The Cross Hotel

73 8th Avenue | West Village | built 1834

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. 1834

    Lumber dealer James Wallace builds a Greek Revival house at 73 Eighth Avenue

    James Wallace bought the property from the Genet family in late 1833 and built this brick Greek Revival house the next year. His lumber yard was around the corner on Thirteenth Street near Eighth Avenue. The house has low attic windows set in the wood fascia under the roof cornice and long windows on the second floor. Its ground-floor store has no relation to the house above it.

    “…built for James Wallace, who had purchased the property from the Genets late in 1833. Wallace, whose lumber yard was around the corner on Thirteenth Street…”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  2. 1878

    July 10

    A night fire kills a cigar worker in the attic and drives two men out onto an awning

    Around 3 a.m. on July 10, 1878, a fire swept the stairs of No. 73. Tea merchant P. J. McDonnell and his cousin P. E. Nagel escaped from a second-floor window onto the grocery's awning, edging away from the meat hooks hanging below it. Caspar Castillo, a Cuban cigar stripper who lived in the attic, was found insensible and could not be revived. Investigators suspected arson, and damage was put at about $2,000.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1889

    October 8

    Saloon keeper Amos B. Cross buys the building at auction and starts Cross's Hotel

    The Le Comte estate auctioned the four-story building on October 8, 1889. Bidding opened at $19,000 and reached $36,300, and the buyer was Amos B. Cross, who already ran a saloon on the ground floor, valued at $3,000 a year in rent. He began converting the upper floors into Cross's Hotel while the bar stayed open below, and a hotel operated here into the 1920s.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1903

    November 20

    Detectives raid a horse-betting poolroom above Cross's saloon and arrest seven men

    On November 20, 1903, police raided an illegal poolroom in a small room over the saloon. A businessman had reported being cheated of $400, so Detective Rochester went in undercover, dressed as a German farmer. He had just bet $50 on a horse called Golden Drop and was about to collect when his colleagues burst in. Seven men were arrested, every one already in the Rogues' Gallery, along with the bartender.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1928

    December 29

    The Half-Past Nine Greenwich Club is raided as a Prohibition speakeasy

    By 1928 the old saloon space on the ground floor held the Half-Past Nine Greenwich Club, a nightclub that ignored Prohibition. Police raided it on the night of December 29, 1928, and the New York Times said the club was threatened with "padlock actions" on Prohibition charges. A 1937 photograph shows what appears to be a grocery store in the space, and the building sold in 1941 as a four-story apartment house.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

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