649 Washington Street
also 159 Christopher Street | West Village | built 1880
Open on the map3 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.
- 1879
Lawyer Levi Lockwood has John B. Snook design a five-story tenement for sixteen families
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Levi A. Lockwood, a Columbia-educated lawyer who lived in Brooklyn, commissioned the five-story tenement at Christopher and Washington Streets in 1879-80 from the architect John B. Snook. It was built by Abraham A. Andruss & Son and originally housed sixteen families, with shops on the ground floor. The Lockwood Estate held it until 1903.
- 1906
Pharmacist Minnie Belle McAvoy opens a drugstore that becomes a refuge for sailors
Minnie Belle "Mother" McAvoy, born in Rome, N.Y., and a 1902 graduate of the New York College of Pharmacy, ran McAvoy's Drug Store on the ground floor from 1906 until her death in 1940. One of the few women to own a drugstore in the city, she advised sailors on leave, held money for them, and sold her own vegetable tonic as a hangover cure. Her funeral was held at nearby St. Veronica's.
- 1975
Tenants win a jury award after a rent strike, believed to be a first for the city
Tenants of the building withheld rent in a strike that ran from 1973 to 1977. In 1975 a jury awarded them compensation, a verdict the New York Times thought was the city's first jury trial over a rent strike. The same ground floor held the Silver Dollar Restaurant from 1964 to 1988.
“A bit of notoriety was attached to the building in 1973-77 due to a tenants rent strike. They were awarded compensation by a jury in 1975…”
Nearby
- 651 Washington Street2 entries
- 653 Washington Street4 entries
- 157 Christopher Street2 entries
- 655 Washington Street2 entries
- St. Veronica's Rectory657 Washington Street | 2 entries
- 659 Washington Street1 entry