72 West 3rd Street

also 234 Thompson Street, 76 West 3rd Street | Greenwich Village | built 1903

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.

1903
Sass & Smallheiser design a six-story tenement with stores for Rosenberg & Aronson at Thompson and West 3rd
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The corner tenement at 234 Thompson Street, which also takes in 72 to 76 West 3rd Street, was built in 1903 to plans by the firm of Sass & Smallheiser for the owners Rosenberg & Aronson. It rose six stories in brick, terra cotta and limestone, with cast-iron piers at the stores below and arcaded second and sixth floors. A bracket sign survives at the corner of the building.
Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission
1940
Ernie's Restaurant, later the Three Ring Circus, opens at 76 West 3rd Street
Around 1940 a restaurant called Ernie's, later known as the Three Ring Circus, opened at 76 West 3rd Street, in this tenement building. The Landmarks Preservation Commission describes its crowd as mostly heterosexual, with a following among working-class lesbians, and dates its run to about 1962. In its account of the neighborhood's lesbian and gay bars, the commission adds that many of those on West 3rd Street stood in the shadow of an elevated train.
Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

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