697 Greenwich Street

also 259 West 10th Street | West Village | built 1892

Open on the map2 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. 1809

    Richard Amos agrees to give the city land for a street only if his corner house stays untouched for five years

    In 1809 Richard Amos, a Revolutionary War veteran with a farm in this part of the Village, gave land to the city for a new street. He attached a condition: his own house on the northeast corner at Greenwich Street was to be left alone for five years. He objected anyway, but the city laid the street out in 1815 and called it Amos Street, a name that changed to West Tenth Street in 1857. His house stood where the warehouse at 259 West Tenth Street is now, so this entry concerns an earlier building on the site.

    “…gave land to the city through his farm on condition that his house at the northeast corner of Greenwich Street be left undisturbed for five years.”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  2. 1892

    William H. Ramsey builds a seven-story Romanesque Revival warehouse designed by Martin V. B. Ferdon

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    The warehouse at Greenwich and West Tenth Streets went up in 1892 for William H. Ramsey, with Martin V. B. Ferdon as architect. Ferdon gave it a ground floor of brick arches, all but one of which serve as doorways, above a plain brick base and a rock-faced stone band. The front wall then rises unbroken, with windows at regular intervals, to a shallow corbeled cornice. Seven stories tall, it was the dominant building on the block when the district was designated in 1969.

    “This handsome seven-story brick warehouse was built in 1892 for William H. Ramsey. It was designed with an arched first floor by Martin V. B. Ferdon…”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

Further reading

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