614 Courtlandt Avenue

also 357 East 151st Street | Melrose | built 1925

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. 1871

    Saloon keeper Julius Ruppert builds on Courtlandt Avenue, the "Dutch Broadway"

    Julius Ruppert, who ran a saloon at 5 Avenue A on the Lower East Side, bought this corner lot in 1871 and built a four-story brick building here in 1871-72. Likely following German customers who had moved to Melrose South, he put a saloon on the ground floor, public rooms on the second story, meeting rooms on the third and a family flat under the mansard roof.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  2. 1882

    Catharine Ruppert hires Hewlett S. Baker to turn the hall into flats

    Catharine Ruppert, Julius's widow, was living in the building by 1880 and kept it as her address until 1894. In 1882 she commissioned architect Hewlett S. Baker to divide the second and third stories into two apartments each. Baker lowered the second-story ceiling, which shortened the tall public-room windows, and also lowered the entrance on Gouverneur Street.

    “It was Catharine Ruppert who commissioned Hewlett S. Baker, architect, to renovate the building in 1882…”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  3. 1911

    The J. & M. Haffen Brewery leases the whole Ruppert building

    Catharine Ruppert rented out the store with rooms above, first to Frank Scheubert from 1894 and then to Peter Gaudert from 1897 to 1911. From 1911 to 1916 she leased the entire building to the J. & M. Haffen Brewery, and in 1916 she let the store and the floor above it to Jacob Blanz. She herself had moved out in 1894, first elsewhere in the Bronx and by 1910 to Yonkers.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  4. 1987

    February 10

    The city designates 614 Courtlandt Avenue a landmark

    The Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the building a landmark on February 10, 1987, calling it a reminder of the period when the South Bronx first turned urban. The report noted a neighborhood theory that it had once been a courthouse, based on the tall second-story windows and the metal eagle on the mansard, while suggesting the eagle may instead have been a fraternal or brewery emblem.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

Nearby

All 9 buildings with stories in Melrose