Jacob Astor bought to clear the way for the Astor House, bought two plots at 539 and 541 Broadway and had Alexander Jackson Davis and Ithiel Town design a three-story granite mansion with a columned portico, finished around 1833. His stables ran back through the lot to Mercer Street.

   Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

2. 1865

   July

   P. T. Barnum leases the former Coster house for a new museum after his American Museum burns

   This was an earlier building on the site. After Coster's death the mansion became the Melodeon music hall in 1848, later the Chinese House, and in 1863 a menagerie run by Van Amburgh & Co. After Barnum's American Museum burned down on July 13, 1865, P. T. Barnum leased the building as a replacement, and Frank Leslie's described a lecture room built to hold about 2,500 people.

   Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

3. 1868

   March 3

   Fire destroys Barnum's museum on the site, and a tiger breaks out onto Broadway

   This was an earlier building on the site. A fire broke out shortly after midnight on March 3, 1868, in bitter cold and wind. A giraffe fell near the doorway and blocked the way out, and its hind part began to burn; and a tiger burst through a basement window onto Broadway before a policeman shot it. Barnum lost about $300,000, the Coster estate about $50,000, and the cleared lot was rebuilt within a year with the cast-iron Beekman building.

   Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

4. 1884

   May 30

   Cloak maker David L. Newborg is arrested at 541 Broadway for counterfeiting a flannel label

   D. L. Newborg & Brothers, cloak makers on the upper floors of No. 541, stayed on after the 1883 fire. Eight months after the fire, on May 30, 1884, the firm's David L. Newborg was arrested on a counterfeiting charge. A Providence retailer, J. B. Barnaby & Co., had bought 120 suits bearing the label of the flannel maker Wendell, Fay & Co., and checking with that firm showed the goods were not genuine. Members of both firms then had Newborg arrested.

   Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

5. 1974

   Dance lofts open on the upper floors, drawing Sylvia Whitman, Lucinda Childs and others

   Sylvia Whitman opened a dance loft in the combined Nos. 537-541 Broadway in 1974, and Lucinda Childs soon had a loft there too. Through the 1970s the building also held studios for Douglas Dunn, David Gordon, Trisha Brown and Russell Dumas. In the 1990s Dunn opened a studio theater, Rio Grande Union, which was still in the building in 2016.

   Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Nearby

• S. A. Beekman & Co. Building537 Broadway | 5 entries
• 543 Broadway1 entry
• 545 Broadway2 entries
• 535 Broadway2 entries
• 529 Broadway1 entry
• 547 Broadway1 entry

All 736 buildings with stories in SoHo