61 5th Avenue

also 2 East 13th Street | Greenwich Village | built 2010

Open on the map3 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. 1938

    Bloch & Hesse design a bow-fronted Schrafft's restaurant and store

    An earlier two-story building on this site, at Fifth Avenue and 13th Street, was designed by Bloch & Hesse for Schrafft's and opened in 1938 as the chain's first restaurant in the Washington Square area. Its Fifth Avenue front was bowed, with vast windows, and the Art Moderne interior had murals of costumed 19th-century figures for its mostly female customers. It seated 200, and Lewis Mumford of The New Yorker called the design "pretty bad."

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1977

    The Lone Star Cafe brings country music and a giant iguana to the former Schrafft's

    In early 1977 the Lone Star Cafe, a club for country music and country rock, opened in the former Schrafft's building on this site. It held 150 people on the lower floor, where food was served, and another 150 standing in a sawdust-covered balcony. Willie Nelson, Roy Orbison, and James Brown were among the acts. A 40-foot iguana on the roof came down after neighboring businesses sued, and the club moved to West 52nd Street in 1989.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 2006

    A fire guts the former Schrafft's building and an apartment house replaces it

    By 2006 the old building held a vegetable market and deli when a fire gutted it. Christopher Gray reported in The New York Times that the marble was blistered and large facade panels had come loose. After the property was bought in 2007, architect Alta Indelman was commissioned to design a ten-story apartment house, and she judged the old facade too far gone to save.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

Nearby

All 518 buildings with stories in Greenwich Village