Adams & Co. Building

675 Avenue of the Americas | also 100 West 22nd Street | Chelsea | built 1902

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. 1900

    Samuel Adams builds a Beaux-Arts dry goods store on Ladies' Mile

    Samuel Adams, a Colorado silver-mine owner and state senator, hired the architects DeLemos & Cordes in 1899 to replace his Sixth Avenue store with a larger one, built in sections so the business could stay open. The granite-faced building, completed in 1900, had three entrances with polished granite pilasters and bronze scrollwork. Inside, a rotunda rose through five floors beneath a stained-glass skylight and was outlined in electric lights at night.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1906

    May 29

    A rooftop water tank crashes through the store's skylight

    At 5:00 p.m. on May 29, 1906, a 10,000-gallon water tank on the roof gave way and crashed through the stained-glass skylight over the rotunda. More than 3,000 shoppers were in the store, and the panic left some with torn clothing and lost belongings, though few were seriously hurt. Three inches of water covered the first floor and about $2,000 of stock was damaged, but Adams & Co. reopened within days.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1913

    Adams & Co. closes and the store becomes lofts, then a bookstore

    Adams & Co. closed for good in 1913 as retailers moved uptown and the Ladies' Mile declined. By the 1920s the Hershey Chocolate Company was making candy in the building, and small firms and lofts filled the rest. After a restoration, Mattel took the top three floors and gave it the nickname "the Mattel Building," while Barnes & Noble held the ground floor from 1994 for 14 years. Trader Joe's took over half of that space in late 2010.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

Nearby

All 72 buildings with stories in Chelsea