65 Mott Street

Chinatown | built 1910

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.

1824
A seven-story building goes up at 65 Mott Street, probably the city's first made as a tenement
Historian Tyler Anbinder concluded in his 2001 book Five Points that 65 Mott Street was probably the first building in New York put up as a tenement, about a decade before the 1833 Lower East Side building by iron manufacturer James P. Allaire that is usually given that credit. He dated it to 1824 from an 1879 trade-journal item saying the address had been occupied for 55 years. At seven stories it towered over the two-story wooden houses around it, and Anbinder estimated it held at least 34 two-room apartments.
Source: Ephemeral New York
1824
The National Register inventory describes 65 Mott as a seven-story tenement with another behind it
The nomination for the Chinatown and Little Italy Historic District describes the front building at 65 Mott as seven stories and four bays wide, in running-bond brick, with some original two-over-two wood windows; its cornice is missing. A five-story rear tenement stands behind it. The inventory notes the property was occupied for 55 years by 1879, treats it as the neighborhood's first tenement, and lists it as part of the Weeks family's real estate holdings.
Source: National Register nomination

Nearby