Rouss Building
555 Broadway | also 120 Mercer Street, 549 Broadway | SoHo | built 1890
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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.
- 1889
Charles B. Rouss starts building his Broadway store, designed by Alfred Zucker
Work began on March 11, 1889, on a ten-story store with attics for the dry goods merchant Charles B. Rouss, designed by architect Alfred Zucker. The twelve-bay building runs through the block from Broadway to Mercer Street and has a granite front with iron colonnettes and spandrels. It was completed on May 31, 1890.
- 1889
A sign at the construction site boasts that Rouss arrived in New York broke and in debt
The Landmarks Preservation Commission notes that Rouss came north from Virginia after the Civil War owing large sums, yet went on to build a fortune. In 1889 a sign on the site proclaimed that the man building this brick, iron and granite store had been penniless and about $50,000 in debt thirteen years earlier. The cornice pediment still bears the name Rouss Building along with dates.
- 1889
Rouss replaces an earlier building that housed Taylor's Saloon and the League for Free Love
An older building on this site held Taylor's Saloon at street level, a lunch spot for Walt Whitman and other well-known New Yorkers, and a group calling itself the League for Free Love had its headquarters upstairs. Rouss's new store replaced it, and his Charles Broadway Rouss Wholesale Auction Dry Goods department store occupied the entire new building.
Source: sohobroadway.org
- 1890
Heavy pilasters, iron colonnettes and a scrolled pediment give the Rouss Building its grand front
Quoined pilasters, each topped with a carved capital, group the windows in threes, while entablatures bind the floors in pairs. Between the windows sit cast-iron colonnettes and spandrel panels. Scrolled brackets carry the cornice, and the two attic dormers with lion's head ornaments appear to be later, since an 1892 view shows a balustrade instead. The ground floor has been completely altered.
- 1938
S. Blechman & Sons leases the whole building for a hosiery and underwear wholesale business
After Rouss died in 1902 his children ran the business until 1929. In 1938 the dry goods firm S. Blechman & Sons leased the entire building for wholesale hosiery and underwear, remaining until 1948, when the firm closed. Rouss's own store had sold goods from carpets and corsets to cutlery and cloaks.
Source: sohobroadway.org
- 2014
Scholastic buys the Rouss Building, which it had rented since 1992
Scholastic was a tenant at 555 Broadway from 1992 and bought the building in 2014, moving most of its offices there. Ise Hiyoko Inc. had bought it in 1996, and its Ise Cultural Foundation ran a gallery in the basement until 2014. The name Charles Broadway Rouss is still lettered across the facade.
Source: sohobroadway.org
Further reading
- Singer BuildingWikipedia
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