Duo Theater

62 East 4th Street | East Village | built 1889

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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. 1890

    Max Schroff designs a restaurant and hall building for Victor Eckstein

    Architect Max Schroff files plans in 1889 for a five-story brick-and-iron building for restaurateur Victor Eckstein, completed early in 1890. Eckstein's restaurant fills the ground floor and basement, assembly halls are rented out on the floors above, and the family lives at the top. Schroff hides the spiral fire escape inside an iron mesh tube and puts his own initials, not Eckstein's, on it.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1893

    May 5

    Waiters are organized at a mass meeting in the building

    On the afternoon of May 5, 1893, the International Hotel Employes' Alliance holds a mass meeting at 62 East 4th Street to organize downtown restaurant and hotel waiters. The assembly halls above Eckstein's restaurant go on to host trade unions, social clubs, and veterans' groups.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1969

    Andy Warhol rents the second-floor theater to show films

    In 1969 Andy Warhol rents the second-floor theater, then called the Fortune Theater, and uses it to screen films. The hall had also been used for Yiddish productions and by early television studios.

    Source: buildingblocks.villagepreservation.org

  4. 1973

    The Godfather Part II films in the second-floor studio

    In 1973 a production of The Godfather: Part II shoots in the building's second-floor studio. By then the space was in use as a television and film studio.

    Source: buildingblocks.villagepreservation.org

  5. 2005

    The city sells the building to the Fourth Arts Block for $1

    In 2005 New York City sells 62 East 4th Street and seven other Fourth Street properties for $1 each to the nonprofit Fourth Arts Block, founded in 2001. The city had taken the buildings in the 1950s for an urban renewal project that never went forward. The building is now the Duo Theater.

    Source: buildingblocks.villagepreservation.org

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