650 Broadway

NoHo | built 1860

Open on the map3 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. 1838

    Constitution Hall, an earlier building on the site, hosts a fancy and civic ball at 650 Broadway

    Before the present building, a venue called Constitution Hall stood at 650 Broadway, among some of the city's most lavish residences. The Morning Herald announced a Fancy and Civic Ball there in February 1838, and the city used the hall as an annual polling place until the Board of Aldermen dropped it in 1853. Hamilton Fish, who owned the property, had it torn down in 1860 for a new building.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1860

    Hamilton Fish builds a five-story store and lofts building on Broadway

    The building went up in 1860 for Hamilton Fish, then a former governor and senator, as this part of Broadway shifted from fashionable homes to commerce. Fish later served as Ulysses S. Grant's secretary of state from 1869 to 1877. His heirs kept the property until at least 1901, and small manufacturers occupied the upper floors from the start.

    “…constructed in 1860 for prominent New Yorker Hamilton Fish at a time when this section of Broadway was changing from a prime residential address…”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  3. 1865

    August 6

    Burglars fail to rob the Eighth National Bank at 650 Broadway, but the fire they set destroys artists' studios

    In August 1865 burglars pried an iron grating off a window of the Eighth National Bank while the night watchman was out eating. They fled before reaching the vault, leaving a coat, a loaded revolver and some gunpowder, but they had set fires. Water and smoke damaged the piano warerooms of J. Bauer & Co., and the artists' studios were hit hardest: Victor Nehlig lost a large painting of the Battle of Gettysburg, and Otto Sommer and Ernest Parton lost their studios entirely.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Nearby

All 222 buildings with stories in NoHo