56 Barrow Street
West Village | built 1889
Open on the map3 entries
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
John F. Asmussen replaces an old house at 56 Barrow Street with a livery stable
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Church sexton John F. Asmussen, who lived on Bleecker Street and served at St. John's on Christopher Street, pulled down the old house at 56 Barrow Street in 1889. In its place Jordan & Giller built a two-story brick livery stable and carriage house with a dentiled cornice. Asmussen kept his own horses and wagons there. In 1901 a streetcar smashed one of his wagons on Central Park West and broke both his arms, and a jury later awarded him $5,431.50.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1919
A tenant at 56 Barrow Street watches a landlord walk into a vacant saloon where he is found shot dead
On the morning of January 8, 1919, Florence Chris sat at her upstairs window at 56 Barrow Street with her invalid son and saw 71-year-old Charles A. Knapp unlock the side door of the empty saloon at 80 Bedford Street, which his family owned. A man in a blue workman's jumper went in with him. A glazier arriving an hour later found Knapp dead, shot in the back of the head, his ruby and pearl stickpin gone, though cash was left on his body.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1973
A heroin addict who stabbed a Macy's copywriter is found hiding behind the boiler at 56 Barrow Street
On August 8, 1973, Roberta Herbert, 28, a copywriter at Macy's, was stabbed at the door of her Hudson Street building and robbed of $7. The attacker was Hosie S. Turner, a heroin user aged 39. Construction workers chased him as he fled along Barrow Street. Police officer William Whitaker found Turner hiding in the basement of No. 56, behind the boiler, in a building where upstairs tenants then lived with falling plaster and vermin.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
Further reading
- Then & Now photos: 56 Barrow StreetVillage Preservation: Greenwich Village Then & Now
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