649 Broadway
also 653 Broadway, 655 Broadway, 651 Broadway | NoHo | built 1930
Open on the map5 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.
- 1855
Pfaff's basement beer hall opens in an earlier building at 653 Broadway, gathering place of early bohemians
Pfaff's opened in 1855 as a basement beer hall on Broadway, and the Landmarks Preservation Commission places it at 653 Broadway. It soon became the meeting place for America's early Bohemians, at a time when Broadway north of Houston Street was the city's entertainment district of hotels, theaters, music halls and clubs. The building that held it was replaced by the present one in the 1880s, and some sources give 647 Broadway for the cellar, so the exact address is disputed.
- 1871
Rug dealer William Sloane builds 649-651 Broadway as the W. & J. Sloane carpet firm grows
William Sloane opened a modest carpet shop near City Hall in 1853, and the firm he ran with his brother John came to this block in the 1860s. Griffith Thomas designed the marble-fronted store at 649-651 Broadway for him in 1871, and the Sloanes acquired the shorter building at 653 in the mid-1870s. By then W. and J. Sloane were big dealers in Oriental rugs for wealthy New Yorkers, and the firm sold its NoHo properties and moved uptown in 1881.
“William Sloane (1810-1879), opened a modest shop selling carpets and floor cloth in 1853…”
- 1882
Jacob Hecht hires Henry Fernbach to give 653 Broadway a marble front matching its neighbors
By 1882 Jacob Hecht owned all four buildings from 649 to 659 Broadway. He hired Henry Fernbach that year to enlarge the shorter four-story building at 653 and give it a new front in keeping with the marble facades Griffith Thomas had designed for its neighbors. Manufacturing lofts filled the block for much of the twentieth century.
“That year he commissioned architect Henry Fernbach to enlarge the smaller building and create a new front consistent with the marble facades…”
- 1975
653 Broadway becomes the disco Infinity in 1975; a fire destroys it in 1979
The address that Pfaff's was later advertised at, 653 Broadway, eventually held an envelope factory. It then became a disco called Infinity in 1975, and a fire destroyed the club in 1979.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1979
A fire collapses three Broadway buildings during an apartment conversion; their marble fronts are saved
A serious fire in 1979, while the four buildings at 649-659 Broadway were being converted to apartments, collapsed three of them. Their marble fronts were stabilized, and architect Avinash K. Malhotra built a new apartment complex behind them between 1979 and 1981, with its entrance on Bleecker Street. The less damaged 657-659 Broadway was repaired and enlarged as part of the same complex.
Further reading
- Edgar Allan Poe: New York’s first bohemian?Ephemeral New York
Nearby
- 659 Broadway2 entries
- 647 Broadway5 entries
- Bleecker Court77 Bleecker Street | 1 entry
- 645 Broadway1 entry
- 665 Broadway3 entries
- 643 Broadway1 entry