Van Beuren Building

71 5th Avenue | also 4 East 15th Street | Union Square | built 1907

Open on the map5 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. 1898

    A fire badly damages the Hanover Hotel, an earlier mansion on the site

    Before the present building, a large brick residence stood at this corner. By 1871 it had been turned into an expensive apartment house known as the Haight House, and later it operated as the Hanover Apartment Hotel. A spectacular fire damaged it in 1898, and the old building was demolished in 1906 to make way for the Van Beuren Building. This was an earlier building on the site.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  2. 1907

    Charles Volz's eleven-story loft building rises in 28 weeks on Van Beuren land

    Built for the Van Beuren Estate Company and designed by Charles Volz, who also worked on additions to the American Museum of Natural History, the building went up in just 28 weeks under the builder Edwin Outwater. It has a fireproof iron-and-steel skeleton with brick curtain walls. Its first big tenant was Voss and Stern, importers of lace and embroidery.

    “…designed by Charles Volz ... and was built by the prominent builder, Edwin Outwater, in the rapid time of 28 weeks.”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  3. 1922

    Striking shirtmakers clash with strikebreakers outside, and a guard shoots one in the leg

    In the summer of 1922 shirtmakers struck at Cohen & Goodman, a shirt manufacturer, and the company hired a detective agency to protect its strikebreakers. At the Fifth Avenue entrance, one of three strikers aimed a blow with a blackjack at agency man William Dipoali, who fired a shot and hit 18-year-old Samuel Epstein in the leg. Epstein and Max Berkowitz were arrested for felonious assault.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1923

    February 3

    A second-floor furrier's clerk chases a coat thief down Fifth Avenue, singing at the top of her voice

    May Durrsee, an amateur singer who worked in a second-floor fur shop, was alone when 20-year-old Samuel Silverman asked her to match a fur sample, then grabbed a $450 coat and ran. She ran after him, putting every high note she had into her shouts, and passersby joined the chase. Two detectives in a patrol car caught Silverman with the coat still in hand, and he confessed at the station.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1972

    August 11

    A federal indictment accuses the ground-floor furniture store's owners of defrauding low-income buyers

    Around 1971 the ground-floor Washington Furniture Warehouse became a branch of the Wucker Furniture Company of Harlem. On August 11, 1972, The New York Times reported a federal indictment of the company and its two other stores for a scheme of deceptive advertising, bait-and-switch sales and hidden payment terms aimed at low-income customers. The Wucker family pleaded guilty on August 29.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

Nearby

All 28 buildings with stories in Union Square