Scholastic Building

557 Broadway | also 128 Mercer Street | SoHo | built 1999

Open on the map6 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. 1993

    A Blechman family garage and lumberyard occupies the lot as Scholastic settles next door

    Before the Scholastic Building, the 50-by-200-foot lot at 557 Broadway held a one-story garage and lumberyard owned by the Blechman family. The Blechmans, who sold hosiery and underwear wholesale in the early twentieth century, owned the neighboring Rouss Building at 555 Broadway as well. Scholastic, led by Richard Robinson, had made SoHo Broadway its world headquarters by 1993.

    Source: sohobroadway.org

  2. 1994

    Gensler brings Aldo Rossi to design Scholastic's new SoHo headquarters

    Scholastic wanted to expand beside its Broadway offices and bought the neighboring lot, where a one-story garage from 1954 stood. In 1994 the company chose a team led by the firm Gensler, which turned to the Italian architect Aldo Rossi, a Pritzker Prize winner who had never designed a building in New York.

    Source: Internet Archive

  3. 1997

    Aldo Rossi dies and his former student Morris Adjmi takes over the Scholastic design

    Rossi died in 1997 from injuries in an automobile accident near his home in Italy, four years before his only New York building opened. His former student and partner Morris Adjmi oversaw the construction through the 2001 opening and refined parts of the design. The building is still regarded as Rossi's masterpiece.

    Source: Internet Archive

  4. 2001

    Scholastic's Aldo Rossi headquarters becomes the first new building in the SoHo-Cast Iron district

    Completed in 2001, the Scholastic Building replaced a one-story garage from 1954 and was the first new construction in the SoHo-Cast Iron Historic District. It is the only New York building designed by the Italian architect Aldo Rossi, finished by his follower Morris Adjmi. Its steel-and-terra-cotta Broadway front echoes the classical scale of nearby cast-iron stores, while the Mercer Street side is plainer.

    Source: Wikipedia

  5. 2001

    Scholastic opens a Rossi building with a basement theater modeled on Palladio's Teatro Olimpico

    Rossi planned the building's public spaces as well as its facades. Visitors enter a lobby sheathed in metal, terra cotta and stucco, and below ground sit a theater modeled on the sixteenth-century Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza and a cafe. The plainer Mercer Street rear, with monumental red arches, echoes the utilitarian backs of old SoHo commercial buildings.

    Source: Internet Archive

  6. 2007

    Mercer Street is turned into Harry Potter Place for a Scholastic event

    In 2007 Mercer Street, behind the headquarters, was turned into Harry Potter Place. The block later hosted other public events for its books, including a 2013 street celebration of Clifford the Big Red Dog's 50th anniversary. In 2016 readers staged a muggle mob for the release of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

    Source: sohobroadway.org

Further reading

Nearby

All 736 buildings with stories in SoHo