Treffurth's

732 Broadway | NoHo | built 1853

Open on the map4 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. 1839

    January 31

    Rebecca Jones buys an earlier house on the site from John Jacob Astor

    On January 31, 1839, Rebecca Jones bought a 25-foot-wide house at 732 Broadway, an earlier building on this site, from John Jacob Astor, who had owned the lot since 1804. It stood half a block south of Astor Place, then one of the city's most exclusive residential districts. The New York Times later described it as a four-story brownstone, which would have been unusual, since most houses nearby were faced in brick. By 1855 a business was already operating from the address.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1872

    July 1

    The Times calls 732 Broadway the most notorious of the city's keno houses

    By the early 1870s the old house held a saloon, with gambling in the rear. On July 1, 1872, the New York Times reported that the keno game here, next door to the New-York Theatre, had run past 2:30 on a Sunday morning, even after a citizen demanded that police stop it. The officer sent over was apparently squared by the proprietors. Years later, Christian W. Schaffer testified that he had paid Byrnes, then commanding the Mercer Street station, a quarter of the profits of a keno game he ran at this address.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1900

    Bruno Berger gives the old house a new front for Treffurth's Restaurant and Cafe

    In 1900 architect Bruno W. Berger designed a new Renaissance Revival facade for the building, which was possibly an early nineteenth-century house, raised to a full four stories in 1885. The owner was Helen A. Wissmann, whose family kept it until at least 1924. Her tenant, Richard L. Treffurth, ran Treffurth's Restaurant and Cafe on the ground floor, and his name still appears in lettering on the roof cornice.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  4. 1967

    Painter Ad Reinhardt, who rented a studio here, dies at work at age 53

    Space in the building was rented in the mid-1960s to the painter Ad Reinhardt, a pioneer of minimal art known for his nearly black canvases with almost no color. In August 1967 he died at age 53 in his studio here. By then the building was leased to the Universal Musical Instruments Company, which had taken the whole building in 1952 and still held space there decades later.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

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