Former YWCA building (the People's House)
7 East 15th Street | Union Square | built 1887
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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.
- 1875
The YWCA buys the Brown House, a three-story mansion on the site
Before the present building, a large three-story brick house stood here, set back from the street in an open yard. Known as the Brown House and built in 1853, it was acquired by the Young Women's Christian Association in 1875, which used it until the new building replaced it. This was an earlier building on the site.
“The Brown House was acquired by the Y.W.C.A. in 1875, and occupied by them in the years before the present building was constructed.”
- 1887
R. H. Robertson's Romanesque Revival building for the YWCA opens with a women's library
Designed by Robert Henderson Robertson and paid for with gifts from John J. Astor, Margaret Louisa Shepard and others, the five-story brownstone and brick building housed a 20,000-volume library that was the city's first circulating library open to women. Critic Montgomery Schuyler praised its facade as an interesting use of the Romanesque style on a modern street front.
- 1908
A millinery teacher bans oversized Merry Widow hats from the building
Bessie A. Losey, who taught hat-making to YWCA members here, forbade the fashionable Merry Widow hat on the premises, as The Evening World reported on May 22. She allowed hats up to forty inches around, while the Merry Widow ran sixty to seventy inches. Peek-a-boo waists and short skirts were frowned on as well.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1917
The Rand School and other socialist and labor groups take over the building as the People's House
When the YWCA moved out in 1917, the building was renamed the People's House, a name tied to the Society of the Commonwealth Center. Its tenants included the Rand School of Social Science, a leading socialist institution, along with the Woman's Trade Union League, the Socialist Party and several unions. It also had a library, a dance hall, a bookstore and a cafeteria.
- 1919
The Lusk Committee raids the Rand School and seizes books and documents
On June 21, 1919, the New York legislature's Lusk Committee, which was investigating radicalism, raided the Rand School with a search warrant. Ten state constabulary members and 55 former American Protective League members carried out the search and removed many books, papers and documents. Two days later police returned and drilled open a safe.
“On June 21, 1919 ... a legal raid on the Rand School premises ... served by 10 members of the state constabulary, assisted by 55 former members of the American Protective League.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1988
Soka Gakkai International buys the building and restores its exterior
The International Association of Machinists took over the building in 1956 and used it as offices and a meeting hall. In 1988 Soka Gakkai International, a Buddhist congregation, bought it. The group restored the exterior, finishing in 1994, and renovated the largely lost interiors with historic sensitivity.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
Further reading
- The 1887 YWCA Bldg -- No. 7 East 15th StreetDaytonian in Manhattan
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