Ball, Black & Co. Building

565 Broadway | also 82 Prince Street | SoHo | built 1860

Open on the map4 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. 1860

    July 1

    Ball, Black & Co. opens its new marble jewelry store at 565 Broadway

    The jeweler Ball, Black & Co. moved north from 247 Broadway into a six-story marble building designed by John Kellum for John A. May, opening on July 1, 1860. It was billed as New York's first absolutely fireproof building, its basement vaults held the country's first safe deposit system, and its plate-glass windows, nearly 15 feet tall, were thought the largest ever made. The company employed more than 300 people, and jewelry was made on the top floors.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1892

    A congressional committee questions Banner Brothers about sweatshop clothing work

    By 1890 the building was home to Banner Brothers, wholesale makers of men's clothing doing about $1 million to $1.25 million of business a year. In 1892 a U.S. congressional committee looking into the sweating system questioned the firm. Herman S. Mendelson, testifying for it, said he had never gone to see the places where its work was done, and within the year the company had left 565 Broadway.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1893

    The Freedman brothers add four floors to the Ball, Black building

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    Charles and Moritz Freedman, makers and sellers of women's wear, bought the building in 1893 and hired the architects Little & O'Connor to raise it four full stories, at a cost of $50,000. The architects used light brick that echoed the quoins and window pediments of the marble structure below, so the addition is hardly noticeable. The brothers went bankrupt in 1900.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1992

    February 16

    The reality series The Real World moves seven strangers into a SoHo loft at 565 Broadway

    Producers of the first New York season of The Real World chose a nine-story co-op at Broadway and Prince Street and removed the walls between two apartments on the second and third floors to make a single 4,000-square-foot, four-bedroom home. The seven cast members lived there from February 16 to May 18, 1992, and the series premiered on May 21.

    “The cast lived in the loft from February 16 to May 18, 1992. The series premiered three days later, on May 21, 1992.”

    Source: Wikipedia

Nearby

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