70 Greene Street

SoHo | built 1860

Open on the map4 entries

Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.

  1. 1868

    October

    Court papers cite 70 Greene Street, a brothel, as the home address of 42 newly naturalized citizens

    By the 1860s Greene Street was filling with brothels, and the house at No. 70, rebuilt in 1860 by owner Catherine M. Jones, became one. Court papers filed in October 1868 called it a common bawdy-house and named it as the listed address of forty-two people newly granted citizenship.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1872

    August 31

    Owner Catherine Jones has a former brothel remodeled into a stone-fronted store building

    On August 31, 1872, the Record & Guide reported that Catherine M. Jones had hired architect J. H. Coster to alter 70 Greene Street from tenement to store. Finished in 1873 at a cost of $10,000, the result is a red brick building trimmed in sandstone. Coster used a stone front instead of the fashionable cast iron, with neo-Grec bandcourses and lintels.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1916

    Frank Mormando and Lawrence Lobesco turn a former silk and fur showroom building into a waste-paper depot

    In 1916 partners Frank Mormando and Lawrence Lobesco rented 70 Greene Street and formed the American Waste Paper Co., which handled waste paper of every kind. Showrooms once called handsome were converted to paper storage, and a truck loading dock was cut into the storefront. Waste paper stayed the building's business for most of the century, and the Jones family owned it until 1949.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1985

    The Rosa Esman Gallery moves in and shows "East Village Funktional," which the Times calls zany art for today

    As SoHo became Manhattan's artistic center, 70 Greene Street's upper floors turned into artists' live-work space in 1983, when the Friedus-Ordover Gallery moved in. In 1985 the Rosa Esman Gallery took over, and one early show was "East Village Funktional," which the Times called zany art for today. Esman said the kitsch pieces had nothing to do with modernism or post-modernism. The gallery stayed through 1990.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

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