Phelan & Collender Building

738 Broadway | NoHo | built 1867

Open on the map4 entries

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

  1. 1855

    The Protestant House of Mercy takes over the earlier house on the site as a refuge for women

    Before the present building, 738 Broadway held a brick house, owned in 1841 by Isaac Jones, husband of the society hostess Mary Mason Jones. In 1855 the Protestant House of Mercy took it over. On November 10, 1860, the New York Times reported that 187 girls and women had found refuge within its walls, 63 of whom were believed to be doing well, while six had died and nine had married.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1867

    Billiard-table makers Phelan & Collender move in, and ship a table to General Grant

    The new building became the warerooms and offices of Phelan & Collender, billiard-table manufacturers, with showrooms on the lower floors, an ivory room on the third and stock on the fourth. In May 1867 the New York Times reported that the firm had sent General Ulysses S. Grant a table with a polished black walnut case, gold plates at the joints and his monogram on the sides. The firm valued it at about $1,400.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1867

    Ritch and Griffiths design a five-story warehouse for Augustus Selden

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    John Warren Ritch and Evan Griffiths designed the warehouse for Augustus M. Selden, who had it built in 1867 in the economic boom after the Civil War, as this stretch of Broadway grew more commercial. By 1902 small manufacturing firms occupied the upper stories. In 1929 the cast-iron columns at the storefront were swapped for a steel girder, and in 1960 an angled electric sign went up for Cotillion Cleaners.

    “The warehouse was designed by John Warren Ritch and Evan Griffiths, and constructed in 1867 for Augustus M. Selden…”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  4. 1932

    April 1

    A tailor of 738 Broadway buys a drawing for a suit at an artists' barter show

    On April 1, 1932, the Society of Independent Artists opened an exhibition at the Grand Central Palace, billed as an anti-depression strategy in which artists traded work for goods and services. Within an hour of the preview, the first barter was struck. S. Hindleman, a tailor of 738 Broadway, took a drawing by the society's secretary, A. S. Baylinson, in exchange for a suit of clothes, and said he was starting a modern art collection.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

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All 222 buildings with stories in NoHo